Clicking on banner ads enables JWR to constantly improve
Jewish World Review March 28, 2000 /21 Adar II, 5760

Michelle Malkin

JWR's Pundits
World Editorial
Cartoon Showcase

Mallard Fillmore

Michael Barone
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
David Corn
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Don Feder
Suzanne Fields
Paul Greenberg
Bob Greene
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Arianna Huffington
Marianne Jennings
Michael Kelly
Mort Kondracke
Ch. Krauthammer
Lawrence Kudlow
Dr. Laura
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Chris Matthews
Michael Medved
MUGGER
Kathleen Parker
Wes Pruden
Debbie Schlussel
Sam Schulman
Roger Simon
Tony Snow
Thomas Sowell
Cal Thomas
Jonathan S. Tobin
Ben Wattenberg
George Will
Bruce Williams
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Consumer Reports
Newswatch

Econophone

Trakdata


Declaring war on HOV lanes

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- FORGET CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM and saving Social Security. The hottest political action these days is on the highway. Across the country, taxpayers are sending an angry message to federal transportation officials:

Take your HOV and shove it!

The revolt against ineffective high-occupancy vehicle lanes first gained momentum in 1998, when New Jersey became the first state to win the right to end car-pool-only rules without paying federal penalties. State government analysts found that the grand social-engineering experiment with HOV lanes failed to encourage car-pooling. Instead, the exclusionary lanes resulted in increased congestion, air pollution, law-breaking, and a greater likelihood of accidents.

N.J. Governor Christie Todd Whitman ditched the diamond lanes on two main highways and opened them to all comers. "We have taken a long, hard look at New Jersey's HOV lanes and concluded that they simply are not producing the results that we all had hoped for," Whitman noted in a letter to federal officials. "Despite an aggressive public relations and marketing campaign, New Jersey was unable to change the driving patterns of motorists using the roads."

Commuters in the Garden State cheered the end of coercive "lanes of pain." Behavior modificationists, who foisted HOV lanes on the nation through the federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, vowed to defend their precious painted diamonds to the death. The anti-car crowd howled. Environmentalists cried foul.

But follow-up studies show that air quality in the region where HOVs were decommissioned continue to meet federal requirements.

Elsewhere, the case against government-directed car-pooling keeps getting stronger. A study by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst's Office in California, the birthplace of HOV lanes, concluded in January that a carpool lane carries as many or more people as a regular lane, on average, but that HOV lanes run at only two-thirds of their vehicle capacity.

Recipe for congestion and road rage, anyone?

Tom McClintock, a California state assemblyman, has introduced a bill to scrap HOV lanes. But in the Pacific Northwest, voters aren't waiting for the pols to put an end to HOV hell. A young, grass-roots activist in Washington state is revving up an unprecedented, anti-HOV initiative drive. Tim Eyman, a thirtysomething small businessman from outside Seattle, is gathering signatures for a campaign to throw open all car-pool lanes to all traffic 24 hours a day.

Washington boasts 191 miles of federally-subsidized car-pool lanes - and the third-worst traffic congestion in the nation.

Though he has never held elected office and doesn't plan to, Eyman is a formidable reform maverick and arguably the state's most influential political figure. He led an overwhelmingly successful ballot campaign last year that slashed car-tab fees to $30. Against all odds and special interests on both the left and right, Eyman and his anti-establishment tax revolters gathered more than a half million signatures for that initiative – the second-most in state history without people paid to gather them.

Now, Washington's weak Democratic governor, Gary Locke, is mimicking Eyman's rhetoric and supports a tepid plan to open a few HOV lanes on weekends.

Such half-hearted measures will be flattened like roadkill by Eyman's fellow travelers. In a letter to his local paper, Bill Muse of Seattle voiced the frustration of millions of commuters nationwide who are tired of seeing half-empty HOV lanes treated like holy land: "My tax dollars paid for those lanes and I'm not going to let bureaucrats tell me how many people I have to have in my car before I can drive there."

"HOV lanes are a crock," Muse fumed. "Their goal is not to ease congestion but to make it worse, thereby punishing us for the sin of driving."

Soccer moms and driving dads are fed up with the environmental zealotry, inflexible central planning, fiscal irresponsibility, and contempt for personal freedom that gave rise to HOV lanes. Beltway bureaucrats, beware: If grass-roots initiatives like Eyman's catch on, you won't be in the driver's seat for long.


JWR contributor Michelle Malkin can be reached by clicking here.

Up

03/22/00: Clinton and the Echo Boomers
03/17/00: Is Bush a Liddy Dole Republican?
03/13/00: Katie and the politics of disease
03/10/00: Maria H, Granny D, and the media Z's
03/07/00: Bubba Van Winkle wakes up
03/03/00: Double standard for day traders?
02/28/00: Sluts and nuts --- and our daughters
02/24/00: Zoning out religious freedom
02/15/00: The Baby Brain Boondoggle
02/10/00: Buddhist temple untouchables
02/08/00: CDC: Caught Devouring Cash
02/04/00: Hillary's poisoned poster child
02/01/00: Corporate welfare on ice
01/28/00: The silly sound of silence
01/26/00: The Old Media meltdown
01/20/00: The pied pipers of KidCare
01/18/00: Our imperious judiciary
01/14/00: Tune out Columbine chorus
01/12/00: Dying to be an American
01/10/00: Time for smokers' revolt?
12/30/99: Reading, writing, PlayStation?
12/27/99: Fight money-grubbing mallrats
12/23/99: Christmas for Cornilous Pixley
12/20/99: Who will help the Hmong?
12/16/99: Shame on corn-fed politicians
12/13/99: EPA vs. the American Dream
12/09/99: Look behind the Pokemon curtain
12/06/99: Amateur hour in Seattle
11/30/99: Stop the Ritalin racketeers
11/23/99: Welfare for a sports fatcat
11/19/99: Jeb Bush's political ploy of the week
11/16/99: Ben & Jerry serve up junk science
11/12/99: A monumental waste of our veterans' resources
11/10/99: Tax-and-spend schizophrenia
11/05/99: Spooky Guy Haunts the Capital
11/02/99: Mourning the loss of the last Liberty Tree
10/27/99: AOL goes AWOL on parents
10/22/99: The persecution of Harry Potter
10/20/99: Don't doctor the law
10/14/99: The trouble with kids today
10/12/99: Pro-animal, pro-abortion, anti-speech?
10/07/99: Beltway press corps needs more skunks
09/30/99: ESPN overlooks athlete of faith, grace, and guts
09/27/99: Personal freedom going up in smoke
09/15/99: Farewell, "Miss" America
09/10/99: Will George W. work for a color-blind America?
09/03/99: Feminization of gun debate drowns out sober analysis
08/27/99: America is abundant land of equal-opportunity insult
08/10/99: Protect the next generation from diversity do-goodism
08/04/99: Sweepstakes vs. state lottery: double standards on gambling
07/21/99: "True-life tales from the Thin Red Line" (or "Honor those who sacrificed their lives for peace")
07/21/99: Reading, 'Riting, and Raunchiness?
07/14/99: Journalists' group-think is not unity
06/30/99: July Fourth programming for the Springer generation
06/25/99: Speechless in Seattle
06/15/99: Making a biblical argument against federal death taxes

© 2000, Creators Syndicate