The Commute

Some years ago I worked with a gentleman who was dropped off at work every morning and picked up every evening by his wife. He never had a car at work. During a conversation, he mentioned that she spent the day at home and didn't work. I raised a question, "Don't you drive?". He grinned a big grin as he told me that his wife dropped him off and picked him up because together they could use the carpool lane (also called a commuter lane or ride sharing), which was much faster getting to and from work than driving alone...

I can fully understand his reasoning. He had found a way to get to work quicker and with less stress. By having his wife make the trip so that together they could use the carpool lane. Not exactly the intent of "carpooling". Which brings me to my point.

Carpool lanes don't work. Carpool lanes are a fraudulent deceit. Especially around here.

The purpose of carpool lanes is supposedly to encourage carpooling. This means having multiple people who would normally drive alone share their commutes in a single vehicle. This would reduce traffic congestion by reducing the number of drivers and vehicles on the road. In principle, everyone agrees this is a good idea.

In my colleague's case, he used it as a chauffeur lane. He actually doubled his contribution to traffic. Likewise, I'm sure taxi and other professional drivers are happy to use the carpool lane for expediency with their passengers.

I use the carpool lane when I take my kids to school in the morning. Am I reducing the number of cars on the road? Not at all. As I watch other cars in the carpool lane, I see many with one adult shuttling kid(s). And so, we use it as a kidpool lane. Carpool moms love this. Wow! There is actually a benefit to having the kids in the car.

I also see many cases of a single person in a car buzzing along watching for police. So it is a "scofflaw watching for a traffic fine" lane. There are even amusing cases locally of people getting caught using lifelike dummies or mannequins in the passenger seats of their car.

And I admittedly see many vehicles with 2 or more people of driving age. But this begs the question. How many of them are actually driving together to reduce traffic? Which of them wouldn't be carpooling otherwise? Granted there must be a few legitimate corpoolers, but from my observations and experience I would have to argue that they are in the minority. I see many work crews, construction, and professional service vehicles that would normally have more than one person.

There are just too many reasons not to carpool. Convenience, privacy, flexibility, control, and security to name some. So the idea of carpooling has a lot of good intent, but in practice becomes "what everyone else should do".

Carpool lanes are a fraudulent deceit because the expense of creating and maintaining them was justified as a way to reduce traffic by getting more people to drive fewer cars. This has not happened to any notable degree. Instead, it makes a lane of traffic unavailable to the vast majority of drivers, increasing traffic congestion in the remaining lanes. Something that was justified as a way to reduce traffic congestion actually increases it? Yep.

On a somewhat positive note, it does reward those who do carpool, along with the chauffeurs, shuttle-parents, work crews, and all the scofflaws who aren't caught...