Abstract
Proponents of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes claim HOV lanes reduce vehicle miles traveled by encouraging more people to carpool. This is thought to reduce congestion, improve air quality, and save fuel. However, HOV lanes are expansions in highway capacity (especially when built as additional lanes) and as such encourage vehicle travel. Traffic simulation models have found evidence for and against the effectiveness of HOV lanes, but so far no study has looked at the effects of HOV lanes on vehicle miles traveled across a wide range of cities. This paper uses a national dataset and exploits the structure of the Clean Air Act to find that building HOV lanes increases vehicle miles traveled. The Clean Air Act encourages non-attainment areas to build HOV lanes as a traffic control measure. Using ozone non-attainment as an instrument for the placement of HOV lanes, this paper shows HOV lanes increase traffic volume. Thus, the Clean Air Act’s provisions for building HOV lanes as an environmental tool are troubling since HOV lanes appear to increase, not decrease, traffic volume.
Published Version
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