PLATFORM : To Ease the Commute, Give Poolers Precedence

So far, all we’ve gotten is pious advice: Switch to car pools and public transit. That’s correct in theory but ineffective in practice. Public transit can take up some of the load, but commuter lines were already filled at rush hour.

Solving the jam requires vastly reducing the number of vehicles on the road. The greatest unused resource is the empty seats in all those autos. But there’s little incentive to car-pool. Your car pool would be stuck in the same traffic jam, and the trip would actually be longer to pick up passengers.

So how do we get people to combine their trips? Reward them with a faster commute. Here’s an example for the Santa Monica Freeway, now broken by the gap at Fairfax. It might also have some application the jams out in Santa Clarita and the Antelope Valley.

Give car pools and buses exclusive use of the freeway entrances and exits closest to the gap. Solo drivers would have to exit earlier, wander further through congested neighborhoods and rejoin the freeway later than car pools.

Is this solution unfair to those who can’t car pool? No, because they also benefit: For every pair of cars that becomes a car pool, there is one fewer car in the jam in front of the solo driver.

We know that car-pool incentives work in other situations. Give them a try here. They’re cheap to implement and easy to discard if they fail.