HOV lanes & Toll lanes

SABA's Walt Seifert was kind enough to send along a link to this opinion article by Heather MacDonald in today's L.A. Times:

CALTRANS' crusade to add more carpool lanes to Southern California freeways continues unabated; too bad the department doesn't know how many real carpools use them. Unless the department can show that the high-occupancy-vehicle lanes are actually reducing the number of cars on the road, its multibillion-dollar plan to add hundreds of miles of new HOV capacity around Los Angeles will be a colossal waste of taxpayers' money.

The article goes on to point out that HOV lanes have a "negligible" effect on true carpooling rates, once you account for all the freeloaders who incidentally qualify as 'carpools'-- limos with passengers, parents transporting children, friends with a common destination who would have been riding together anyway, etc.

MacDonald's proposed solution is toll lanes. Unlike so-called carpool lanes, the premise of a toll lane is that everyone who uses the lane pays. Bona fide, employer-sponsored carpools could be exempted, but families and other 'circumstantial carpools' would have to pay just like everyone else. And single-occupancy cars could use the lane as well, if they're willing to pay to do so.

MacDonald's solution seems geared at preventing further public subsidies for automobile commuters. That's a laudible goal. But she doesn't directly address the question of whether a toll lane would more effectively encourage carpooling, thereby reducing the number of vehicles and the pollution they cause.

Then, of course, there's the question of whether a toll lane would be an equitable transportation solution, or whether it would simply allow a free pass, for those who can afford it, out of one of the most bothersome aspects of life in cities designed around the automobile.