insert
Well-known member
^^^ exactly what they said.
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Motorcycles in HOV lanes - Petition and Protest!
- Thread starter MarkR
- Start date
Actually, the link you gave explicitly states the purpose:
"HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes are designed to help move more people through congested areas. HOV lanes offer users a faster, more reliable commute, while also easing congestion in regular lanes"
This goal would be better served by letting single-occupant motorcycles use the HOV lanes. As the petition states; every other jurisdiction sees it that way.
There was a long discussion here about this a year or so ago. Will try and find it.
EDIT:
Here you go; Pro/con discussion starts with post 40.
http://www.gtamotorcycle.com/vbforu...he-HOV-lanes&p=1520932&viewfull=1#post1520932
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Yes I'm in. What took you so long?
-Mark Faulkner
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This is the key to the argument of why bikes should be allowed on the 404,403.
It's not the safety factor of being in the hov (seriously if you feel unsafe as a biker riding on our highways then sell the bike and take transit)
It's not the emissions or green friendly aspect.
It's not the 3 bikes take up the same space as one car on the hov lane.
It's the end goal of where the bike finishes it's trip/commute. There is no space downtown, the bikes do make a difference,we take up alot less parking room, and ease congestion. We travel in the same half lanes as bicyclists which are numerous in the core. By allowing bikes to use the hov lanes encourages more ppl to ride and take advantage of the free parking by the City of Toronto.
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insert
Well-known member
1) yea i know, its exactly what i said... lanes promote carpooling--> less congestion.
2) if 1regular sedan holds 5 people, a it would take 5 single-passenger motorcycles to equal that... 1 motorcycle = approx 2m long... so that is 10m of lane space taken up if each motorcycle was riding touching the wheel of the bike in front. toyota camry = 4.8m.
You would also need to factor in gaps between vehicles, each vehicle would need 2m on each side just a gap for decently safe driving. 2m on each side, is 4m per vehicle with 5 bikes that is an additional 20m.
1 car with 2m on either side is 8.8m
1 car would take up 8.8m driving space, 5 bikes would take up 30m... how are the bikes causing less congestion?
If other jurisdictions feel otherwise, find out why, bring that to parliament, bring reasons. If you were to go to parliament and tell them canada is hte only country in north america without capital punishment, thus canada should have capital punishment, they would not be convinced. but if there was some benefit to be gained by capital punishment and you ran that by them, it might convince them.
3) yea, threads pop up about this every now and then.
insert
Well-known member
this would be an interesting argument to attach to the petition. despite taking up the same amount of space on the road, we take up a lot less space once we get there.
but it still doesnt address that the point of the HOV lane is to help people move through congested areas. The HOV lane doesnt really care what you do when you get off the highway, just that you are making less traffic when you are on the highway.
1) Actually, you added "it is to reward people for bringing less vehicles into the city", which is not part of the rationale for HOV lanes. All the other considerations you mentioned would benefit from allowing single-occupant bikes on HOV lanes.
2) That is a good argument for the benefit of 5-occupant cars over single-occupant bikes. However the goal here is to get single-occupant bikes on HOV lanes. The focus of this discussion needs to be on the purpose of HOV lanes and the benefits - if any - of single-occupant bikes in achieving this purpose.
3) Have a look, I linked to it my previous post. It was a good discussion.
From what I've been able to observe, all HOV lanes lead to a bottleneck somewhere down the road. I think this might be o0n purpose, but that's beside the point.
As traffic gets denser through rush hour, all lanes get backed up more, including the HOV lanes. However, depending on how exclusive the usage of the HOV lane is, there will usually be a point where regular lanes are backed up more than HOV lanes. So HOV users will still benefit even if they do come to a grinding halt further down the road.
The hov lane on the provincial highway leads to hov lanes in the City.
insert
Well-known member
my mistake... i thought less vehicles would equal less congestion, and that the lanes reward for less congestion, that's the way my mind was running. did not mean to mislead you. maybe better wording would be: "incentive" to bring less vehicles --> less congestion.
