Talk:High-occupancy vehicle lane

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I like how the article outlines the pros and cons of HOV lanes, but a great refutation to the "HOV lanes arent encouraging more carpooling, just advantaging those who would have had multiple occupants anyway" can be found in the "slugging" phenomenon of the washington DC metro area where "sluggers" line up at arranged points and wait for drivers to pick them up. The driver gets to use the HOV lane and the sluggers get a ride. I think I'll add that to the article.

I don't have enough information, but I know a couple of years ago a judge ruled that a mother with her baby constitued carpooling after she got a ticket for using the lane and fought it. This probably should be included, but I don't know enough so I'll put it here. If somebody knows more about it, maybe it should be included. - Rt66lt 04:21, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

I think another problem might be that they look under-utilized even though they are moving equal or more people than a lane of single-occ vehicles. After all, it takes at most half the vehicles to move the same amount of people. Increased speed can mean more "empty space" even though the same amount of vehicles or being moved. I could be wrong, but assuming same following distances it seems that a lane going twice as fast and with twice the persons/vehicle can move the same amount of people in only 1/4th the lane use--Jason McHuff 21:14, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't remember the details, but a man was recently caught using a dummy to drive in the HOV lane PrometheusX303 14:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents 1 Research 2 Removed external link 3 HOV = bus lanes? 4 Requested move 4.1 Survey and discussion 5 Can hearses use the HOV lanes too? 6 Another Requested Move

[edit] Research

It is my impression that valid research in the transportation research community isn't always "published" with the same frequency and rigor as other research communities. That is not a criticism of the transportation research but an acknowledgement of differences in methodolgy. Therefore, there is no need to denegrate valid research from reputable academic institutions just because it hasn't made it into a journal (yet).

In that light, I altered Softgrow's pejorative statement "unpublished research" to a less POV statement of "recent research".

Further, Texas A&M University's Texas Transportation Institute is a highly respected outfit, and I'd argue that serious research from it is presumed to be valid. Therefore, I have reintroduced the HOV criticism based on TTI research, and per Softgrow's edit comment request, I have cited the original document (which was prominently linked at the end of the originally referenced article, BTW).

Nova SS 14:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

As somebody who has worked in transport research since 1994 I resent that comment. Transport research is a historic and well-respected engineering discipline and there are a number of quality peer reviewed publications (Transportation Research series for example). If research has not made it into a journal then there may well be very good reasons for this. In general peer reviewed research is better to cite but almost anything is prefereable to simple web sources claiming to be research. www.thenewspaper.com is a particularly dubious source to cite in my humble opinion. --Richard Clegg 15:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe I mistated. It has been my experience that there is a substantial body of valid transportation research that hasn't been formally published, moreso than in other fields. Is that not correct? My own background is in a particular applied science, and in that field, anything that isn't formally published is highly frowned upon in an almost snobbish way.

Another way of putting it: there exists a robust body of published research, but there also exists a body of valid research that falls outside published research, which is a phenomenon that wouldn't happen with the elitist mindset of other fields. Is this a mistaken view?

By the way, www.thenewspaper.com linked to the source papers in both cases.

Nova SS 16:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, perhaps I am biased but if the research is quality research it would go through peer review and be published just as in any other discipline. --Richard Clegg 21:54, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

When editing Wikipedia we have to work within the rules and guidelines for Wikipedia. Wikipedia has Wikipedia:Five_pillars:five pillars. One of these is Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. There are two other content guiding polices Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research. NovaSouce please read this material particularly Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#A_vital_component:_good_research and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Using_online_sources. I consider www.thenewspaper.com as an unreliable source as it is a personal website. (Who runs it, nobody knows). Yes it's a good source of material that supports your POV but that doesn't make it a good source for Wikipedia.

