Insanity with HOV Stickers
As I was driving home from my haircut Tuesday afternoon, I was shocked to hear that National Public Radio's afternoon newsmagazine All Things Considered was doing my story for this week! You would think that with the shootings at Virginia Tech, the US attorney firing scandal drama unfolding this week as well as the bizarre extreme weather flooding the North East, NPR would have bigger fish to fry rather than an insignificant press release from Kelly Blue Book. Perhaps it was good comic relief for a week with some seriously bad news.
Let's step back a couple months and give the back story here. The California DMV was authorized by the California Air Resource Board (CARB) to hand out 85,000 stickers that allow qualified hybrid and zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) to drive solo in the high occupancy vehicle lanes/carpool lanes of the tangled and jammed freeways in California. No legislation has been passed to increase the number of permits originally authorized under the trial program.
Under the existing program, the Clean Air Stickers cannot be transferred to another vehicle and are tied to the original vehicle and VIN. Substitute stickers are allowed if the original vehicle is damaged and you replace the damaged vehicle with another qualifying vehicle. Qualifying vehicles on the resale market with the stickers can transfer the benefit of the stickers to the new owner. The vast majority of used hybrids with the stickers are either a Honda Civic Hybrid or a Toyota Prius.
KBB reported this Monday that a used hybrid with the CARB/HOV sticker is selling for $4,000 more than the same used hybrid without the sticker. I checked on Autotrader.com and it's true that a used hybrid with the sticker is selling for as much as new hybrids. Maybe that's why Toyota is giving heavy incentives on the Prius. Or maybe Toyota is just upping the green profile in a preemptive strike on those that might criticize the poor fuel economy of the new full-sized Tundra or the newly-redesigned Toyota Land Cruiser and its over-priced Lexus sister the LX-570.
So not only are Californians obsessed with buying hybrid vehicles, we are stupid enough or maybe desperate enough to pay a hefty premium to get the stickers (that used to be issued for a small fee) and be able to drive solo in the increasingly congested HOV lanes.
NPR contacted some expert who did an analysis of the payback time for this kind of premium. In terms of average cost benefits from driving a hybrid over a non-hybrid, you'd have to drive the car for 250,000 miles to get that kind of gas-savings payback.
However, NPR, being a bit smarter than your average commercial radio news outlet, found an expert who could rationalize the premium in "LA terms". Oh crap, what now? We already have a bad rap for being flaky in LA and for spending obscene amounts of money or cars and real estate. Apparently the profile of the "idiots" paying the $4k premium includes wealthy bankers, lawyers and yes, of course, entertainment industry-types.
They are paying the ransom because they have hideous commutes and the stickers give them the privilege of driving in the HOV lane and passing all the cars lined up on the metered onramps. That appeals to their ego. But the real reason is that the shortened commute buys an almost priceless commodity: Time. And time is money -- particularly when your time is billed by the hour or you make an obscene salary for having meetings and talking on the phone all day. In LA, that extra twenty to forty minutes a day is worth at least $100 -- $200. At those rates, the $4k is chump change. You can't put a price on family or personal time when your time is so limited and precious.
Mark Rechtin, LA correspondent from Automotive News, reports that he's seen counterfeit stickers on cars as non-qualified as a 1995 Honda Accord and a 2000 Toyota Corolla. The California DMV guy interviewed on ATC says the stickers can't be faked or peeled off one car and stuck on another. Maybe he isn't out in the HOV lane every day on a commute. He might be surprised what he sees. The California Highway Patrol hasn't weighed in on this issue. I think the CHP has bigger problems to deal with on our hideously over-crowded freeways.
But as I've talked about here before, there are some pretty angry people on the freeways these days with much of the hate directed at hybrid owners in the HOV lanes. [Issue 122 13 April 2006] Ten years ago, LA was famous for road rage shootings on our freeways. That road rage may manifest itself again with smug lawyers taking up valuable space in the HOV lanes. Shootings seem to be on the minds of many Americans this week; let's hope nothing happens on our freeways!
According to the US Census Bureau, an "extreme commute" is 90 minutes or more on a daily basis and at least 3.5 million Americans do that every day. It took me 25 minutes to drive 4 miles yesterday morning to a 20 minute appointment in West LA. It's a good thing I work at home. I don't know how well I'd cope driving from Costa Mesa to Downtown LA or Seal Beach to Santa Monica every day. I might be crazy enough to pay the extra $4,000 to save time on my commute and a few bucks on my fuel bill!
