[djmcmath]

In Norfolk, there's a 6 mile stretch of 2 lanes between the normal freeway lanes which is HOV. It's open to traffic towards the Naval Station in the morning, and away from the base in the afternoons. During rush hour (6-8am 4-6pm) it's HOV. Outside those times, it's just express.

Works great, in that:
1 - A lot of people carpool during rush hour, and I know people who bought motorcycles specifically for the HOV.
2 - It evens the load on the roads. If I'm not carpooling, I'll make an effort to either be in the HOV before it's rush hour, or I'll hold off until it's after rush hour. There are a lot of us doing that, so it ends up being a cumulative effect of a lot of traffic that's shifting to either side of the peak time.

Now, you could argue that you could open up those two lanes of traffic and increase bandwidth by 66%. I'm curious how that would work, and I don't really have a lot of data to work with.

(shrug) Just my $.02.

Dan