[shampine]

Actually as someone who drives the 110N home everyday the HOV makes everyone worse off in my opinion. Every entrance to the HOV during rush hour makes cross-lane patterns that end up bringing traffic to halt around them, but in between entrances it flows properly. Entering a freeway and immediately crossing 5 lanes of traffic to enter the HOV is extremely disruptive to the flow.

[haubey]

I totally agree. I was just in LA for the summer and coming from Ft. Lauderdale where the HOV lane is free to enter and exit, the entrance and exit system in LA made no sense to me. I also had to quickly get out of the HOV lane when it suddenly switched to the FasTrak and I didn't know what that was.

In Ft. Lauderdale we have an HOV lane that you can enter whenever you want and exit whenever you want. Granted, we don't have near as much traffic as LA has, but at least in this system traffic keeps moving forward as people move in and out of the HOV lane. We also have an express lane that you pay for and exit at the end of 595, the equivalent of the 110 to our suburbs. The express lane there has really reduced traffic. When I'm running late, I pay $.50 and fly across, and otherwise I can still go faster than before.

[twblalock]

That's the result of a bad design in this particular case, and it isn't inherent to the concept of an HOV lane.

[shampine]

Right because most HOVs have dedicated exits (I'm picturing 495 in D.C.) that avoid the cross traffic. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury on any of our HOV/Fastrak lanes that I drive.

[tomohawk]

Very much agree. For example, the I395 in Northern VA uses up 6 lanes of space but only provides 2 lanes for HOV, and these lanes change direction. So, instead of having 3 additional lanes in each direction, we get 2 lanes that change direction depending on the rush. The extra dedicated flyovers and exits are hugely expensive and negatively impact the interconnection of roads to the interstate. What a waste.