HOV Lanes: A 'Big' Waste Of Money?

"They are like quiet country roads, rising and banking, then dipping out of view, the serenity broken by nothing more than the occasional vehicle cruising through the soft turns. Traffic is so sparse that motorists - the few that there are - usually can't see the car ahead.

Yet these are anything but rural byways. Rather, they are the little-known and seldom used high-occupancy vehicle lanes of the Big Dig tunnel system, curving in and out of the city not far from the skyscrapers of South Station. When they were opened two years ago, with their very own tunnel under the Fort Point Channel, state officials predicted they would change the way Boston area drivers commute to work.

They've done nothing of the sort.

The roads sit largely unheralded and unused, given that the adjacent Interstate 93, the highway they are supposed to relieve, is rarely clogged by traffic in that area. The cost for these three miles of open pavement: an estimated $250 million."

"The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, conceded that far fewer commuters are using the lanes than the 1,600 cars an hour they were designed to accommodate."