Few use HOV lanes in Big Dig after 2 years - Boston Globe report

High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (HOVLs - pron hovels) in the Big Dig tunnels in Boston costing around $250m are largely unused two years after opening, the Boston Globe reports. They counted 181 vehicles in a recent peak hour northbound and only 112 southbound. The Turnpike's traffic counts show between 59 and 167 vehicles/hour are using the lanes through a broader survey period. Traffic lanes in expressway conditions like the Big Dig have a capacity of 1,600 to 2,400 vehicles per hour so the HOVLs are 90% to 97.5% empty.

Reports the Globe today: "They are like quiet country roads, rising and banking, then dipping out of view, the serenity broken by nothing more than the occasional vehicle cruising through the soft turns. Traffic is so sparse that motorists - the few that there are - usually can't see the car ahead."

Officials say it's for the future but today reports the Globe: "it's a quarter-billion-dollar engineering curiosity - a lonely carpool lane used largely by buses, taxicabs, and limousines."

From the south the Big Dig HOVLs begin with a left exit out of the I-93 mainlanes near the Massachusetts Av Connection about 1.4km (0.8mi) short of the centerline of the I-90 crossing. One HOVL branch continues through the Turnpike interchange on up I-93 just a few blocks to South Station area in downtown Boston. Another heads off east at the interchange alongside the mainlane tunnels of I-90 in a dedicated HOVL tunnel which cost a pretty penny. It merges with other traffic heading to the airport just before the entry to the Ted Williams Tunnel.

At one point in the planning the feds criticized this lane drop as liable to generate merging blockages at the tunnel entrance, but given the lack of use of the HOVL lane there's no lane drop problem.

FHWA hasn't recognized as "existing" yet

The current FHWA inventory of HOV facilities shows 6.4km (4 miles) and 12.8 lane-km (8 lane-miles) of HOVL in the Central Artery project as "planned". That is the HOVLs that opened just over two years ago. [FHWA's inventory will hopefully register the Big Dig HOVLs as "existing" by say 2009?]

see http://hovpfs.ops.fhwa.dot.gov/index.cfm

No Turnpike or MPO mention either

The Turnpike has nothing on HOVLs on its website apart from hyperbole uttered by Turnpike chairman Matt Amorello in a press release when HOVL ramps were opened Sept 23 2005.

Most state authorities have elaborate maps and instructions to motorists on HOVLs, but not Massachusetts.

The local MPO has descriptions of HOVLs on I-93 south of Boston where about 10km (6mi) of movable barrier have been used to create a reversible HOVL since 1995 and for 2km (1.2mi) north of the Zakim Bridge. But they haven't caught up with the existence of the Central Artery I-93/I-90 HOVLs either (see map below right).

(MISSING INFO: we haven't been been able to work out how HOV westbound on I-90 and southbound on I-93 is handled. No maps we can find show this reverse direction. CLARIFY SOON. TRnews)

It is clear that there are now three unconnected stretches of HOVL on I-93, hardly an encouragement to carpooling.

According to the Globe report the Big Dig's HOVLs are used nearly exclusively by buses, cabs and limos. There are few regular carpools.

Even with lots of publicity there is little success generally with HOVLs anywhere on the east coast except in the I-95/395 corridor southwest of Washington DC.

New Jersey, Maryland and Tidewater Virginia have completely given up on their HOVLs, and only the Long Island Expressway has them in the New York area. There are none in Philadelphia.

In Boston HOV use has been in decline - and occupancy requirements have been lowered from 3 to 2 in order to maintain some usage.

PR hype, then nothing, not a map nor a flyer

When the Big Dig HOVLs were opened two years ago (2005-09-23) the then Massachusetts Turnpike chief Matt Amorello said in a press statement: "One of the goals of the Central Artery/Tunnel Project was to help the environment by promoting carpooling and the use of mass transit. These ramps, as part of the Big Dig's extensive HOV network, provide a strong incentive toward that end. With gas prices hovering around $3 a gallon, we're confident that this change will get more people carpooling or taking the bus into Boston."

If you had an "extensive network" worthy of such expectations you'd think that out of the $14b Big Dig budget they could generate an HOVL map to publicize it.

Perhaps they got distracted at the Turnpike. Not long after, the roof fell in.

TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-28