The Road to Hell Is Clogged With Righteous Hybrids
Published Tuesday, August 30, 2005, in the New York Times


By John Tierney

LOS ANGELES -- Judgment Day has arrived in California, but not exactly
as prophesied. The ones sitting on the right-hand side are the
sinners.

They're stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic while the righteous fly past
them in the far left lanes. Those freeway lanes used to be reserved
for car pools, but they've just been opened to a new group: those of
us virtuous enough to drive the right hybrids.

I'm not a good enough person yet to own a hybrid, but I've been
passing for one. I rented a Toyota Prius for the pleasure of cruising
the car pool lanes and parking free at meters, another perk available
here in Los Angeles. I've enjoyed it all, especially the envious
looks from guys in S.U.V.'s, and I can understand why hybrid drivers
in other states and cities are clamoring for similar privileges.

But even if these new privileges put more fuel-efficient cars on the
road, I'm afraid the net effect will be dirtier air and more gasoline
consumption. The promoters of hybrids are committing the sin
identified by the ecologist Garrett Hardin in "The Tragedy of the
Commons," the 1968 essay providing one of the foundations of
environmentalism.

The essay's title refers to a pasture that's commonly owned and open
to all. Since every individual has an incentive to increase his own
herd, the pasture will eventually be destroyed by overgrazing, just as
other types of unregulated commons -- the ocean, the atmosphere --
will be damaged by overproduction and pollution when too many
individuals pursue their own goals.

This seems like an obvious lesson, Hardin wrote, but it must be
"constantly refreshed" because each new generation repeats the
mistake. As an example of "how perishable the knowledge is," he
pointed to politicians in a Massachusetts town who declared that
people didn't have to pay at parking meters during the Christmas
shopping season. By giving away the spaces at a time of peak demand,
the town encouraged some people to hog spaces and left everyone else
unable to park.

That's the same mistake being made with hybrids. In Virginia, where
they've been allowed for years in the car pool lanes, the lanes have
become so clogged that an advisory committee has repeatedly
recommended their banishment. The same problem will occur in
California, where some of the car pool lanes were congested even
without hybrids.

As traffic slows down, there will be more idling cars burning more gas
and emitting more pollution, but politicians will be reluctant to
offend hybrid owners by revoking their privilege. So it will be
harder than ever to make the one change proven to speed up traffic and
help the environment: convert the car pool lanes into what engineers
call high-occupancy toll lanes.

These HOT lanes would be free for the truly virtuous commuters --
those in car pools, jitneys and buses -- and available to anyone else
for a toll that would vary with demand. By enticing just enough
drivers to maintain a steady flow of high-speed traffic, the HOT lanes
could handle many more vehicles per hour than today's car pool lanes,
which are usually either too empty or too congested to accommodate the
optimum number.

With HOT lanes, everyone would come out ahead, drivers as well as
environmentalists. As more drivers paid for a guaranteed speedy
commute in the left lane, they would leave the regular lanes less
clogged, so there would be fewer cars stuck in traffic jams, wasting
gas and spewing fumes.

With HOT lanes, you could still encourage people to buy hybrids by
promising them a discount on the tolls, but there's a fairer way to
promote environmental virtue. Instead of arbitrarily rewarding a few
cars for having a certain kind of engine, set tolls for all vehicles
according to their weight. Since S.U.V.'s and other heavy vehicles
require more room to brake, they need more empty pavement between them
and the next car, and they should pay extra for it.

I realize that many Prius owners would rather have free privileges in
the car pool lane than a discount in a HOT lane. But they'd be moving
a lot faster, and they would still have one great satisfaction.

As they contemplated how much more the Hummer drivers were paying in
tolls, devout environmentalists would experience the "joyful sense"
that Jonathan Edwards predicted for Judgment Day: "When the saints in
glory, therefore, shall see the doleful state of the damned, how will
this heighten their sense of the blessedness of their own state, so
exceedingly different from it!"


Email: tierney@...