The objective of this research is to investigate the operational effectiveness of the Dallas area HOV lanes. Issues such as person movement, carpool formation, travel time savings, violation rates, safety, and project cost effectiveness are addressed. By understanding the operational performance and issues of both buffer-separated (concurrent flow) HOV lanes and barrier-separated (movable barrier contraflow or fixed barrier reversible flow) HOV lanes, recommendations can be made on suggested HOV lane implementation guidelines for the Dallas area.

This report documents a study conducted to assess and test promising technologies for HOV lane enforcement. After a qualitative assessment of video, automatic vehicle identification, and infrared machine vision technologies, the study was suspended because no preferred infrared technology was available for testing. The study was resumed when a vendor demonstrated promising video technology. The highoccupancy vehicle enforcement and review (HOVER) system was then developed for an operational test on the East R.L. Thornton (I-30) contraflow HOV lane in Dallas, Texas. The results of the operational test indicated that the HOVER system, in its current state, could support a program that mails HOV information to suspected violators (similar to the HERO program). The study's limited budget prevented several improvements that could improve the capabilities of the HOVER system. With several enhancements to the system (e.g., improved license plate recognition and "whitelist" license plate database, etc.), the HOVER system could be used to perform enforcement screening. Significant enhancements to the system (e.g., high-quality video cameras and additional camera views, improved video signal transmission, improved license plate capture and recognition, etc.) could enable its use for HOV ticket-by-mail programs, although enabling legislation does not currently exist in Texas. The author recommends implementation of these enhancements and further testing to determine future system potential.

The objective of this research is to investigate the operational effectiveness of the Dallas area HOV lanes. Issues such as person movement, carpool formation, travel time savings, violation rates, safety, and project cost effectiveness are addressed. By understanding the operational performance and issues of both concurrent flow (buffer-separated) HOV lanes and contraflow (barrier-separated) HOV lanes, recommendations can be made on suggested HOV lane policies, including the type of permanent HOV lanes to be implemented in the Dallas area.