Hybrid Vehicles and HOV Lanes

In today’s Washington Post, they printed this article: “Hybrid Perks May Become Problems.” This article does a fantastic job of informing us of the perks of purchasing hybrid vehicles. One of those perks is the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) waiving the HOV occupancy restriction for those who drive these vehicles, in addition to State and Federal income tax breaks. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for trying to save the environment, and getting more and more vehicles out there that are more environmentally friendly, but there reaches a point where the perks are doing more harm than good.

I know from personal experience driving on the HOV lanes on Interstate 95/395, where the HOV restriction is HOV-3, that there are a lot of hybrid vehicles taking advantage of this perk. I have also noticed, in the three years the perk has been in place, a gradual increase of the number of hybrid vehicles on the road. As a matter of fact, here in the Commonwealth, we have one of the, if not the highest average sales of hybrid vehicles in the nation. Perks are originally offered to encourage people to purchase something or to encourage specific behavior. However, when does a perk become a bad thing? This article does a good job of stating that for us. When there are so many drivers of hybrid vehicles on the HOV with only ONE person in the vehicle, it does end up causing a negative effect because there ends up not being a benefit to the environment. As a matter of fact, one day, while driving on the HOV, I noticed, for a stretch of about ten miles, give or take, every car that passed me was a hybrid. In my mind this is ridiculous especially here in northern VA. These vehicles are selling like hotcakes specifically because of this perk and it’s causing the HOV lanes to be almost nearly as congested as the regular lanes. This in itself is counterproductive to the efforts of those drivers who make a concerted effort to carpool in order to decrease the number of vehicles on the road.

When I saw this article, specifically this one section where the State Legislature is considering a bill to extend the waiver, it irked me. It irked me because I emailed our new governor, Tim Kaine, about this exact issue last weekend, asking him to see about removing the waiver as it was causing more harm than good. The article also states that Governor Kaine is for this particular piece of legislation. Well, it appears to me, that another email is in order for the governor. I will post the text of that email here later on. This is something that can’t, and should not, be allowed to continue. Enforce HOV restrictions on all.