Getting Rid of Carpool Lanes Could Double Travel Times (sciencemag.org) 245
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Science Magazine: Eliminating carpool lanes could almost double drivers' traveling times, according to a new study. The findings come thanks to an unusual decision made by the government of Jakarta last year. Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire, Indonesian lawmakers repealed the so-called three-in-one restriction. The law had required cars driving on the business district's main roads to carry at least three passengers during rush hours. To determine the impact on the city's drivers, Benjamin Olken, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and colleagues queried Google Maps for real-time driving-speed data before and after the new policy went into effect. Following the policy lift, travel delays, defined as the time it takes to travel 1 kilometer, increased by 46% in the morning and almost 90% in the evening, the team reports today in Science. But the most startling result is that phasing out the three-in-one policy led to worse traffic during times of the day and on roads where there had never been restrictions in place, Olken says. One possible explanation, he says, is that the three-in-one restriction led fewer people to drive into the city. "Maybe they carpooled, took public transit, or worked from home."
False Scarcity (Score:2, Insightful)
In the USA they take away "free" travel lanes, then sell them back to you as carpool/HOV/HOT lanes. This creates scarcity and increases congestion in the existing lanes and makes the relatively quicker toll lanes more appealing, which fills up the government coffers. Sweet little scam.
So it's doubtful that getting rid of toll lanes would increase congestion, rather it would restore highway capacity so traffic should flow better.
Re:False Scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
In fairness what's true in Jakarta may well not be true for America, but I think you have to give some more reasoning as to why the article is wrong.
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I'm quite certain that what applies in Jakarta does not apply in the USA. For one there are far fewer people in the USA willing and able to drug their children to hire themselves out to fulfill a HOV lane requirement.
I say willing because people in the USA generally don't seem as desperate. I'm not saying they don't exist, just fewer. I say able because any drugs worth a damn are prescription only in the USA. Sure, you can get a Tylenol or something over the counter but if have anything more than a mild
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NyQuil, Dramamine, benadryl can all out children to sleep.
I have no doubt but:
1) I checked the labels of the allergy meds I have in my cupboard and looked at child dosages, I saw variations on "Do not use" or "Ask a physician".
2) Assuming you can get someone to write a prescription I would imagine using this in a not as prescribed manner, getting the kid to sleep in a car during the day as opposed to sleeping in a bed at night, is child abuse.
3) Without a prescription or trained medical supervision this is dangerous as hell, people have gone to prison for pulling
Re: False Scarcity (Score:5, Insightful)
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Clearly there are two cases:
1) HOV lanes slow everyone down because not many people carpool
2) HOV lanes speed everyone up because they cause people to carpool
You should be able to calculate a crossover point, where the number of carpoolers is sufficient to overcome the loss of the lane. It's not just total carpoolers, it's the delta.
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Or how about the absurd theory that traffic increases in general around 3:00PM, which is why the carpool lanes turn on.
If you haven't been in the traffic in question, you might make that mistake, but the fact is that the slowdown happens not around 3, but at 3. Like clockwork. Because there's one less lane available for the bulk of traffic, that traffic has to move more slowly. The best answer would be meaningful public transportation, but the sili valley has never embraced such a communistic idea. There are some bus lines but most of them are useless to people who want to arrive places on time, but not spectacularly early
That's one way to look at it (Score:3)
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Why can't the poor just use the "high occupancy" option? I thought that just meant >1 person in the car, which makes sense if you are poor because it's cheaper than two people driving two separate cars to work.
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When all lanes are HOV-only (read the article), carpooling works only if both people live in the same place and work in the same place. When a person drives alone to pick up the person who carpools with him, he violates carpool law. When a person drives alone after having dropped off the person who carpools with him, he violates carpool law. Or should people instead choose a roommate based on having the same place of employment?
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The poor are more likely to have jobs they have to arrive at time at, making it harder for one of them to take a detour to pick up another one. I have carpooled but I would not be considered the lower class, and I can certainly see how this would be far more difficult if my time for travel was limited.
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"Yes, the asteroid will wipe the Earth, but the tax to fund the mission to deflect it is an intolerable abuse."
