Hybrids in the carpool lane

As of last Wednesday, it is now possible in California for hybrid owners to apply to use the carpool lane with single occupancy. It requires an EPA rating of 45 MPG or higher which currently is only met by the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight, and Honda Civic Hybrid.

This is pretty cool, but unfortunately it seems that the various SF bay area bridges currently allow compressed natural gas and electric vehicles to cross for free during carpool hours, but there was some concern about lost revenue if this was allowed for the more than 57,000 hybrids registered in California. So they came up with the clever idea of requiring bay area residents to also sign up for FasTrak (an additional $40 for the transponder plus whatever money you put in your account) on top of the $8 fee for the special sticker you have to have to take advantage of this law.

The dumb thing about this is that many people that would like to take advantage of the carpool lane rarely use the bridges (like me), and some that do use the bridges live outside of the bay area counties that are affected.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/12355793.htm