Featured Hybrids kicked out of Free HOV?

VDOT certainly knew. They had to have known the previous deadlines too, and that they had been extended. But somebody in the PR department may have been lax in getting the word out to the public.

Most of the VDOT pages I looked at, don't have visible dates. But here are various pages that do:

Sep 11, 2019: Lane change: Not all hybrids will be able to ride solo in Va. HOV lanes | WTOP
Updated Sep 6, 2019: High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lanes - Rules and FAQs
- Travel | Virginia Department of Transportation
Sep 5, 2019: HOV lane changes: Only hybrid plug-in vehicles can ride alone for free starting Sept. 30 | WJLA
June 2016: http://outside.transform66.org/documents/meetings/2016june/i-66_otb_hov2_to_hov3_conversion_tech_report_final_06-10-2016_v7_final.pdf
Nov 2015: Hybrid Owners To Lose 'Clean Fuel' HOV Exemption On Virginia's I-66 | WAMU
Nov 2012: HOV Hybrid Exemption Extended in Virginia - NBC4 Washington

California had that too, but those stickers expired some time ago and new stickers were for plug-ins and other alternative fuels only.

The Feds make very clear that the LIE program expires today (emphasis added), but I can't yet find that expiration on the linked NY page:
"High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lane Exemption
Through the Clean Pass Program, eligible plug-in electric and hybrid electric vehicles may use the Long Island Expressway HOV lanes, regardless of the number of occupants in the vehicle. Vehicles must display the Clean Pass vehicle sticker, which is available from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles. This exemption expires September 30, 2019. For a list of eligible vehicles and Clean Pass sticker application instructions, see the Clean Pass Program website."

 

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Salt Lake City.
Gas hybrids no longer qualify for express lane | KSL.com

 

Call me crazy, but HOV lanes should be used for vehicles with....high occupancy. Otherwise, there is basically little benefit in traffic congestion reduction.

I once spent 4 hours for a trip that should have been 1 hour on the parking lot known as the I405. The road design on the east side of Lake Washington is abysmal.

 

the issue comes down to crowded hov lanes, and advancing tech sales by moving out the old and bringing in the new, while still allowing for the original intent, high occupancy vehicles.

in this day and age, we're fortunate they haven't been converted to single occupancy land yachts

 

I posted in the EV Mississippi Facebook Group

"Nationwide, today HOV lanes are not available for single passenger hybrids, you would need at least a PHEV or BEV to use HOV as a single occupant.

Here in MS, none of the zero miles of HOV lanes in MS were available to single occupant Hybrids before, and none of the zero miles of HOV lanes in MS are available to single occupant Hybrids now.

Given the whole zero miles of HOV lanes in Mississippi, PHEVs and BEVs don't actually have it much better than mere hybrids in this regard unless they leave the state. Now you know!"

The reply was that since there were no HOV lanes in MS, drivers drove in the bike lanes instead.

 

if you read the original legislative intent, the multiple purposes of the regulation, at least in California, is to save fossil fuel, cut smog AND reduce congestion. The farce is nearly 30% in Cali HOV lanes are cheaters, riding in there with no legal standing. In any event, plain old-fashioned hybrids were kicked out of the California HOV Lanes or a decade ago. So to all of you other states that got more time, welcome. If we believe the issue is congestion in the HOV, then the solution is better enforcement - not more gas burners.

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Note first: there is no "the I405" here. It is either "I-405" or "405". This area has not adopted the scattered practice of putting the article "the" in most major highway names.

The total length of our I-405 is just 30.3 miles. So any trip on it 'should' be no more than 30 minutes, though 60-90 minutes wouldn't be abnormal during commutes outside of a real recession. But 4 hours? That is extremely unusual, even when traffic is halted to give a clear motorcade route for a Presidential visit. Not that such will ever happen during this Administration.

But the Interstates around here are hobbled by design decisions made in the 1960s, before Americans knew much about designing Interstates. Both I-5 and I-405 started much smaller, and were gradually expanded, alternately and in piecemeal, to accommodate burgeoning traffic ever since.

I-405's (east side) design is no worse than I-5's (west side) design. Seattle's Convention Center was built overhead, atop the highway, with foundations placed on the shoulders of the original I-5, narrow by today's standards. While most of the urban highways on both sides of the lake have been widened with additional lanes over past half century, that piece of I-5 is constrained to be a chokepoint. Nothing on I-405 is equally bad. Anymore.

 

it would be pretty simple to use fast lane transponders or the like to facilitate proper hov usage, if any in power were interested in better enforcement.

 

I checked the NJ Turnpike site and I don't see any mention of the last HOV lane left here. If it is gone, there's no great loss, you had to go through traffic to get on and off of it and if there was a crash, they opened it to all traffic.

 

The "the" was supposed to be sarcasm.

Also, I should have been more clear that the trip extended beyond just I405 (it was from north Seattle to the Olympia/tri-city area). It turned into a total of 4 hours due to a bad crash on I405 (roughly 2-2.5 hours), then hitting rush hours traffic down I5 south (1-1.5 hours).

I agree that the actual road design is horrific on both sides of the lake, but the Seattle/I5 side does seem to manage it better with directional express lanes, variable speed limits and just way, way better and more extensive mass transit. After the light rail was first opened (and then definitely after it expanded to the UW area), it became my go-to method for getting to the downtown/sodo/south seattle/airport method.

Also, WA does it right by keeping the HOV lanes restricted to high occupancy vehicles (with the one exception being motorcycles): High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes | WSDOT

 

Back when I lived there, leaving I 405 on WA 167 to WA 512 got you south of Tacoma with little congestion. Probably worse now.

 

A not insignificant number of new arrivals don't know that, while they continue the usage from where they came from.

Over my many decades in the area, I have to say that the situation has flipped several times. Both sides experienced major congestion-aggravating growth, but the transport upgrades were not simultaneous, tending to alternate. The least aggravating commute was long a function of where the most recent major improvements happened. Though more recently the faster growth on the east side seems to have put I-405 at a more persistent disadvantage.

The opening of the UW station provided a massive boost to light rail ridership. As I mentioned in another thread, it was opened on the first weekend of a UW Spring Break, and was already beating one-year-away ridership projections before break was over. It finally demonstrated that the system will be a success. But the build-out to most customers will still take a very long time, with the east side getting none of the initial phases.

 

My $22 check to the California DMV for my HOV sticker was just cleared yesterday, and I just re-checked on their website, and the program is in place until (at least) the end of 2023. I'm expecting my sticker(s) next week.

Just to add info, I mailed my application 41 days ago, and length of time is about what I expected from other posts on priuschat (regarding the waif time in California).

This is my first post on prius chat. I bought a Prius Prime in July, and it's a great car, and I hate the infotainment system (I have the 11" screen). But it was heavily discounted as the 2020s were arriving, and I'm getting accustomed to the utility of having a big map and smaller close-up map available all the time. I just finished a round trip drive from Los Angeles to the Seattle area and back, and I've verified that the gas engine can sustain 800+ mile days at 75-85 mph, and that it can drive all day in heavy rain.

 

Yes, this only affects hybrids, not PHEVs or BEVs.