HOV lanes encourage me to carpool. I refuse to attend a meeting in Bellevue unless I've got a carpool to go up I-405. It's the only lane in motion in the morning; the other lanes stand still. HOV lanes only encourage people to carpool or pay for it if they value their time. That people will sit in the standstill lanes while the HOVs whiz by is a testament; those people are voting with their time and the choice they make. Obviously the slow lanes aren't yet slow enough.

If you take the "actions have consequences" and "stupidity should hurt" principles into consideration, people are saying and voting that their time isn't valuable enough to bother with the hassle of finding someone to ride with them.

That's why I'd like to see the center of the freeway with a Metro like rail system flanked by HOV lanes flanked by slow lanes. Everyone in the slow lanes watching the train and buses and HOVs zoom by deserves to be sitting in the slow/standstill lanes by the very choice they make to be there.