A Compendium of Existing HOV Lane Facilities in the United States
Introduction
The intent of the HOV Lane Compendium deliverable is to document the basic characteristics of current and proposed High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes throughout the United States. The characteristics, or data columns, that we identified for the compendium are as follows:
Table 1: Geographic and Infrastructure Characteristics.
- ID #.
- Location. Urban Area; Road; Segment.
- Responsible Agency. Agency responsible for facility operations and maintenance.
- History. Year Opened; Current Status (open, design/construction, or planned/ studied).
- Scale. Number of Lanes (General Purpose/HOV); Length Number of Route Miles/Lane-Miles).
- Type. Bus lane/busway; Concurrent (median, right side, second lane on one-way urban arterial); Contraflow; Curb lane; High-standard arterial; High-Occupancy Toll or HOT (reversible, concurrent); Reversible; Separate roadway.
- Separation. Barrier; Buffer; Cones; Dash line + broken diamond pavement marking; Limited access highway; Moveable barrier; None; Painted stripe; Pylons; Standard dash line; Traveled lane edge line.
Table 2: Policy and Utilization Characteristics.
- ID #. Common field with Table 1.
- Location. Common fields with Table 1.
- Eligibility. HOV Eligibility (2+; 3+; bus only); Special Fuel Eligibility (if special fuel vehicles such as alternative fuel vehicles, hybrids and Inherently Low Emission Vehicles [ILEVs] are eligible.)
- Hours of Operation. Days of week and hours of day.
- Intermediate Access Allowed? Yes; Limited; No.
- AM Peak Hour Utilization (if available). Number of Persons in HOV Lane(s); Number of Vehicles in HOV Lane(s); % of Vehicles in HOV Lane(s).
- PM Peak Hour Utilization (if available). Number of Persons in HOV Lane(s); Number of Vehicles in HOV Lane(s); % of Vehicles in HOV Lane(s).
- Peak Hour Violation % Estimate (if available). Estimated percentage of peak hour vehicles in the HOV lane(s) that are in violation of the eligibility requirements.
- Peak Hour Travel Time Savings (if available). Estimated minutes of travel time savings in the HOV lane(s) relative to adjacent general purpose lanes.
- Also, documented below Table 2 is a description of policy changes made to a particular facility since the facility first opened.
Data sources are the HOV Facility Inventory (a database maintained by the FHWA HOV Pooled Fund Study, last updated in March 2007) and discussions with select HOV facility critical partners.
