Birth to death of HOV lanes: New Jersey's Interstates 287 and 80 experience

New Jersey has experience with a half a dozen different HOV lanes. In the early 1990's the increase in traffic and the rising cost of highway construction led transportation experts around the country to seek and provide alternatives. It was increasingly impractical to continue to add lanes, which turn out to give only a temporary traffic relief. HOV lanes were implemented on two interstate facilities in New Jersey based upon recommendations from two studies that followed national practice. I-80 HOV was opened with a peak-period two person per vehicle HOV designation in March 1994. The HOV lanes on I-287 were open in their entirety in January 1998. This paper provides the background, implementation and reasons for the subsequent failure of both of these HOV facilities. New Jersey's experience should not be understood as a technical failure, but rather a failure of public relations, and an example of how much can change when regulatory, policy and administration context changes during project implementation.