I have rearranged the paragraphs so the repetition of material in criticism is more obvious. The material about barrier seperation should probably be moved out of criticism and into the separate systems part. The San Francisco HOV study should removed for the moment on two grounds (1) is unpublished (2) is cited by anonymous critics. Softgrow 00:15, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Removed external link

I removed this item from the External links:

• Carpool lanes have flopped

This is a letter to a newspaper, and as such is just the opinion of one person and hardly encyclopedic. It also contains a potentially misleading statement: "A typical diamond lane carries only 7 percent of the traffic, yet the lanes take up 25 percent of the capacity on a four-lane freeway." Surely the correct comparison is not the percentage of traffic but the percentage of travelers carried.

In fact, all of the external links except the last are anti-HOV-lane opinion pieces. Shouldn't there be more balance? Fionah 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I've removed all except the last link. They are unreliable sources. See discussion in section above about verifiability etc. Softgrow 21:56, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HOV = bus lanes?

A friend of mine pointed out to me that HOV lanes make much more sense if you think of them as being built primarily for buses. Without HOV lanes it would be much more difficult to have reliably timely rush-hour express bus service to and from the suburbs, which would make riding the bus impractical for many potential transit users, which would make bus service to the suburbs more difficult to justify. Once the lanes have been built, of course, the buses hardly need the whole lane to themselves, so the lanes are made available to other multi-passenger vehicles. I'd be interested to hear if there's anything in the literature about this approach or perspective, as in my mind it just explains too many otherwise puzzling things about the diamond lanes. If so, I'd think it would merit a mention. Jerry Kindall 07:29, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

High-occupancy vehicle → High-occupancy vehicle lane — Rationale:Article is about a lane type not the vehicle that occupies it. Was changed from this High-occupancy vehicle lane → High-occupancy vehicle in 2003 and should be changed back. Softgrow 07:53, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Survey and discussion

Add * Support or * Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, or add * followed by a comment, then sign your opinion with "~~~~"

• Support Article is about a lane type not a vehicle type. Softgrow 07:54, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support per nom. David Kernow 09:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support The intro sentence says it all! PrometheusX303 13:45, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Nova SS 16:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support per nom. Fishhead64 21:04, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

  Done. —Nightstallion (?) ^{Seen this already?} 09:36, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Can hearses use the HOV lanes too?

Many ponder whether a hearse can use a HOV lane when one or more of the passengers it carries are not alive. I searched the article, but it mentions nothing about a whether hearses can use HOVs in this situation. --68.102.193.78 02:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't know. It depends upon the law of your state. I doubt dead people count, though. Allowing hearses to use the HOV lane would not further the underlying public policy, which is to encourage rational thinking people who are alive to make conscious choices about work, play, and housing so that they can carpool with others to and from various activities. Dead people don't make conscious decisions. --Coolcaesar 07:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Depends on the situation. In some countries, it is common practice to allow business traffic (like cargo trucks and delivery vans, fire engines, ambulances, cabs and whatnot) to use HOV lanes. Hearse might count as such a vehicle for its purpose if not body count (no pun intended). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.100.33.36 (talk) 10:17, 27 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Another Requested Move

Per WP:COMMONNAME, HOV lane (312,000 Ghits) would be preferable to high-occupancy vehicle lane (51,300 Ghits). Let's have a survey below. --JianLi 01:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Add * Support or * Oppose followed by an optional one-sentence explanation, or add * followed by a comment, then sign your opinion with "~~~~"

• Support per myself. --JianLi 01:53, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as per Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms). Please give me evidence that "HOV" is widely known and used in that form worldwide. And before quoting Google hits, please read Wikipedia:Search engine test#Google bias. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:13, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
• I had never heard of the term "High-occupancy vehicle lane" nor "HOV lane" until today, after CNN was discussing a bus driver who apparently mistook a left-lane exit for an HOV lane in the Atlanta area. The correspondents used the acronym as if everyone knew what it was. I was only familiar with "carpool lane" (as something that exists in other metro areas of the U.S.) —RVJ 18:30, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose as High Occupancy Vehicle Lane is meaningful worldwide, even if not used. HOV Lane is not. Alex Sims 03:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose for the same reasons as Alex Sims and Zzyzx11.--Coolcaesar 18:44, 3 March 2007 (UTC)