Tierney knows not of what he speaks. Although, now that I think about it, in posts that start with the word "Tierney", the rest of that sentence is generally assumed. So never mind it. In any case, The Times' token libertarian (and how come no major papers need a token green on staff? Don't they reliably attract more votes than libertarians?) has aimed his non sequiturs at hybrid cars and the collision, as you would expect, claimed coherency as collateral damage.
Tierney apparently travelled to LA and rented a Prius so he could drive in our carpool lanes and write about how superior he felt. Unfortunately, that gig only works when your audience is in New York. As any Angeleno will tell you, our carpool lanes may as well not exist. Fairly often, they're worse than the other lanes (because movement in and out is restricted save for certain, small junctions). When traffic is clear -- it happened for about 10 minutes last October -- the carpool lane is, you guessed it, slower than the other lanes, as one pokey driver sets the pace for snaking line of steaming carpoolers behind him.
The fact that Tierney almost certainly lied about the experience didn't stop him from misinterpreting it. He goes on to argue that hybrids will slow down the carpool lanes, forcing more cars to idle and add to pollution. A) As mentioned, carpool lanes already crawl, B) LA is packed with traffic, wherever those hybrids are, they'd cause more of it, forcing more cars to idle and thus their placement doesn't actually make a difference C) this has nothing to do with hybrid vehicles at all, any additional cars on the road would have this effect.
Tierney's solution to his made-up problem are HOT lanes, carpool lanes that other drivers could pay to enter. Since carpool lanes are currently carpool lanes that hybrids can enter, I don't see why switching out hybrids for toll-paying drivers will make a difference, but Tierney had to awkwardly jam a free-market solution onto this somehow, and we should congratulate him for the effort. That his starting premise is wrong and his fix doesn't make sense should be quietly, courteously, ignored.
Oops.