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You're not used to Los Angeles traffic, I see.
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But the worst is that 30 percent of the tolls go to a private firm, out
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I'm pretty sure the signage, toll collection systems (FastPass, etc) and road modifications for carpool lanes cost way more than the revenue from tolls brings in. It's hardly a money maker.
It's also doubtful that the traffic would move appreciably faster if the toll lane was an ordinary traffic lane. Usually these systems are implemented at some point where traffic levels have exceeded roadway capacity, so you were already going slow.
In fact, the larger problem is that demand exceeds supply at the price o
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Apparently you don't have variable toll rates on your express lanes. In Atlanta, there are express lanes going up that have variable rates that are determined by monitoring the express lane speeds. If the express lane starts to slow, the tolls go up. They vary from a few pennies when there is no traffic to tens of dollars in rare cases.
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That's how demand pricing works and that's how it works here, too.
As demand increases, the price is supposed to increase to cut demand. The higher prices should force people for whom the additional dollars aren't worth the additional speed to not use the express lane.
Knowing what I do about Atlanta roads, my guess is the congestion is so bad that the price ceiling for a lot of drivers is very high and they are willing to pay a large sum to stay in that lane.
There's also the question of casual users. In Mi
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However, you are correct in the effort to create artificial scarcity. And that's not hidden. The goal of a carpool lane is not necessarily to bene
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Evidence, please. It is quite possible that the carpooling encouraged by this reduces the overall traffic so that the non-HOV lanes, while more congested than the HOV lanes, are less congested than they would be if there were no HOV lanes.
It's not a cash cow, it's a tax dodge (Score:2)
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In rare cases, the citizens don't put up with that bullshit. GA-400 in Atlanta used to be a toll road inside the perimeter but they actually removed the toll and demolished the toll booths. And in many cases, they are adding toll lanes funded by tolls and not removing a previously existing travel lane to do it.
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It's a cash cow. Tolls never go away despite what you've may have read. They go on forever as maintenance costs and to fund the next "big project". So once a toll, always a toll.
The worst are dynamic metering based tolls. If there's a wreck on a major road in some states, the toll/hov section instantly jacks up the price until enough people stay in the parking lot until that flipped over 18 wheeler is shoved off of it.
It is hardly a cash cow. Toll roads rarely make money when debt service is taken into account. They cover their operating expenses, but have trouble recouping construction costs.
Dynamic tolls are the only ones that make sense if you want to use a free market perspective. When the toll road is more desirable you jack up the price so that it maintains value to the people willing to pay the price. Otherwise you get the scenario of people paying to use a toll lane that isn't moving faster than the non-toll
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The entire roadway was HOV, less than three passengers and you are forbidden to travel on that road.
The article is not about a single lane of the road being HOV...
Braess' paradox Another possible reason (Score:2)
Its possible that Braess's Paradox [wikipedia.org] is to blame here also?
In a nutshell, it can be that if people are given too much license to make "selfish' decisions, it can actually increase travel times across the system. (E.g. if people keep changing lanes to get ahead but cause others to slow down resulting in a net negative to the system).
There are examples of this occuring when new "improvements" to motorways added to a system actually caused traffic delays, which only went away when the new road was closed.
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Read the summary again, it's not a carpool lane, it's ALL traffic.
Whoever wrote the article needs a kick in the crotch.
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So if you remove the 3-passenger requirement, capacity will not change but usage will increase, so of course it will slow down. If you change a carpool lane into a regular lane, capacity will increase, and depending on how much usage increases traffic can speed up or slow down.
Read the summary again, it's not a carpool lane, it's ALL traffic.
Whoever wrote the article needs a kick in the crotch.
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Yes, we're in furious agreement... excepting that the article title and first paragraph both misrepresent the study.
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In a nutshell, it can be that if people are given too much license to make "selfish' decisions, it can actually increase travel times across the system. (E.g. if people keep changing lanes to get ahead but cause others to slow down resulting in a net negative to the system).
You forgot the chucklefucks who don't know what lane they're supposed to be in who create the inducement to others to change lanes to try to get ahead. That's the first selfish decision in that chain.
