jcesare said:
How dare you suggest that the car pool lane be used for what it was intended for.
Let's be fair, the concept of an HOV lane was always an incentive, period.
Initially it was to incentivize folks to reduce congestion and pollution by carpooling; four people in a car means three less cars on the road. In California (and a few other places), it then became an incentive to reduce pollution either by carpooling (see above) or getting a low emissions vehicle.
I actually honestly wish they'd do that up here in Washington. We have some HOV lanes that require 3+ people in the car, which mean they almost never get used; many people will carpool with one other person, but finding a third person to carpool is very difficult.
Add to that the fact that there's a bunch of political fighting about EV owners not paying towards road maintenance. (In fairness, we aren't; road upkeep is paid for by gas taxes up here.) So they want to impose a $100/year fee on EV owners to help cover road maintenance. So I think they should just charge us $100/year for a special 'low/zero emission' plate that lets cars use the HOV lane; make the plate required for EVs (to make up for the gas taxes we don't pay), and make it optional for hybrids like the Prius (hey, extra money for highway upkeep; they want to use the carpool lane, they shell out $100/year to get the plates).
I'm sure there's lots of flaws that would be more apparent if I lived in California, but from a distance, and looking at our disused 3+ occupant HOV lanes and the arguments over lack of EV gas tax, I have to say there's a lot about California's system that looks feasible.