Did they give any justification for the change? It makes absolutely no sense to me why you'd put an income cap on that - don't you wan to encourage EVERYONE to burn less fossil fuels, REGARDLESS of income?
What the GP posted is a bit misleading, you either get the rebate or the carpool lane stickers if you're over the cap but not both. It does suck but I think it's for the best. The hov lane in norcal is becoming relatively crowded lately since electric cars were a rarity before but not so much now.
You got your stories wrong, the new blood is ruining Portland and Seattle, where they hate outsiders (as long as they carefully avoid having a racial component to this complaint).
I was not entirely correct but part of the problems is that the car pool lanes are overloaded here and the federal laws have some minimum average speed requirements for those lanes which are not being maintained. So they are kicking out the older clean-air cars. Also they are trying to find ways to give lower income individuals access to clean air vehicles.
Why should everyone else pay for the rich to get a tax break and free usage of HOV lanes? They're the ones who can most afford to pay for those things, and the ones most likely to want to buy a vehicle for bragging rights.