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The passing lane concept breaks down in many urban areas which have freeways with road splits, left exits, lane shifts -- and traffic volumes high enough that it makes sense to fill all the lanes and not leave one empty for passing only use.
On more than one occasion I've seen the "relentless lane changer" successfully weave their way through traffic only to find myself right behind them at some traffic light at the highway exit. They've managed to get 2 minutes ahead just to wind up 0 minutes ahead near th
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The passing lane concept breaks down in many urban areas which have freeways with road splits, left exits, lane shifts -- and traffic volumes high enough that it makes sense to fill all the lanes and not leave one empty for passing only use.
It doesn't have to be left empty, the rule is that if you're not passing, you get out of it. Somewhere up ahead, there's always someone not following that rule. The two types that really steam my clams are the people who slow down to pass, and the people who are afraid of Jersey barriers that crop up around construction sites. That stuff isn't in their lane, but they're afraid of it anyway, because they know they can't stay in their lane... in which case, they should slow down, and pull over to a lane which
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Still, you can't avoid the problem that during periods of congestion all the lanes end up full. Keeping one lane mostly empty wouldn't seem to accomplish much but reduce total capacity and push congestion back.
And it does nothing for situations where the entire freeway splits in two to go different directions, in many cases if you're not in that half of the freeway a half-mile or more before the split, you're not easily getting into that half.
I will say that the passing lane concept should be followed fair
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It's not the speeds that are important to commute times, it's the following distance. And the following distance also causes the weaving. There is a small subset of poor drivers that leave ridiculous gaps in traffic as they "aren't in a hurry" to catch up to the pack in front of them. Except they are just wasting the space of cars (sometimes dozens of cars worth of space) forcing the traffic jam to extend backward faster. In traffic, you have to pack in tightly to maximize the flow rate of the road. I recal
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The problem around here seems to be that a safe stopping distance between you and the car in front of you is invitation to a weaver to change lanes, and usually results in an unsafe following distance, requiring everyone to slow down.
IMHO, you shouldn't change lanes unless the gap you're merging into is some multiple of the safe following distance of the cars you're merging between. This prevents the rear car from braking to slow down to re-create the safe following distance.
I also think that safe followin
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The problem around here seems to be that a safe stopping distance between you and the car in front of you is invitation to a weaver to change lanes, and usually results in an unsafe following distance, requiring everyone to slow down.
The root problem that causes that problem is, you guessed it, people who don't belong in the passing lane being in the passing lane. They don't seem to comprehend that if their pulling out causes someone else who is attempting to pass to have to slow down that they are fucking up. If they would just stay out of the way of people who want to go faster, then the highway's capacity would increase significantly. Of course, that means some people would be stuck behind a truck for the entirety of their journey, b
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I watch this. Every. Single. Day. And the person who wants to pass never gets very far, not because some slow driver is in their way, but because the traffic is beyond the road capacity. Passing one arbitrary slower driver simply presents them with another driver in front of them, probably who wants to go as fast or faster than they do, ad infinitum.
The traffic level is simply beyond the capacity of *both* lanes. You couldn't maintain the "passing" lane free for passing because if it was empty enough
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If all they did was slow slightly, that might be true. The drivers with excessive following distances also tend to over brake causing a lot of the problems... They are also slow to accelerate when traffic frees up. They are just timid drivers that don't feel comfortable in traffic and they cause most of what they fear.
The number one thing I yell in traffic is "Why are you braking?" It just seems to be the default response to any event for most drivers.
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t=d/v
r * t = d
If v is zero, your equation results in an undefined value.
Further, there's the distinction between rate and velocity (which is a vector). See also distance vs. displacement (and how they both start with a d).
Cure worse than disease (Score:2)
So they implement a policy that cars must have passengers to use main roads. So people "hire" (that word used in the articles) passengers to get around the law. Since screaming kids is not something people are willing to pay for the kids are drugged to stay quiet.
So, they can choose seeing kids drugged or they can choose longer commutes. They chose longer commutes.
Who was it that said for every problem there is a fix that is easy, simple, and wrong? I believe that applies here.
