What to do about those dang HOV lanes

Apparently the members of the DART board aren't too happy with the HOV lanes along LBJ and north on 75 any more than the rest of us. They just don't know what to do about them. As usual, I have a solution.

Convert them from HOV Lanes to Express Lanes. Then the requirement for using them is not how many people you have in your vehicle but how far you need to travel.


It's interesting that we never hear or read about complaints involving the original HOV lanes that were created along I-30 east of downtown or the ones along I-35 south. It's also interesting that those lanes have concrete barriers that separate them from the rest of the highway.


So here's what you do. You build similar barriers for all the current HOV-Lanes-that-will-become-Express-Lanes. You have a minimum of entrance and exit points. (That's the problem with Texas freeways -- they were poorly designed. Freeways are supposed to be transit ways designed to carry vehicles over long distances in a short time. But the local engineers made sure that would never happen by creating freeways with entrances and exits less than a mile apart and stupid service roads that run alongside them, guaranteeing that most of the time the freeways would have all the mobility of a parking lot.) DART should extend the North Central Lane all the way to the Dallas CBD with entrances and exits only at its northern most point in Allen and flyover exits and entrances that connect to the George Bush Turnpike and LBJ Freeway. That way you are providing express service for those major traffic arteries and from the outer burbs to downtown Dallas.


The North Rim LBJ Express Lanes should have similar entrances and exits at 175/I20, I-30, North Central Expressway, I-35 and DFW.


Freeways are not supposed to be for those who just want to drive on them for 1-5 miles, but that's what they are in Texas and that's why they are so congested. I had the pleasure a couple of years ago of driving on England's Motorways one of which is pictured above), which are designed to get people over long distances in the shortest amount of time. In the metropolitan areas, there is never an entrance or exit closer to two miles of another one and in the rural areas, the standard is 25 miles between entrances and exits. I never once encountered a traffic jam on an English M-highway. It also helped that English drivers are far superior to Texas motorists, but then kamikaze pilots are safer than the majority of Texans on a highway.