Review Your Cars

The state of California continues with the ridiculous HOV or High Occupancy Vehicle lanes that are intended for Electric Vehicles, hybrids with limited issue permission stickers, motorcycles and multiple occupant vehicles. As you can guess, eventually these lanes won’t move any quicker than other full access lanes. That’s how stupid they are. They are so poorly thought out that there are multiple scenarios that the system can be foiled. Of course, not everyone can use these lanes which I covered in a previous article here: http://cartruthblog.blogspot.com/2016/07/abolish-wasteful-and-unfair-hov-lanes.html so they are patently unfair. Now in the infinite wisdom of CalTrans and others, the Fastrak was introduced in order to charge a fee for solo riders who want to use the lanes. This meant adding sensors to detect vehicles but still no cameras for reading license plates. Of course cameras came next along with a revised Fastrak that has a switch to indicate how many passengers are in the ...

HOV lanes waste gasoline and are bad for the environment. How often have you sat idling, virtually motionless when an occasional vehicle drives by? How about watching the traffic reports on the news and seeing the HOV lanes severely underutilized while hundreds or thousands of cars sit idle or barely moving? Imagine the wasted fuel and exhaust emissions as tens or hundreds of thousands of vehicles sitting twice a day for hours while an adjacent lane is open. Let’s toss in the ill-conceived notion of FasTrak access while we’re at it. Wasting gas and contributing to polluting the environment are the major drawbacks of HOV lanes. Discriminatory access is patently unfair. Productivity delays and wear and tear are secondary. The intent of the expressway system is to allow as much traffic as possible to move efficiently and safely. That’s it, no other function or purpose. People will carpool if possible. They already use mass transit when they can. The cost of living is high, gas prices are ...

Mr. Gary Richards AKA Mr. Roadshow of the San Jose Mercury News recently reported that the new southbound 680 express lanes have added on average a minute to the commute time. The study cited was done by the Alameda County Transportation Agency. What that means is the results of the new lanes are an absolute and total failure contributing MORE pollution from idling vehicles than before. I would also like to know just how bad the spikes are and how badly the statistics show the real story every day. ALSO, on southbound 680 AFTER the express lanes end during the evening rush hour, traffic slows down while there is a very large median area next to the center divider that could easily accommodate another lane. Why it hasn’t been made into a useful lane is beyond me. Finally northbound 680 during the late afternoon and evening looks horrible as well, observed during late afternoon drives southbound. Why California continues to mandate harmful and/or useless fuel additives, lower octane ...