HOV lane behavior... 4446

Scott en Aztl‡n

Hmmm. *I* look silly pointing out that the purpose of the HOV lane is for HOVs? And I wonder why we're not making progress here! You said earlier the purpose of *HOV* lanes was a clas of users who are not driving HOVs. I've addressed the very hear of the issue. Now, who is silly?

I'm not arguying semantics, I started by pointing out your error upthread when you said: "The purpose of the HOV lane is to reward drivers of low pollution-high efficiency vehicles by letting them travel on the highway unimpeded. Having some inconsiderate Sloth blocking the road defeats the whole purpose of having an HOV lane."

That;s just patently false. The purpose of HOV lanes is not to reward low pollution-high occupancy vehicle drivers by letting them travel *unimpeded.* One may often find themselves impeded even in HOV lanes; there's no government guarantee of free-flow travel. But the primary purpoise is to encourage car-pooling to remove cars from the system (whether it works is another debate!). Hybrids and other allowable users such as motorcycles are incidental uses of the exces capacity. The HOV concept has nothing to do with *unimpeded* travel, just faster travel than the GP lanes in exchange for car-pooling. Unimpeded and faster are not the same things.

Second, someone driving less fast than you isn't defeating the whole purpose of the lane at all, if in fact you are trying to do 90 or more in that car-pool lane while the normal flow of nearly everyone else is 65 or 75 or 80. It's merely holding you up a bit. Why should you cut in line ahead of these folks? They're taxpayers too. Why should your MFFY atttidtue *cost them their own valuable time* by forcing them to get into the lanes of people driving 25 or 30 - or even 55 - just for your marginal gain? Their time is no less valuable than yours.

You clearly don't understand the concept "ad hominem." I did no such thing.

Don't you mean, *other* than the ONE that I DID cite and to which we're all responding?