Are
carpool lanes coming to a highway near you? The province has
installed High Occupancy Vehicle lanes alongside two busy
Toronto-area highways, the first of their kind in Ontario. HOV signs
are becoming common on U.S. urban freeways, and now some even sport
"HOT" markings -- the T is for toll. This newest hybrid designation
allows buses and cars with more than one person to use the lanes, as
well as those solo drivers willing to pay for the privilege of
zooming past all the schlubs stuck in gridlock.
If you
haven't been on the 403 or 404 yet, the changes are pretty simple.
Placed to the left of the "fast lane", a set of solid lines about a
metre wide separate the HOV from the "SOV" -- that is, Single
Occupant Vehicles. Drivers are expected to enter and exit the
special lanes in marked areas, where they will likely have to adjust
speed -- at times dramatically.
Aside
from their novelty, there are some major operational obstacles to
the success of the new lanes. Drivers must pass through general
purpose traffic to get from the HOV route to a highway exit. On
newer US freeways, HOV lanes have their own on-and off-ramps.
The
Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) likely spent most of the
$100 million cost of this project at the super-hairy intersection
where the 404 meets Highway 401 and the City of Toronto's Don Valley
Parkway. Even with a special HOV ramp tunnelled through the
cloverleaf, a swath of southbound lanes now end in a tangle. Toronto
will re-stripe its roadway and shoulders to create some more space,
but the junction is going to remain a bottleneck.
For
years, reserved or "diamond" lanes have been in place on municipal
streets in Ottawa, Toronto and Mississauga, but inconsistent police
enforcement make some of them useless.
The
only things keeping solo drivers off MTO's new HOV lanes are paint,
special signage and the threat of a provincial police officer
pulling you over into a special enforcement "pocket." From opening
day, they were delivering $110 fines, each worth three demerit
points. Possible increased insurance rates make driving alone in the
new lanes quite the risk.
The
OPP have other things to do, but they will somehow have to maintain
this threat. If motorists ever get the impression that the lanes are
poorly enforced like those on city streets, the experiment fails. A
lot of people in SOVs don't like being confined to "stop and go"
while just a few feet away the carpool types are doing the speed
limit -- or higher.
HOV
lanes have the capacity to move more people, in less vehicles, than
unrestricted lanes. They offer some commuters -- those who find
co-workers to share a car (and the cost of gas) -- an initial 15 to
20 minute reduction in travel time.
Of
course, modern cities do not lend themselves to carpooling. Spouses
may work in entirely different areas, and for some stressed citizens
the commute is the only time to be alone. The provincial and federal
governments have recently put money into employee-matching services
-- sites like
www.smartcommute.ca can help you find a suitable passenger or
driver.
The
lanes also allow buses to bypass gridlock, further increasing the
person-carrying capacity of our valuable asphalt space. Building a
viable commuter transit network is a lot cheaper if you can
piggyback new bus service onto highway expansion projects.
The
next (contentious) frontier: Turning "regular" lanes into diamonds.
Ed
Drass
edrass@nationalpost.com