Like we all couldn’t see this coming. Seriously, you’re not surprised, are you? Really? After all the Ontario Liberal Party’s broken promises, it still took you off-guard that Premier Kathleen Wynne, declaring Toronto’s “temporary” HOV lanes a grand success, has all but decreed some of them permanent?
As political machinations, you’ve really got to hand it to good ol’ Kathleen. Indeed, those of you outside of Ontario should be very concerned lest your politicians take a lesson from the Liberal playbook. First, you invent the problem — traffic during the Pan Am games will be infernal — and then, as brilliant strategist, present a solution — 235 kilometres of high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes ringing Toronto — promising timely arrival for anyone looking to enjoy the city’s Number One tourist attraction. That the expected Pan Am crush never arrived or that the only real disruption to normal levels of traffic was the HOV lanes themselves matters not a whit. “They’ve been very successful,” said Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca, just as the Premier suggests that some of Ontario’s diamond lanes could remain after the games are done.
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“I have heard that people have noticed behaviour changes and that is what putting in place HOV lanes is meant to do,” claimed the Premier. Except that anyone who actually spent any time on Toronto’s highways would have seen little change in attitude. An avid Pan Am games attendee, I trolled the HOV lanes extensively for two weeks and saw precious little indication of increased occupancy. Indeed, at one point, I counted so many cars whizzing by me — 19 in a long chain — in the HOV lane without the requisite person in the passenger seats that I was sure, until a beat-up Civic farted by with three passengers, I was losing my vision. I realize that my statistical analysis is completely anecdotal, but a count of less than one in five HOVers adhering to the rules would not seem to amount to any grand behaviour modification.
Besides, my rough estimation follows what actual traffic analyses over the last 30 years has already proven, namely that high-occupancy lanes simply do not work, especially when they are just converted general purpose lanes rather than additional specific-purpose HOV roadways. And even when they are implemented with additional lanes, HOVs may do more harm than good. Los Angeles officials, for instance, were surprised to find out that the commute along their famed Interstate 405 actually took one minute longer after they added a hugely expensive 10-mile carpool lane last year. Many of California’s vaunted HOV lanes are so clogged that they don’t meet U.S. federal rules for minimum speed. As Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation told autoblog.com, “The problem is that most of these HOV lanes are either too full [meaning they are as congested as the general purpose lanes] or too empty [and not contributing enough to enhanced traffic flow].”
Vehicles crawl past the nearly empty Pan Am high-occupancy vehicle lanes as morning rush hour traffic crawls in Toronto on Monday, June 29, 2015.
Frank Gunn, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Liberal apologists and Toronto’s anti-car movement will be quick to point out, however, that Premier Wynne isn’t promising permanent HOV lanes, but something called high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, the environmental lobby’s solution to the now-discredited HOV lane (which, of course, begs the question why our HOVs were implemented in the first place). Essentially, HOTs supplement the high-occupancy vehicle contingent — again, because so few actually take up carpooling — with people willing to pay for a speedy return to the suburbs.
The problem is that, despite all the hype among traffic gurus that these hybrid, tax-generating HOV lanes are the bees’ knees, they might not work either. According to the Duke University thesis, “High Occupancy Toll Lanes: Do They Reduce Congestion“, converting HOV lanes to HOT offers, at best, marginal improvements in “aggregate net travel costs” — thesis-speak for the cost of the tolls versus cost of the time lost in traffic — and in the case of California’s 14 miles of HOT lane on the I-680S, actually reduced traffic flow. In fact, the research would seem to indicate the only effective way to truly reduce congestion is to charge all motorists a toll “unless driving a carpool.” But let’s not give Ms. Wynne any grander ideas.
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And sometimes the problem is that politicians simply don’t talk to one another. For the Pan Am games, for instance, the city of Toronto’s diamond lanes granted access to motorcycles but forbade green vehicles while — and I’m pretty sure you can see where I am going with this — the province of Ontario’s HOV lanes specifically forbid motorcycles but grant access to hybrids and EVs. Thus, motorcyclists are allowed to rumble up Toronto’s Don Valley Parkway with dispatch but are not allowed to HOV it on Hwy. 404 (for all the non-Torontonians reading, the 404 is simply the continuation of the DVP north of the 401). That a motorcycle might have the minimal carbon, not to mention spatial, footprint one would want to promote on a crowded highway matters not. Ditto for an electric vehicle or hybrid in Toronto.
And political whim is really what this is all about. It doesn’t matter that the proposed HOT lanes might increase overall congestion (and thus produce more pollution from the idling cars) or that there are much better solutions for reducing the congestion on our highways. (According to Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do, the late lane merging we all consider so impolite is actually one of the very best things we can do to improve traffic flow.) This is about Premier Wynne punishing one of her favourite whipping boys — car owners — and the Ontario Liberals doing what Ontario Liberals always do — raise taxes. For those outside of Ontario reveling in Toronto’s folly, pray that politicians in your neck of the woods don’t follow suit.
dbooth@nationalpost.com
Twitter.com/MotorMouthNP
