Metro begins HOV crackdown today

Because we're decent, law-abiding people — and also because we're not really all that ballsy when faced with the possibility of getting a ticket — Houstonist is proud to say that we've never broken the rules and gotten in an HOV lane alone (or even with our good friend Della). But we have wondered how many people do break the rules, and now we have an idea: According to Metro Police Chief Tom Lambert, 10,400 tickets were issued for HOV violations last year. That's a 55 percent increase over 2005, when cops wrote 6,700 HOV-related tickets.

According to KHOU, 118,000 people use Houston's HOV lanes every day. That works out to 590,000 people every work week, or (we're using very general numbers here) around 30 million every year. In that context, 10,400 tickets is almost nothing — you have to assume there are a lot of drivers who get away with misusing the HOV lanes, right? Which is why Metro police are going to get a lot tougher on violations beginning today: Drivers who aren't supposed to be in the HOV lane will get a ticket and a $200 fine if they're found there. "I'd love to say there are no citations because everybody's abiding by the rules," Lambert told Channel 11. "But the fact of the matter is, we don't always have that, and so when we don't have that, we're gonna do those things that we think, in using our resources, we get the best balance between mobility of the HOV lanes and enforcement for folks who are violating them."

Another element of Metro's plan to get everyone in line: a "wall of shame" that will depict some of the ways people have tried to get around HOV restrictions. We can't wait.