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Yup. What they should do is just do an odds and evens system.
Rich people can have 2 cars and drive every day, most people can carpool with a neighbour.
Then you can just have plate scanning cameras issuing the fines.
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That sounds like another fix that is easy, simple, and wrong.
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most people can carpool with a neighbour.
Only if A. they work at the same place and at the same time and shop at the same place and at the same time, and B. they weren't issued plates whose last digits are the same modulo 2.
Demand based lanes (Score:2)
In California they have carpool lanes that have variable pricing depending on the time of day and the congestion on the road at that time. Similar and probably the inspiration for Uber's "Surge Pricing".
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Unless you're well-heeled, they want you to suffer.
Or, they want to recoup the investment in adding the lanes to the road...
Traffic is the least of your worries... (Score:5, Funny)
Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire
Holy crap, if this is true I would think that congestion traffic is the least of your worries...
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Following allegations that drugged babies from poor households were being used as "jockeys," or passengers for hire
Holy crap, if this is true I would think that congestion traffic is the least of your worries...
I'm surprised that isn't getting more discussion here. Did people miss that or is it that people don't think that is a problem?
Then again, I don't want to know the answer. I'll just believe what I want to believe.
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Why this isn't discussed here? Consider: What would the average /. reader be more likely to encounter in his life?
Contested traffic
or
Children
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I avoid both as much as possible.
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(i.e. people being paid to be passengers, so drivers can get over the limit to be able to use carpool lanes)
Except these aren't "carpool lanes", they are carpool ROADS - you couldn't drive on the road unless you had two other passengers along for the ride.
why call it 'carpooling'? (Score:2)
The thing I don't understand is that they aren't really carpool lanes. They are party car lanes. If you bring extra bodies you go faster. So you get people trying to convince their friends and family to go with them instead of going alone. The additional weight in the vehicle burns more gas but you get where you want to go faster so it's probably worth it even to poor Indonesians. Still it must waste and burn a lot of extra fuel.
The whole idea of carpooling is kind of ridiculous. Most neighbors don't have t
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Yes, that's what Jakarta needs: More motorcycles and the horrible accidents that come with them.
And before someone answers, this is more a statement about the way people drive in Indonesia than motorcycles. I love my bike. But I'm not suicidal enough that I'd drive it there.
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Traffic in Jakarta is so sow that I highly doubt any accident is fatal.
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The speed of the car running you over isn't the deciding factor concerning your survival chances when you fall off your bike.
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The additional weight in the vehicle burns more gas but you get where you want to go faster so it's probably worth it even to poor Indonesians.
Run the numbers, the math is straight-forward.
If one person in a car travelling a certain distance consumes "x" amount of gasoline, will three people in one car travelling the same distance consume 3x the amount of gasoline or some amount less? Common sense tells us less, and that saved fuel, which in turn results in less greenhouse gasses being generated is the motivation for car pool lanes. Faster travel time is the incentive to car pool.
EXCEPT this story isn't about car pool LANES, it is about car pool R
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This is actually an area where a little bit more government involvement could be beneficial. It seems like the only way to make it work would be if more facilities were provided to carpoolers, such as free parking lots where riders could connect. It would be kind of like a bus station without the buses.
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Riding with neighbors and friends isn't how carpooling works anywhere. Usually for routine travel where the majority of the distance is the same, a bunch of random people meet/pick up at certain points and journey together. They come from close enough places and go to close enough destinations. Its a personal & predictable ride share.
Another form of this has actually been quite common for decades in most developing countries. There are "shared" taxis with extra seats that pick up and drop off people
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Generally you wouldn't be carpooling with your next door neighbor. Typically, at least in concept, you'd be carpooling with a coworker or someone from a nearby business who lives in the same general direction as you even if they're a couple miles away. Or better yet, many such someones.
The idea being that the time spent running around picking up all those people is comparable to or lower than the amount of time spent idling in traffic on the "high"way, and of course for the last person on the pickup route
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Congestion pricing, not just for uber. (Score:2)
Government should institute congestion pricing for such districts . Vaguely recall London does this. If people are paying for passengers or renting drugged baby (just one case, despite the prominent mention in the summary) they would pay the tolls. Impose the toll on vehicle not on number of passengers. Keep raising it till employees refuse to drive to work or demand compens
Roads, not Lanes (Score:2)
The law had required cars driving on the business district's main roads to carry at least three passengers during rush hours.
