HOV / HOT Lanes

2002 High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV) Lane Master Plan Update for the San Francisco Bay Area

Officially, they’re known as high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. In the vernacular, they’re also referred to as diamond lanes, carpool lanes and commute lanes. Whatever you call them, these ribbons of highway dedicated to multi-occupant vehicles have not only expanded our vocabulary, they’ve become a critical part of the Bay Area transportation system. In fact, the region’s carpool lane network has grown more than five-fold since 1990. To help ensure the network achieves its dual goal of relieving congestion and reducing emissions, MTC recently updated its master plan for Bay Area carpool lanes.

Using input from more than 5,000 respondents to an online survey conducted this winter, the 2002 HOV Lane Master Plan Update calls for considering opening Interstate 80 carpool lanes to mixed-flow traffic headed in the off-peak direction during morning and evening commute periods; improving enforcement of carpool lane requirements; and expanding express bus services so the HOV lanes carry more people. Planners found that many of the Bay Area’s HOV lanes will fill to capacity between 2010 and 2025. Strategies for dealing with the crush at that time might include further increases in express bus service and stricter HOV enforcement, more metering lights and HOV bypasses at freeway on-ramps, or raising carpool occupancy requirements from two to three-plus occupants (the level currently in effect along the I-80 corridor).

Beyond such operational adjustments, the HOV Master Plan Update recommends a multi-tiered investment program that would add as many as 387 new miles of carpool lanes around the region by 2025, construct freeway-to-freeway carpool lane connectors, build new ramps to provide direct access to and from carpool lanes, add several major express bus stations to freeway medians, and build more than a dozen other express bus/park-and-ride stations around the Bay Area. More than half the funding for these projects already has been committed in the long-term Regional Transportation Plan or the near-term 2003 Transportation Improvement Program. Of the remaining projects recommended by the HOV Master Plan Update, top-priority investments would cost about $775 million, with a nearly $1 billion price tag for lower-priority projects.