PE.com - Commuting Blog

A firsthand look at carpool lanes in NorCal

Just back from vacation, which typically is not worth blogging. But part of the trip included a couple of days in the Sacramento area, where carpool lanes operate in a much different manner than here in SoCal. And there is an effort to equalize the two sets of rules in such a way that would give us more flexibility.

In a nutshell, they have what we are trying to get: the ability to enter and exit the carpool lane at any time, provided you have enough people in your car to qualify as a carpool. Instead of the double-yellow line with openings where you exit, the carpool lane has the same markings as any other lane. Transportation types like to call this "continuous ingress and egress." I call it "refreshingly simple."

NorCal carpool lanes also allow solo drivers to use the lanes during off-peak hours, another plum we can't quite seem to get, despite the efforts of local transportation officials and legislators. As noted in The P-E last week, just experimenting with the idea is a major hassle.

Bottom line, I used these lanes during off-peak hours and did not observe a bunch of solo drivers clogging things up. I also used them, with the adequate number of people in the vehicle to qualify as a carpool, during the peak periods and did not have a problem with people cutting in and out of the lanes in an unsafe manner.

Maybe I caught Sacramento traffic on a couple of good days. Maybe our traffic levels down here are high enough that our experience would be different. But it definitely was a nice change not having to scramble to get out of the carpool lane at precisely the right time in order to exit the freeway and not have to double back.