The gov't eliminated the requirement that ALL cars driving on certain roads needed to carry 3 or more passengers, it didn't remove carpool lanes along those roads.
Under the old law EVERY CAR on certain roads were required to carry at least three passengers, cars with fewer passengers were prohibited. Once the "three or more" requirement was lifted, the streets in question were, as one would reasonably expect, flooded with more cars.
HOV Lanes are a joke. (Score:2)
I regularly travel all around southern california and the HOV lanes are always always slower than the regular lanes. What's worse is having to stop in a HOV lane while regular traffic lanes keep moving. This is compounded by idiots who insist on going exactly 65mph (or worse 55-60 because muh fuel economy) instead of the speed of traffic which regularly hits 76-78.
What they need to do is set the speed limit in HOV lanes to 80mph and set a minimum speed of70mph (enforced by camera). That would solve the slo
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It's been awhile since I traveled in the bay area. But when I was there the HOV lane was frequently the only lane moving at more than 10mph during peak hours. In fact I remember moving over into the HOV lane was always a little harrowing because you had to get up to speed very quickly to avoid an accident. We could often spend more time merging from the on ramp and across four or five lanes of traffic to the HOV lane, and then reversing that process at the exit, than we spent actually in the HOV lane.
Measurement is skewed (Score:2)
Instead of minutes/kilometer (with an implied 'per vehecle'), how about minutes/kilometer/person?
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Does "per person" matter in this case? The jockeys rode as cargo - they weren't interested in the destination.
Re:Seattle just closed the I-90 express lanes (Score:4, Informative)
That was just the Mercer Island private lane anyway. The Seattle to Eastside commute volume reversed decades ago. But the DOT never had the guts to reverse the lane to match actual use.
Re: Seattle just closed the I-90 express lanes (Score:5, Informative)
Also car drivers need to open their eyes and see motorcyclists. The vast majority of motorcycle accidents are cars hitting a motorcycle. It is as if people would not see a large crib with lights on all the time in the road. Or a pallet of cinder blocks with taillights and headlight(s) on all the time. Car drivers fail to drive defensively. And yes some small number of motorcyclists have apparent death wishes. But not as many as cars driving in and out of traffic at rush hour. I have my little french fry transponder but I'm on my third. heat and 60MPH peel them off the plastic headlight cover. So charging a motorcycle will not go over well with me.
Re: Seattle just closed the I-90 express lanes (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree in general it's hard to put the blame solely at drivers inability to "see a pallet of cinderblocks".
Firstly those pallets are much larger than any motorcycle.
Secondly motorcycles fit in blind spots even with properly adjusted mirrors where small cars would not.
From a behavioral side:
I have only once seen a motorbike move with traffic rather than overtake, move faster, or (if the traffic is slow) lanesplit. And that one motorbike was a Harley too big to lanesplit. This is an expectational piece. When I drive I generally keep a view out and know the relative positions of cars around me, but baring a few idiot car drivers (okay a lot of idiot car drivers) motorcyclists are somewhat of a wildcard, they suddenly appear and then disappear soon after.
I can't blame them really, I'd be doing the same thing if I were small enough to fit in between traffic, but in general even the well behaved ones are hard to predict, and the vast majority of accidents involving cars and motorbikes involve merging into them due to the above issues. That is followed not too closely by being rear-ended by them (i.e. cutting them off because they have a far worse stopping ability.)
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The big problem is that in much of the US, driver education doesn't teach new drivers how to share the road with motorcyclists.
Oh please, more fanciful crap. Here in the US, driver education teaches drivers to have 2-second following distances, to signal lane changes, to not drive aggressively, etc. Do people actually follow this advice? Hell no. What makes you think they're going to follow any teaching about sharing the road with motorcyclists? They don't even share the road with other cars.
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>Oh please, more fanciful crap.
