The in basket: Debra Buchholz and Dave Dahlke, both of Port Orchard, consider the new HOV lane coming out of Bremerton on Highway 304 a waste of money.
“We now have an HOV lane, wow, for what, a whole mile, just to have more idiots try to hurry and merge at
the last minute,” wrote Debra.
“Who’s idea was this?” she asked. “I truly would love to know so I can
charge them when someone in my family gets hit by some impatient driver who says, ‘Yeah, I will use the HOV to pass all of the patient people trying to get
home from the shipyard during rush hour.’
“I think the state, county and city of Bremerton
all should re-think this idiotic HOV lane,” she wrote, signing off as “a frustrated citizen.”
Dave says, “WSDOT is going to die trying to get solo drivers out of their cars by establishing non-helping-congestion-free lanes and all they do is cost extra money and do nothing to free up congestion.
“By the way,” he added, “when one does a spell check, WSDOT is cross-referenced with Wisdom. How far out of sync is that?”
The out basket: This is a city of Bremerton project on a state highway. Lynn Price of the city engineer’s office says the city has taken the lead in completing the 304 portion of a project to improve the highway between Gorst and Bremerton.
The city wouldn’t have gotten the money to do the last leg of its project without the HOV lane, he said.
“While the full benefits will not be gained until HOV lanes are included in future SR3 improvements,” Lynn said, ” the current southbound HOV lane on SR304 will have a benefit. (It) will begin at Farragut Street and end at the beginning of the ramp to the SR3/304 interchange. This will allow buses, worker/driver buses, van pools and car pools to bypass the typical afternoon backups on southbound SR304.
“Providing the HOV lane supports our local governments’ Commute Trip Reduction plans required by the Washington State Legislature and the Transportation Demand Management strategies of Kitsap Transit, WSDOT and the Navy.
A sign bridge went up the day before the HOV lane went into effect July 15, guiding the merge. If anyone remains confused, here’s how it works:
Any vehicle with two or more people in it can use the inside lane. Cars in the center lane coming out of Bremerton, presumably mostly single occupant vehicles, must merge into the inside lane after the HOV restriction ends. Cars in the outside lane not planning on going north toward Silverdale must merge first into the center lane and then into the inside lane. Any vehicle changing lanes must signal and yield the right of way.
“I and several members of our staff drive this route regularly,” Lynn concluded. “We find that the motorists are very courteous and rarely have we seen anything but orderly merging into the through lanes, even during the peak afternoon rush hour. There is no reason to believe this positive behavior would not continue. The overall improvements along this section of SR304 will make this a safer, less congested trip for the traveling public.”
“The out basket: This is a city of Bremerton project on a state highway. Lynn Price of the city engineer’s office says the city has taken the lead in completing the 304 portion of a project to improve the highway between Gorst and Bremerton.”
On the other end of SR 304, there is a project that the city left to the state DOT rather than “take the lead” after running into local resistance. I wonder how “the lead” is ordinarily decided.
There is absolutely no reason to establish a one mile HOV lane because there are future plans to have the HOV lane extended. This is hogwash. This could have waited the years before the HOV lane is extended, that is, if it ever is.