Thoughts on Car Pool Lanes:

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday, while heading home from work, I noticed a gigantic, jacked up full sized pickup truck bouncing down the I-405 south car pool lane, trying to herd it between the lines. I was thinking why should a mess like that be in the car pool lanes, then it hit me, the solution.

I don't know how it works where you live, but the carpool lanes here in the greater Seattle area are an absolute disaster.

The traffic here is horrible and the car pool lanes are not helping a whit. Indeed many times trying to drive south near Renton traffic is bumper to bumper stopped and the car pool lane is virtually empty. The car pool lanes here actually make driving considerably more dangerous.

I am assuming the main intent is to convince people during rush hour traffic to carpool so that there are less cars on the road. So now un-employed house wives use the carpool lanes to go shopping during rush hour in their monstrous SUV's, and take a three year-old child with them to be legal. This does not get cars off the road. Also many carpool lanes here were literally 24 hours a day, the lions' share of the time they sat empty while working folk commuted to work at 5:30 am, what a screaming waste!
It is so bad here that Tim Eyman recently had a referendum on the ballot to entirely dispose of them!
Here is the solution I am confidant you will agree it is elegant.
Change the car pool lanes to ECO-LANES!
They will only be used by vehicles that get 30 miles to the gallon or more. A sticker would be purchased to affix somewhere that is clearly visible. I have noticed that virtually all the huge SUV's cruising the carpool lanes have heavily tinted windows, who knows how many people or legal drivers might actually be in there? The police would have to pull them over just to check!
Of course this solution would not only help with traffic, it would help to minimize buying foreign oil, it would help in the department of global warming as well! The more I think about it, the better the solution works.

Current situation: Car pool lanes are being used by people carrying individuals who are not legal drivers, who are not commuting to work, the intention it being abused. Cars used in the car pool lane are often three time the size and weight, and burn three times the gas of a commuter car.

Proposed Solution: Make the Eco Lanes about real improvement of; traffic, fuel use, carbon emission, pollution, safety, and wasting the very limited resources we have!