The first one is enforcement. Already today I see a number of single driver cars using the HOV lanes, this includes totally enclosed HOV lanes with no way out! While police do patrol at times, people are still not deterred.

Having some people with the ability to legally use the HOV lane as single drivers makes enforcemnet more difficult, and probably also increases the need to patrol the HOV lanes for violators that may feel it’s easier to fool people if they look like anyone else who has paid for a pass. So, there is a hidden cost to such an effort. Possibly you could address this with transponders but that would only work well I think if all HOV users were required to use them (another cost).

The second issue is one of public opinion – there might well be asignificant number of people outraged at the thought of people being able to “buy” roads all for themselves while poor people have to suffer in traffic. I don’t agree with that opinion but you can see where elected officials would be nervous about bringing that kind of classist accusation down on themselves.

I would also love to see speed-rated licences where people who paid for extra training could have higher speed limits than other people, but it has similar issues in addition to the problem of traffic travelling as disparate speeds (though I think that is really a problem already).

Personally, I’m a big fan of congestion pricing, maybe not so much for an area like London’s, but for toll roads. The biggest problem is that tolls are not set high enough to really discourage people from overloading a road.

I’m not so sure about your idea of the passes for roadway usage. I see 2 problems with it: at 5000 issued, you’ll have a LOT of empty pavement, and you would still have the possibility of congestion in the lane (yes, I know, it sounds oxymoronic). Generally, 2000 vehicles per hour per lane is a best case estimate, although it can get higher with more aggressive drivers (less space between cars at highway speeds). If you have one lane each way, you’ll have approximately 20 hours a day that each lane is just totally empty, and you still have the possibility that 3000 people would show up in the same hour to use the road. Since the premise of your pass is that you are trying to guarantee some minimum level of service (D – Congested but still flowing), when it gets clogged, you’ll have some unhappy people.

That’s why I like the realtime congestion pricing a bit better. It also allows people who don’t want that service every day to decide if they need it for a special occasion. Sometimes you have an important meeting that you HAVE to get to, but the rest of the year it doesn’t matter.

There’s no reason that multiple systems can’t be used, and the class warfare that’s used to shout down the ‘lexus lanes’ and toll roads doesn’t sway me at all. People don’t pay enough for roadway usage either. I’d love to see gas taxes go up to meet all roadway expenses. I wouldn’t mind every road being a toll road. That’s also in line with the real pricing of transit. Then we’ll see what people really want.