Steve Lopez, a columnist at the L.A. Times, illustrated years ago the weirdness of the region’s day-labor pool of worker-guys; and the comic absurdity of the region’s “High Occupancy Vehicle” (HOV) highway lanes — all in one brilliant, Cohen-like column.
Lopez stopped at one of the street-corner worker pools, hired himself a laborer, and then proceeded to drive in the HOV lanes, since he now had a “passenger” and was free to revel in the benefit that came to those who “carpooled.”
Of course, HOV lanes are an easy topic for satire. There are few better uncomplicated examples of the influence on public policy of guitar-strumming, folk-singer, dreamy, feel-good environmentalism than expensive highway lanes designed to be empty and somehow able to mock us all for being idiots.
As initially explained for public consumption, the HOV lanes would be plopped on busy commuter highways, with the promise that if you did as God intended and carpooled — that is, drove to work with someone else in the car besides your big corporate ego — then you would be rewarded with access to a lane paved with gold — and not nearly as busy as the lanes full of selfish, carbon-dispensing, solo drivers and cement trucks and the like.
Everything was wrong with the concept from the moment of conception. Many confused jurisdictions, including Connecticut, implemented the HOV rules to apply 24-hours-per-day; thus, for most of the day, the only thing driving on the HOV lanes was tumbleweed and the occasional confused raccoon. Enforcement was spotty; cops aren’t promoted for snaring a hardened felon driving solo in the HOV lane.
And the God-fearing drivers who chose to travel in the HOV lane with a buddy would often find themselves stuck behind a car driving, oh, about 18 miles per hour. No passing lane for HOV drivers.
HOV theory was one of those ideas that you couldn’t think about too hard, without your brain exploding. We live in an era when commuters are scattered hither and yon, as opposed to driving into the factory town for an assembly line job. In an age when cars empower suburbanites to stop for Chinese food, pick up the dry cleaning, and attend the kids’ soccer games, without necessarily stopping to drop off a passenger first, the HOV premise borders on madness.
And, if for some weird reason, we all found God and drove to work with a buddy, then the HOV lanes would be jammed during Rush Hour, diminishing the advantage and the allure of having someone else in the car with us.
What truly prompted HOV mental illness in tens of thousands of the nation’s drivers was Empty HOV Lane Syndrome — a kind of road rage prompted during Rush Hour by staring over at a largely empty lane; or by driving along a quiet highway at midnight — and cursing an expensive, wasteful, empty strip of concrete that would be better used as a golf driving range.
Beyond transforming the HOV lanes into drive-through hotdog venues, the best HOV fix, experimented with in a few places, is to charge a toll for HOV access. Make it a premium to those in a commuter hurry — and forget about the make-believe carpool fable.
A bill commuting up and down the halls of the Connecticut General Assembly would open the HOV lanes to all during afternoon Rush Hour madness.
Better than nothing, but if you’re going to admit defeat and open up the lanes during Rush Hour, why not also at 3 a.m. on Saturdays?
By the way, I am available for rent as an HOV passenger. You pick the radio station.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
