Carpools and special lanes ease traffic and fight pollution. (Lars Hagberg/Canadian Press)

Back in the days of horses and buggies there were those who hitched a ride into town and drivers who welcomed the company. This neighbourly convenience accelerated with the car, of course, and in the new millennium the challenge of commuting has reached epic proportions — gridlock, road rage, global warming and designated carpool lanes.

We now have special HOV (high-occupancy vehicles) lanes, HOT (high-occupancy toll) lanes, and the latest transportation acronym: HOVER (high-occupancy vehicles in express routes). All are well-intentioned systems to get people to and from places quicker, cheaper and with reduced noxious emissions.

Yet despite the good sense HOVs and HOTs and HOVERs offer, highway problems persist. Not everyone has warmed to the concept of carpooling — sharing a vehicle with others — whether neighbours or strangers, even if it saves time and money and saves the planet from extinction.

This may be changing as the zeitgeist brings new attitudes to cars, carpools and freeways — we laugh, we cry — including a new television comedy starting this fall on ABC called Carpoolers, with four suburban commuters commiserating about their lives as they head to and from work.

But, back to basics.

HOV and HOT

When carpooling lanes were introduced three decades ago, there was some antipathy from drivers in single-occupant cars who watched other vehicles whiz by in the special HOV commuter lanes. In the early years, these lanes were reserved for vehicles with at least three occupants. The rules have since been eased to allow two-occupant vehicles, hybrid cars and soon, perhaps, electric cars to use HOV lanes.

The HOT system, operational in parts of California and Texas and approved for other regions, allows anyone to use designated HOV lanes if they are willing to pay a toll for the privilege, something like fliers choosing to pay for a first-class airplane ticket.

In Regulation, a magazine published by The CATO Institute — a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. — authors Robert W. Poole Jr. and C. Kenneth Orski argue that HOT lanes make better sense than HOV lanes:

"Underused HOV lanes irritate most drivers; environmental groups do not believe that HOV lanes reduce auto traffic; transportation researchers find that HOV lanes do little to relieve congestion; and elected officials are under increasing pressure to convert HOV lanes to general purpose lanes."

Others differ. The latest report on the effectiveness of designated HOV lanes in the Greater Toronto Area says travel times for some commuters have been reduced by up to 25 minutes.

"[It was] very successful, more successful than we had forecast them to be," Patricia Boeckner of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation said after new stretches of HOV lanes were built, with more to come.

There are 11 kilometres of new HOV lanes on Highway 404, which runs north of Toronto as an extension of the Don Valley Parkway. There are also 14 new kilometres of HOV lanes in each direction on Highway 403, on the western outskirts of Toronto. Boeckner said there are plans for more HOV lanes between Burlington and Oakville, also to the west of Toronto, but work on them is going slowly because of many overpasses along the Queen Elizabeth Way.

The HOVER system

HOVER (high occupancy vehicles in express routes) is the latest scheme to clear up highway congestion. Paul Minett, a Canadian-born New Zealander who heads a company called Trip Convergence Ltd., developed the concept.

The HOVER system is a formalized version of the carpool, incorporating parking "ports" where commuters can either pick up passengers or park their car and ride in someone else's car. The HOVER system allows carpool vehicles to use existing lanes for high-occupancy (more than two people) vehicles. It even includes a provision that gives participants who need to leave work early, such as for an emergency, a free ride home by taxi.

The HOVER people say members would pay $200 for a car tag to park in any parking terminus and another $30 for a membership card. According to Trip Convergence Ltd., the HOVER system would save each member about $2,500 a year in gas, maintenance and parking, and for each participant carbon emissions would be reduced by about 5,000 tonnes a year.

Boeckner of the Ontario Ministry of Transportation says the HOVER system might not be ideal for an urban centre such as Toronto and the overall Golden Horseshoe region because they differ from typical U.S. urban centres, which have sharper distinctions between city and suburb.

Also, large cities such as Toronto do not have distinctive morning and afternoon rush-hours. Toronto's rush-hours tend to be daylong affairs, Boeckner said, and the city has a large and efficient transit system of buses, streetcars, a subway and the GO rail system that shoots commuters in and out to the east, north and west.

The trend is to spend more money on improving the existing transit system in southern Ontario. Earlier this year, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced he intends to spend $11.5 billion over 12 years on a rapid transit action plan called MoveOntario2020.

"Tackling gridlock is one of the most important things we can do to build a strong and prosperous economy," McGuinty said when he launched the plan. "Building a modern transit system that moves people and goods quickly and efficiently will ensure we can attract and keep thousands of good high-paying jobs."

Vancouver has a system called TransLink that sponsors the Jack Bell Ride Share Program (JBR). This non-profit system, designed to reduce single-occupant vehicles on the roads, offers door-to-door options to people commuting in and out of the Lower Mainland. The three choices are:

• Online ride-matching — Participants register online on the JBR program at no cost, troll for rideshare partners and, using their own car or a Jack Bell vehicle, carry paying carpool passengers on a full-time, part-time or alternating basis.

• JBR vanpool — Seven or eight commuters share a ride and travel costs using a minivan supplied by JBR. Fuel, maintenance and insurance are covered by JBR; commuters pay a monthly fee to cover the costs.

• JBR carpool: This option operates the same as vanpools, but with a smaller JBR-supplied vehicle for three to five people.

Most participants live within Vancouver, Burnaby and Surrey, though some come as far away as Chilliwack and Squamish. You sign up by going to http://www.ride-share.com.

Joy of solitude

Fact is, many people simply enjoy driving alone on their daily commute, no matter how murderous the gridlock.

Pravin Varaiya, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley and one of the leading traffic analysts in the United States, told CBC News Online that the enjoyment of solitary driving may explain the difficulty of establishing carpooling in North American cities.

Though the evidence mostly is anecdotal, many drivers have adjusted to gridlock and enjoy the oasis of solitude they attain in a single-occupant, air-conditioned vehicle: sipping coffee, listening to the radio or a favourite CD, chatting on a cellphone, singing their heads off, puffing an illicit cigarette — even thinking.

The daily commute may be the only solitude they experience in their quotidian odyssey between home and office.

"It's your little space and you have some free time, if you can call it that," Varaiya said.

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