Seattle and surrounding cities are looking hard at adding toll lanes. We just raised our state gas tax 9 cents to raise about $9 billion for new roads and roadwork, but to complete the projects in the Seattle metro area, we need to come up with $3-4 billion on top of that, which would mean significant tax increases or tolls.

HOV in general is a decent idea, the problem is too often it is not designed to get the HOVs on and off the highway efficiently and you end up saving tens of minutes in the inter-stop transit, but you then spend the same tens of minutes as everyone else getting on and off the highways. Highway interchanges, especially, are terrible in this area here in the Seattle metro area, which makes me pine for the special HOV highway interconnects CA has.