Carpools boon or boondoggle
Speed up car pool lanes, federal officials tell state [California] Nice quote from USC professor Peter Gordon: "There's no evidence on the planet that car pool lanes have caused car pooling."
A bit of hyperbole perhaps, certainly casual carpools because of the HOV lanes in San Francisco and Washington DC caused carpools (at the expense of public transportation no doubt), but nevertheless an important point about the futility of weak incentives. The problem is further exacerbated by the attempt to use these lanes to solve other social ills, namely pollution by using them as an incentive for hybrid cars.
One problem ... one policy.