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In an effort to help cut emissions, Governor Blagojevich plans to introduce "Green Lanes" for the Illinois Tollway. Essentially "express lanes," these new lanes will be for drivers of hybrid vehicles and car-poolers. The lanes would be placed in some of the busier segments of Tollway roads, thus cutting down on congestion and emissions from the constant stop-and-go of gas-brake-gas-brake pedal pumping. Carpool lanes are not a new concept; if anything, Illinois is late to the party as cities nationwide have been implementing similar programs for years. Cities like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Nashville have HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes. Of course, Chicago looked at the idea of adding the lanes to the Stevenson in '94, but Mayor Daley squashed that idea. Still, Blago's proposal at least has the "green" element, which is, we admit, not a bad idea.
And Blago's proposal has another twist. Unlike those other HOV lanes around the country, Blago's proposal would allow solo drivers to use the "Green Lanes" - but for a price. Under the proposal, these solo drivers would pay a higher-than-standard toll to cruise in the "free-flow" lanes. Blago spoke with Spike O'Dell and told him, "This will have an effect on really getting cars off the highways, and our estimate is there will be 5,700 fewer cars (daily) on the highways when these lanes are operating...You can get in that lane if you have one other person, who's a real person, not a blow-up doll."
In theory, this sounds great. But how would it be fully enforced? Would traffic cameras be used to snap photos of violators? How would the automatic I-Pass system know the difference between a car full of four people and a car with a single, lonely, Roy Orbison sing-a-long driver? Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero says that certain technology can use heat sensors to count the number of car occupants, but you'll forgive us if we remain skeptical (we've seen 2001: A Space Odyssey and we know how wrong this shit can go). Also, if everyone is allowed to drive the carpool lanes anyway and those lanes won't be separated by a barrier (as Blago claims) then will this really cut down on congestion? That's going to have be one hell of a premium toll.
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Better 14 years too late than never! That's what I always say!
What a douchenozzle
2 People is high-occupancy? All right.
Just getting rid of the toll system all together would be an even better move. In the dim, misty days of history the tollroads were supposed to be TEMPORARY. But then they became profitable and it was very good.
Anyway, this is a moon-shot. The over-under on Blago is that after the election he's doing a perp-walk. If Rezko is singing Blago can make all the fanciest of plans and still end up bunking with George Ryan.
Will seniors be able to use that lane at regular tolls? Just wonderin.....
It's about fucking time!! It will probably help traffic as well, for those who car pool.
How much is his name on the sign going to cost?
The problem is that most people don't car pool because they either (1) don't live near others they work with or (2) have different schedules. I bet it won't work.
(FYI, I-55 is called the "Stevenson" expressway -- not "Stephenson." It was named after Adlai Stevenson, the Illinois governor in the early 1950s and U.N. Ambassador in the early 1960s.)
Hopefully Blago can car pool with Rezko to the federal priaon in Wisconsin
"The lanes would be placed in some of the busier segments of Tollway roads, thus cutting down on congestion"
Haha, removing a lane from the busier segments of the tollway will REDUCE congestion? Not likely, when the vast majority of commuters are single-occupancy.
in theory carpool lanes are great... but unfortunately, they don't really work that well. just ask people in vancouver/seattle/tacoma. blago probably doesn't bother doing that kind of homework though... he's too busy trying to find a way to roll in perks for seniors in this waste of a plan.
If you refuse to do the little bit of work necessary to take advantage of such benefits, of course you're not going to benefit directly. Most of the folks who rail against propositions like these already know they can't be bothered to take the initiative to coordinate rideshare (easy stuff in the age of the inter-tubes), and that's what they've got their shorts in knots over.
Yes, there's lots to hate Blago for, but your own laziness is not one of them.
OK, by your logic the hybrid vehicles should be the ones stopping and going while the regular vehicles should be the ones driving unencumbered since most hybrids shut down their engines when they're stopped. Let's implement gas guzzler lanes!
I don't see how reducing the already scant number of lanes available to the general driving population helps reduce congestion. It might offer some incentive for people to drive hybrids and carpool, but I don't see it reducing congestion.
It's quite simple. Carpooling results in fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars means less overall congestion.
If you want to argue "but they're taking away a lane, so it doesn't mean anything", you're wrong. Three lanes of mostly single-occupant vehicles is more congestion than two lanes of mostly single-occupant vehicles and one with a fair number of multi-occupant vehicles. Now, take some of those people in the car pool lane, put each person in one car, and send them on their way, while a select few still carpool. Now they're back in those two lanes and congestion there is greater than if they'd carpooled. And that's the idea here: there is a clear-cut incentive to take the extremely small amount of effort necessary to engage in rideshare.
"But wait," your contrarian brain screams. "Why should the hybrids and alt-fuel powered vehicles with one driver get to use that carpool lane?" Because, again, there isn't an up-front immediately obvious benefit to making such an investment by most people's reckoning. Sure, you save in fuel costs and the thing eventually pays for itself. But these things are still not particularly common and are still a fringe investment. If you give the early adopters a bonus like this, you get more early adopters, and then eventually, you reach the point where there are enough of these vehicles on the road where you wind up dropping that incentive. The overall supply increases, the cost goes down, and when you've got affordable hybrids and alt-fuel powered vehicles, people save more money on day-to-day transportation, which results in them having more money to spend on other things, and the economy benefits accordingly.
There are lots of incentives here. If you want to keep burying your head in the sand, I suppose there's no helping you.
"Carpooling results in fewer cars on the road. Fewer cars means less overall congestion."
Absolutely correct.
However, "making one lane carpool only will reduce congestion" is a different statement, and likely false, because it assumes that enough people will carpool to make up for the lost lane capacity. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that won't happen.
This is SO typical of Illinois government.
We've already spent countless millions on reconstructing every road in the Chicago area. do Do they decide to add HOV lanes while planning these massive road construction projects? Of course not!
It's only after the fact that these idiots who represent us actually start thinking. How much more is it going to cost to add these lanes, not to mention the signage for them? Hopefully, it'll be less than the $10K per sign we, the taxpayers, have already spent on each 'Open Road Toll brought to you by Blaggo' sign.
I'm not betting on it.
@enneyekay: Read Tower18's response. Obviously, carpooling works when people carpool. People already carpool when it's practical without the incentive of HOV lanes. I think you overestimate the number of people that can or will carpool given the extra "incentive" of a HOV lane.