I was just in the L.A. area with my gf. We rented a car and drove all over the place and got to use the car-pool lanes.

And that got me thinking. How many people who use the carpool lanes are actually carpooling? That is, how many people in those lanes purposely combined a trip that would have otherwise been taken by two separate drivers.

After all, that is the purpose of the car-pool lanes: to incentivise single drivers to combine with other drivers in one car.

But I really have to wonder how many people in the carpool lanes are true carpoolers. I'd bet that the vast majority of people driving in the carpool lanes are like my gf and me: two or more people who would be traveling together anyway. So why exactly were we rewarded with the carpool lanes?

So my take is this: car-pool lanes are just failed attempts at social engineering and should be abolished (assuming that I'm correct in my assumption that few true carpoolers use those lanes).

Thoughts?