ABSTRACT
The high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in Madrid are Europe’s first successful implementation of such lanes, after failure of the HOV lane in Amsterdam. In the USA several thousands of miles of HOV lanes are in use. The Madrid HOV lanes were introduced in 1995 in an attempt to reduce congestion problems by creating two HOV lanes that are accessible only to buses and cars with two or more persons travelling. The lanes are located as central and bidirectional lanes, allowing them to be used in the morning towards Madrid city centre and in the afternoon towards the outskirts and have a length of 12.3 km plus the last 3.8 km near the city centre for buses only. Supportive factors for the fast realisation of the HOV lanes were the increasing nuisance caused by traffic jams and the coming into power of a new political majority. The idea of HOV lanes was definitely not new in the world.
