Carpool, HOV, Transit lanes

Carpool lanes, High-occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, and Transit lanes are road lanes reserved for cars carrying more than the driver. The number of required passengers in the vehicle can vary depending on the specific road.

Although currently Waze does not support the requirements of routing over these types of lanes, there are plans to add support for them in the future.

As an interim measure, these lanes should be added to the map as separate roads, with the road type as Parking Lot Roads. This means that if you are not currently in one of these lanes the routing will avoid it, but if you choose to get into the lane, the routing will work correctly. This should only be applied to dedicated lanes that have exit and entry points.

Supporting these lanes is a priority for Waze, and they are aware of the problems caused by such lanes.

A complete solution needs to consider the following factors:

• The driver would need to tell the Waze client app how many passengers are present in the car for that trip. Waze would only offer routes over carpool lanes when there are sufficient passengers to be eligible
• In some places, Electric or Plug-in Hybrid vehicles may also use HOV lanes, so this local situation must be known and the driver should be asked if the vehicle is allowed in HOV lanes for reasons other than number of passengers.
• A new road type of "carpool lane" would be added with an entry for how many passengers and/or vehicle type (zero/low-emmission, mororcycle, etc) are required to use it
• The ability to change the direction of the car pool lane automatically based on time of day and day of week. This is also necessary for other roads
• The ability to set the minimum passenger count to zero (meaning the road is open to all drivers) based on time of day and day of week
• As car pool lanes are often adjacent to normal roads, GPS tracking is not sufficient to differentiate the two. For accurate road speeds Waze needs to assume you are using the car pool lane when you have passengers (and/or based on your speed)
• HOV lanes are being merged with Toll lanes (HOT lanes) and the user needs to be able to select if they want to allow toll roads. The map needs the ability to track multiple lane restrictions (HOV and/or Toll) for the same road rather than defining the road as either an HOV or a Toll lane.