I've passed the driving and motorbike test in the UK and USA. The USA test is a joke compared to the UK test. The USA motorbike test didn't even take place on the open road. It was just a trip around a school yard. The USA driving test was a drive around the block.
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I had one of those drive-around-the-block tests too, back in the 90s. When was your test? I've been told that tests are a lot more rigorous these days, but that's just what I've been told.
However, what they test for and what they teach are two different things, and were when I got my license too. While the driving test was almost trivial, there was still a written test based on the driving manual, which teaches those rules that I mentioned earlier. Also, when I was in high school they had driver's ed cl
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My USA driving test was at around 2000. It involved driving around the block. The examiner said "Yep, you're good", signed the paper and I was done.
My USA motorbike test was about 2 years ago. It involved riding slowly around a series of cones in a school yard while the examiner looked on.
My UK driving test was 24 years ago. It was 30-45 minute of driving around, emergency stops, reversing around corners, 3-point turns and being observed all the time for good observation and signal use.
My UK motorbike was m
People are just bad drivers in general (Score:3)
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I don't get it. I have a blue Nissan Leaf, never saw anything like that, nor have the other Leaf owners I've known. Is this something specific to your area?
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Also car drivers need to open their eyes and see motorcyclists.
Oh please, that's some fanciful thinking. It'll happen about the time that voters open their eyes and start electing good politicians, or the time that computer owners open their eyes and stop using a spyware-laden OS.
Inattentive and stupid and reckless car drivers are a given; it's never going to change, at least until mandatory automated driving becomes the norm.
Personally, I think motorcycles should be discriminated against: they can only ge
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> Quiet motorcycles are fine with me, I just hate the stupid loud ones.
You mean the big Harley's with big "bikers" on them. I think they deliberately disable the muffler. While we're at it, the idiots who disable mufflers on cars are no better. It's all about "being macho".
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Yep, but two points:
1) The bikers always claim that it's for "safety"; the car-modders never claim this, so at least they're honest.
2) Disabling mufflers on cars, or putting loud fart-can mufflers on them, seems to have mostly died out, having hit a peak in the 1990s I believe with compacts, and probably 70s/80s for domestic muscle cars. But loud Harleys are just as popular as ever. More stringently-enforced noise codes might have something to do with this, but somehow these laws are almost never enforced
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BMWs and Hondas are welcome, Harleys are not.
I think Harleys are fine if the driver -looks- like a stereotypical Hell's Angel biker. The more... bikery he (sorry, it has to be a he) is, the more likely it is he gets to ride on the roads.
If you look like Al Bundy or like anyone who works at Oracle, hell no.
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You're obviously an idiot if you think Hondas and Suzukis make the kind of noise that Harleys do. I've never in my life seen a Japanese cruiser modified to make the kind of noise that Harleys almost always are, and it's easy to tell the difference just from the noise because of the Harley's distinctive rhythm.
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It is true that, given their weight, cars are much better on the highway with lower wind resistance. However, motorcycles use much less fuel in stop-and-go type situations then a purely petrol based car.
Motorcycles have the benefit of lower weight and the added expense of greater wind resistance. There is not much room to improve their mileage. Of course, this assumes you are looking at a model that is designed for efficiency and not the motorcycle equivalent of a mustang.
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Motorcycles, when measured by the amount of fuel required to move a fixed weight a certain distance, are horribly inefficient. If a typical 4,000 lb. passenger car operated with the same efficiency as a 500 lb. motorcycle getting 70 mpg, the car would only get 9 mpg.
Yeah, but we don't measure it that way because the 4000lb is not payload you care about, only the contents of the car are. The weight of a car is only a means to an end.
Although we're concerned in this case with absolute fuel usage rather than proportional usage, the point remains that motorcycles could get far better mileage than they do.
There's a certain amount of overhead that will be taken by operating an ICE regardless of the payload weight. Also, a certain amount of static friction / tire, a certain amount of wind resistance which will be larger than the difference between weights might indicate.
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Boy, some AC has been busy in this thread!
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Re:There is only one logical conclusion. (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing is, that was the case. The title misleads people into thinking there was just "another lane" which required 3+ people in the car, it was all of them.
