Lets face it. Crawling along at a snail's pace during your morning commute is far from a joy ride.
But help is on the way. Plans are in motion to construct the first extra set of carpool lanes along one of the Bay Area's nastiest commutes.
According to the San Jose Mercury News, the new roadway is being built along a three-mile stretch of Highway 101 between Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto to the Highway 85/101 interchange in Mountain View.
This would make it the widest set of roadways in the entire region with 12 lanes. And there are plans to expand more doulbe carpool lanes along Highway 101 down south from the San Mateo County border to Morgan Hill, spanning 34 miles. The project is under development by VTA to also include express lanes in this corridor, and is slated to be completed in 2016.
In a few years, work could also be done to expand eastbound lanes on Interstate 580 in the Tri-Valley area. And looking further down the road, Highway 85 could see more carpool lanes from the 101 interchanges in Mountain view to the south San Jose area of Almaden Valley.
One carpool lane is being added on Interstate 880 to San Jose, and on Interstate 80 east of the Bay Bridge.
The double carpool lanes comes in response to the sharp increase of commuters using single diamond lanes. Engineers are trying to keep up with a federal mandate which requires carpool lanes to move at 45-miles per hour or better.
Local
The Bay Area isn't the first place in the state which uses double carpool lanes.Commuters in Southern California have been traveling expanded roadways for years on several interstate freeways in Los Angeles.
