Less than three is the loneliest number

Can HOV lanes teach gridlocked city to carpool?

For the first time in his life, Dani Habbal is considering carpooling.

High-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes have tripled his commute time and driven him to Kijiji in search of ride buddies — even if that means skipping the snooze button. “I don’t want to have people be dependent on me showing up at 6:30 a.m. every time . . . but now it’s just going to force me to be a bit more consistent.”

Most drivers, such as Habbal, routinely travel the region’s roads in nearly empty cars. But can the lessons they are learning from the HOV lanes force them to change? And will it stick? “Carpooling is, in many ways, perfect,” said Jonathan Hall, an urban transportation professor at the University of Toronto.

It’s a perfect idea until you actually have to co-ordinate it, he says.

“If you work in a suburban office complex and you live in a different suburb, there may not be someone else doing the same trip as you.”

Or someone is going straight to soccer instead of going home.

Or the driver’s child gets sick, and he has to go home early.

Little things can add up to a list of reasons to hop in the car solo.

“I don’t think anybody really wants to sit in traffic endlessly,” said Ron Buliung, a transportation geography professor at U of T. However, “if you have an incredibly complex geography to your everyday life and a lot of demands at work and on the domestic sphere . . . it may seem as though the car is the only way you’re going to be able to pull this off.”

With HOV lanes cutting space on major highways until mid August, pulling it off is even harder.

“Occasionally we have these shocks to the system which cause people to think a little bit differently about their typical behaviour,” Buliung said, likening it to the OPEC oil crisis in the ’70s.

“That was actually a real stimulus for thinking about issues around energy security and energy consumption and using our transportation system somewhat differently.”

So ads such as Habbal’s have sprung up.

Car-sharing apps are getting a boost. Toronto’s BlancRide has seen a 300-per-cent increase in user registrations since Monday, according to spokesperson Justin Kozuch.

And Metrolinx’s Smart Commute tool, which also provides ride matchups, had 1,500 new registrations in June. Ten thousand users had signed up since last September.

“I do think it is Pan Am related, people looking for options and seeing what’s available to them there,” said Chris Burke, GO’s director of service planning.

Metrolinx hopes growth continues beyond the Games as it works to reduce congestion, he added.

In some cities, carpooling has become ingrained in the culture. People line Washington, D.C., streets in “slug lines” awaiting lone drivers to hop in HOVs together.

That kind of flexibility can be key, say researchers.

Backup rides, in case a driver misses work or leaves early, and financial incentives can help, too.

Car costs are third behind shelter and food on household budgets. The average cost was recently pegged at $437.48 per month.

The number of carpooling commuters is generally around the same proportion that take public transit, but most of the carpools are within households, says Buliung.

That’s something the new threeperson rule can upend, prompting some, including Mayor John Tory, to call for the lanes to allow two-person vehicles.

Planners, Pan Ammers and politicians can be assured that a 20-percent reduction in the number of cars on the road — through carpooling, working from home and taking transit — would return the system to pre-HOV-lanes congestion levels.

Those levels were already problematic. In 2006, Metrolinx estimated congestion cost the region’s commuters $3.3 billion annually and the economy another $2.7 billion.