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Absolutely agree, what was described is not what most people think of when they hear the term "carpool lanes". You could also show that removing the congestion pricing in London would cause more congestion. Not a surprise.
In my experience carpool and toll lanes do speed things up, as there are several places in LA where they have been added or removed so it is easy to compare. The biggest complaint is that they are another form of income disparity, basically the richer people (who can pay tolls or wait the
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Jakarta had it right. A single lane isn't a good enough incentive to carpool, but making all lanes HOV would do it.
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Good to see that everything is now worse for everyone?
Some people just want to watch the world burn.
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It's not necessarily worse for everyone. In the article, the author speculates that more people are able to go to the city now.
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Not at all. The author only speculated that while the system was in place fewer people may have driven into the city. He also offers alternatives for how people used to get into the city before.
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Sorry, that's right. Possibly more people are able to DRIVE to the city now, not GO in the general sense.
I'm not sure how you get "not at all" though. It's still an improvement for the hypothetical person who used to take a bus for 2 hours, versus driving directly now, even with increased traffic, for 1 hour. I mean there is a reason that person is taking a car instead of still taking the bus, right?
On which day do the buses not run? (Score:2)
Possibly more people are able to DRIVE to the city now, not GO in the general sense.
I thought the only way to go at all on certain days of the week was to drive, as public transportation systems in many cities tend to shut down entirely on the least busy days. In a plurality-Christian country, this is Sunday (source [fwcitilink.com]; source [tulsatransit.org]), but I don't know which day of the week would be the victim in a majority-Muslim country.
Re:What we need is COMMUNISM! (Score:5, Funny)
In communism, all is done for the benefit of man.
The key to success is being that man.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't it interesting how many of the subject trolls come out on this article.
Its almost as if they want to shut down discussion here so that people don't find out that this article is a blatant misrepresentation.
Now, the question is, who would want to do that?
Ahh, could it possibly be the anti-car lobby who think we should all gently ride out pushbikes through green meadows on our way to yoga class?
Of course the reality is that this is not a case of carpool LANES being closed, that is a blatant and false mi
Re: (Score:2)
Somebody needs to find a partner so you can experience the glory of road head.
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It's not clear that a study based on HOV with 3+ occupants would be relevant to cities with a 2+ occupant HOV.
Also, we aren't talking about HOV lanes in a roadway, we are talking about the entire roadway being HOV - with fewer than three occupants, the car may not travel on the "main road" at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Then how would one travel to pick up the other occupants? Or is it only for someone whose roommates work at the same place?
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So you have an entire roadway that has a forced capacity of 3 travellers. You remove this limit and people are not forced to travel together and at the same time. The expected result would be more traffic over a broader period therefore increasing congestion and travel times.
FTFY
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I remember the Bay Area well. The on ramps came ofter the off ramps on the freeway. So there is a lane of slow traffic waiting to get off trying to weave through the lane of slow traffic trying to get onto the freeway.
The public transportation was a bit hit and miss. They had the Caltrain from San Jose to San Francisco. That was good if your offices were a ten minute walk from the station. But any distance further than 10 minutes walk was pushing it not just because of the heat in Summer, but because of all
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I remember the Bay Area well. The on ramps came ofter the off ramps on the freeway. So there is a lane of slow traffic waiting to get off trying to weave through the lane of slow traffic trying to get onto the freeway.
This is pretty common. If you want to minimize the number of bridges you build and not require stops to allow other traffic to make a left turn, it is unavoidable by basic topology.
I'm from Massachusetts and EVERY intersection was this design. I really doubt Massachusetts is that strange. Neve
Re: (Score:2)
As opposed to how they do it in Texas, where the entrance comes first and the lane of traffic trying to get onto the freeway is completely blocked off by the lane of traffic stopped in the freeway waiting for the light (at the intersection at the end of the exit ramp) to turn green so they can get off.
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The correct solution would have been to keep the carpool lanes running, find anyone drugging babies or using drugged babies to carpool, and sterilizing or executing every party involved.
Especially the drugged babies. They're already on drugs and they're masterminding these schemes to circumvent the law!