It's because every 2nd driver on those HOV lanes is a clown who has no passengers. They should enforce the 2-person rule, like they do in California, with very big fines. Maybe then we won't see the idiots who don't understand the point of diamond lanes. I constantly see people on Allen Rd in diamond lane, which is clearly marked BUSES ONLY. Not even talking about Dundas, where 4 out of 5 cars in the diamond lane have only 1 person in a car.
The purpose is not to incentivize people to bring fewer vehicles either. The stated purpose of HOV lanes is simply to reduce congestion. Sorry to seem pedantic but it's a critical difference when it comes to allowing bikes onto HOV lanes or not.
Worth thinking about.
You are now sharing a lane which includes soccer mom minivans, taxi's and limos.
Now which lanes are safer
Yeah, the safety angle could only serve to divert the focus of the argument. There are a lot of factors to consider like speed, visibility, proximity to other drivers, and so on. I doubt very much that any study has been performed on the subject of relative rider safety using HOV lanes versus not. In addition to the lack of clear evidence, making that argument for bikes would also require the MOT to realign the aim of the HOV lanes to include safety considerations, which currently doesn't seem to be their stated purpose.
Instead, the existing purpose is quite explicit, and within that scope there is a clear argument in favour of allowing bikes to use Provinicial HOV lanes. So we should stay focused on that purpose (of reducing congestion) and avoid the topic of safety if this campaign is going to be as strong as possible.
insert
Well-known member
not being pedantic at all.
but i agree, the PURPOSE is to reduce congestion (according to the site), the MEANS by which achieving this purpose is providing a reward to people that give up the convenience of having their own car with them by giving them a fast moving lane, thus there is an incentive to commuters to carpool.
that's the line logic took in my head.
Also, on the HOV page it says nothing about environmental concerns. however, on the second link (fixed) i posted it says that "green" cars will be allowed in the HOV lanes, even with one person.
That tells me that the criteria for who is allowed in the HOV lanes is not set in stone. Parliament is willing to rethink who is and isn't allowed in, but it seems that there needs to be somekind of "benefit" (for lack of a better word) that people allowed in these lanes provide to other commuters/members of society in general.
carpoolers reduce traffic, lowering commute times. green cars reduce pollution. taxis are allowed in the lanes, even when empty, they provide for less vehicles around the city, because many people throughout the day will share a taxi, rather than each of those people bringing a separate vehicle for their specific purpose and crowding the city.
the question is: what do motorcycles do? what benefit do we provide, if we can think up a decent position, we may have a shot at this.
parliament has already decided that motorcycles with 2 passengers provide a benefit, but what about bikes with single passengers, what do they do?
edit:
My Posts: my postcount has reset... whyyyyyyyyy
edit 2: Link fixed... http://www.mto.gov.on.ca/english/dandv/vehicle/electric/ev-green-plates.shtml
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Sabex
Well-known member
Maybe cops just don't know? lol... I've met a lot of police officers who don't know the small nit-picked parts of the law to charge people with.
So you save maybe 5-10 minutes on your commute?
Hmm... I tend to show up to places I have to be 15-30 minutes early anyways, so I plan for that. So it wouldn't really affect me much...
I guess I can see how it would help someone who leaves to show up to work 1 minute before they have to clock in...
Sabex
Well-known member
I agree with your post. And a few months back there were some server problem so the admin wiped out a whole bunch of old post to make room and speed it up (the server was rolling REALLY slow)
insert
Well-known member
oh i see, i was out of hte loop for a while.
Also, regarding the "green" cars in my earlier post. it seems that they will only be allowed in those lanes until june 2015. So, it would seem to me that the province is tightening up on who is allowed in, and they seem to be limiting it only to multi-passenger vehicles.
This was their intial intention, the purpose was for reducing congestion. Then, they started allowing others in, and now it looks like they are pulling back on the advantages they gave to others. If parliament is convinced that multiple passengers in a vehicle is THE way to reduce congestion, this petition must argue that there are other ways, and that motorcycles are one of those ways. How exactly... i dont know...
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