The car pool lane is a roadway reserved for vehicles with at a specified number of occupants. These high occupancy vehicle lanes (HOV) may have the appearance of being lightly traveled, but statistics show that they carry more people per lane with fewer vehicles and usually at higher speeds. Some places allow hybrid and electric vehicles to access these lanes to encourage the use of a more environmentally friendly means of transportation.

Other states are looking at the concept of putting a price on the convenience of using HOV roadways. They say that tolls would not only raise money to maintain the roads but could manage traffic congestion as well. Motorist would be allowed to “buy their way” into the express lanes using an electronic transponder that logs how long and at what time of day the driver accesses them.

While the goal of the program is to keep traffic in the restricted lane moving at a reliable pace, a coalition of local groups say allowing people to by their way into the lane is having the opposite effect, and they have petitioning to have the program suspended. The state of California has recently restricted some older hybrids from HOV lanes because they were becoming too congested.