Did the state pull the stickers?
Probably issued different ones.
“Those 1st and 2nd gen Priuses no longer qualify for the HOV lane in California”
I’ve only ever seen an HOV area once, while on a vacation. It thought it meant High Occupancy Vehicle (a vehicle with 2 or more occupants).
The old Priuses no longer hold 2 people or what am I missing?
CSA
Some states allow HOV lane usage by motorcycles and hybrids with only 1 person on board.
To encourage people to buy high mpg cars CA gave stickers to Priuses and others that let you use the HOV lane with only one in the car. One reason EVs are so popular there…
Too late now, it seems. “IMPORTANT NOTICE: The 85,000 statutory Green Clean Air Vehicle Decal limit has been reached. The DMV will continue to accept applications without payment to establish a queue for requesters should an additional amount of decals be authorized. There is no guarantee that additional decals will be authorized in the coming months. Those individuals in the queue will be notified to submit payment if additional decals are approved. Updates will be provided here as more information becomes available.”
More info here, including a list of cars that qualified:
http://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/carpool/carpool.htm
@VOLVO V70
@texases
Thanks, guys! I get it now.
It sort of reminds me of folks who have to tie a bone around their neck to get the dog to play with them. 
CA ran out of bones.
CSA
The green stickers are for certain low emission vehicles, yellow was for hybrids;
Yellow Clean Air Vehicle decals for hybrids are no longer valid - the program ended on 7/1/2011. Please note that these vehicles do not qualify for any other type of decals.
And the white sticker (for EVs and some others) are still available:
“White Clean Air Vehicle decals are available to an unlimited number of qualifying Federal Inherently Low Emission Vehicles (ILEVs). Cars that meet these requirements are typically certified pure zero emission vehicles (100% battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell) and compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. Per AB 266, the expiration date for the white stickers has been extended to January 1, 2019.”
Yellow Stickers?
Green Stickers?
White Stickers?
Wow! It’s Like A Game Show!
CSA
I wonder how much damage was done to the environment building those HOV lanes, and how much taxpayer money has been spent in the creation and maintenance of an administrative system to regulate it? Oh well, I don’t suppose those promoting hybrids really care about the impacts.
The HOV lanes were there long before the hybrids. But I agree, the HOV lanes around here aren’t used to near capacity.
HOV lanes if done right can be useful. Boston’s a joke. I saw a guy changing a flat in the HOV lane once…had traffic backed up for a couple miles.
As for cost of enforcement…the state probably makes money. In Boston it’s a $500 find for driving in the HOV lane. And the staties are there a lot with several vehicles pulled over all the time.
Boston has those crazy “zipper” lanes. Must cost a fortune.
For those unfamiliar with this, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_transfer_machine
Boston has those crazy "zipper" lanes. Must cost a fortune.
Especially since Boston drivers have no idea how to use them. Zipper lane to a Boston driver means speed up and cut everyone off you can. If the 5 cars in front of you zip in correctly that means you now have a few hundred feet to speed up and pass those idiots who zipped in so you can get in front of them.
I-93 South (part of the big dig project)…decided in it’s infinite Wisdom to shut down a lane as you get closer to the city. It is by far the biggest traffic problem on I-93 (besides the drivers). And don’t use the HOV lane to get the airport. The HOV lane ends about 1/4 mile before the exit forcing you to cross 3 lanes of heavy traffic. Thank’s to all the out of state tax payers who helped pay for the $7 BILLION the feds contributed to this mess.
“I wonder how much damage was done to the environment building those HOV lanes, and how much taxpayer money has been spent in the creation and maintenance of an administrative system to regulate it?”
I can’t speak to the situation in other states, but in NJ those lanes are (to the best of my knowledge) located only on the NJ Turnpike, where they are not “new” lanes, but instead are just a matter of the original left lane being labeled as HOV lanes during rush hours.
Well over 90% of the vehicles using those lanes are commuter buses and commuter vans, plus the occasional car with a lot of occupants, and hybrids. The cost (whatever it might have been) couldn’t have been very high as it resulted from merely posting signs every 5 miles, plus painting some “diamond” shapes on the pavement of those lanes. And, the intent–of expediting passage of the buses in the interest of getting more cars off the road–has been well worth the cost.
Mike, seems like you have had a ton of bad driving experiences in Boston.
I’ve had a few, but I almost always drive in off-peak hours and avoid most of the mess. Although one that really annoyed me was (a few months ago) on Storrow drive, at the beginning, where is is two lanes, they would shut down one lane with some orange cones. This is at 10 AM, when there was enough traffic to back it up to the Tobin bridge. This occurred every day for a few weeks.
And, when you got to the point where it narrowed down to one lane, you could see that the closed lane was closed for no reason at all. It was closed for about 50 feet by the cones on perfectly fine highway.
b
The ONLY good driving experience in Boston was at 2am. Boston is by far the worse city to drive to or in. Bostonians are aggressive obnoxious drivers who could care less about the safety of others.
Everybody who has had to drive in Boston during peak hours has had a ton of bad driving experiences. It doesn’t help to learn that Boston’s highway department discovered that loads of road signs are wrong. They created an initiative to correct them, but a followup survey showed lots of them are still wrong. Route signs pointing in the wrong directions or missing entirely, signs with the wrong route numbers, lots and lots and lots of problems. And it’s long been rumored that the roads were designed by copying a plate of spaghetti. I believe it.
Oh, and that multi-multi billion dollar one-mile hole called the “Big Dig” has done absolutely nothing except become a huge money pit and make many of Mitt’s buddies very, very wealthy.
True, texases, HOV lanes do predate hybrids, but my point remains the same. Nobody has ever looked at the environmental impact of building and maintaining these lanes. I’m betting it’s huge, far greater than any emissions reduction achieved. HOV lanes are 100% politics.
If you, or anybody else here, is aware of such a study, I’d really love to see it.
Maryland I-270 out of Wash. DC has a stretch of the existing left lane that becomes HOV during peak hours.
In Virginia, part of I-66 the entire road becomes HOV for rush hour.
Plus there’s a stretch where the shoulder becomes a travel lane.