On the stroke of midnight on January 1, close to 220,000 cars will lose their HOV lane access and will merge with normal traffic.
It’s the stuff of traffic nightmares that traffic analysts will probably study and commuters are dreading but traffic-ocalypse 2019 is just weeks away. This petition is aiming to change that. As per this latest petition on Change.org that was posted earlier today (Sept. 25,2018) and is slowly gaining traction, EV, zero emission vehicle, and near-zero emission vehicle owners are petitioning the soon to be gone California Governor Jerry Brown to extend their HOV lane access privilege until at least 2021.
Since stories on major news outlets seemed to simultaneously hit last month, this petition has gained newfound attention. As of this writing, there are already 1,200 of the 1,500 signatures needed for this petition to reach its goal, a fraction of the 220,000 cars headed to normal lanes.
A cursory glance at DMV’s main site reveals that in March 2018 the DMV started issuing new red decals for electric, CNG, and near-zero emission vehicles. The previous green and white decals are on older vehicles made before 2017. These decals allowed single driver passengers access into the carpool lane, a potential time-saving perk and oftentimes a defining bonus to buying an electric car altogether.
As mentioned in this petition, this decal program was part of an executive order initiated by Governor Jerry Brown with a goal of five million Zero emission vehicles on California Roads by 2030 aided by initiatives and incentives like this decal program.
As of this writing, according to Curbed, there are about 500,000 zero-emission vehicles on the road today with projections that will see 1.5 million vehicles on the road by 2025.
What this initiative fails to address is that more cars on the road doesn’t necessarily help with traffic, a growing problem as the population of California’s busiest cities continues to rise.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with allowing older EVs in HOV lanes. The real problem is a cited 40 percent of illegal HOV users hogging California HOV lanes.
A carpool lane should be just that, a lane reserved for carpoolers. Although I don’t necessarily agree with single drivers in these lanes regardless of what you have under the hood, suddenly adding 220,000 cars into normal traffic isn’t going to be part of the solution.
We have an FCEV, so we’re set. For a few years at least.
BEVs… well, look, those Teslas are very expensive. We already gave those rich folks a big tax credit, a tax rebate, tax help with their solar panels, gave them special electricity rate tiers, gave them all kinds of benefits so they don’t have to deal with the hoi polloi… and now there’s lots of them.
The whole point of allowing all of these perks was to push the adoption of these things. Once you get to a magical number then you’re there. The technology is normal and adopted.
Just like when normal hybrids lost their gold sticker access years ago. Did we complain about it? No, we just put up with it and moved on. We still have our 06 HCH.
But I guess the rich people in their Teslas are simply too entitled. Heck! Let THEM eat cake for a change. Let them deal with the Great Unwashed drivers on the main freeway trunk.
Of course, most of them will simply BUY into the new 405 Toll Lanes.
And clutter the benefit of the car pool lanes.