HOV Lanes Closed Friday

Well I just got into work, took me over an hour. I was watching the HOV lanes from about 6:25 to 7:35 and the only vehicles in them where trucks putting down orange cones and 1 cop heading southbound along 395 HOV. So they had to close HOV for the buses that up until now still haven't used the road. Why couldn't they just close HOV from say 9 to 4? To be fair, traffic moved ok from about mile marker 162.5 on 95 all the way to the Pentagon, but it crawled (like usual) from 156 to 162.

I assume they will do it 2 ways, if only buses are running. From what I could see in the pentagon parking lot, there were maybe 10 buses.

Go look at the traffic cams, you can see the buses zooming down the HOV - I don't think they've gotten to the merge yet... But they do have two-way traffic on the HOV.

what "merge" are you talking about? Where the buses join the main lines? Quantico or Pentagon? Which traffic cam site are you using?

I drove up around 2 p.m. and southbound 395 was PACKED and there was no one at all moving on HOV (except for some guys who looked to be blocking some of the openings along the railings).

What amazes me about HOV is that DOT really doesn't seem to anticipate traffic issues during weekends. For example, it doesn't matter if there is a football game, a marathon or whatever with the bulk of drivers going into the city -- the HOV will be set for only southbound in the morning. I would think that DOT could better evaluate major events on the non-regular HOV usage times and adjust accordingly. In this instance, even if there was a need to transport a number of busses, given the hours of the event they probably would not have had to restrict anyone at all and still been able to fly down south with no problem.