[ianc]

What's your opinion?

To me they seem only to cause more serious congestion.

Every day when I drive home on the bumper- to-bumper 101, crawling 12 miles in first gear, all I can see is that virgin stretch of pavement right next to me that my tax dollars paid for, but I can't drive on.

The original intentions of the carpool lane are laudable: give people who are carpooling a break. This will encourage more people to carpool, and hence we will lower fuel consumption.

What that doesn't take into account is that:

1) Not everyone has reasonable public-transportion alternatives, or lives near enough to a coworker to feasibly carpool.

2) People entering the freeway exhibit the mad 'lemming-rush' to get into the carpool lane, thereby cutting off everybody else and bringing traffic to a crawl.

3) Any nebulous decrease in fuel consumption from carpooling is rendered meaningless by the 3 lanes of traffic next to it sitting bumper-to-bumper idling, while a complete lane of freeway bandwidth goes nearly unused.

Now I find that the highway dept. in Marin has 'done us all a favor' in 'meeting their goals' and increasing the length of the carpool lane near the central San Rafael exit. My commute is now longer than ever, with more wasted time and fuel.

Is anybody else convinced the whole carpool lane idea is just complete idiocy?

Humph...

ianc