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Plans to punish HOV lane violators are still alive in the Legislature, and the potential penalties will get your attention.

When I first unveiled earlier in the session, I was only quoting the increase in the standard fees, not the additional penalties that would be tacked on for each additional HOV violation. When those additional penalties are added, the first HOV violation would cost you $245. The second would cost you $499, and a third would run $755. There would be no timeline for calculating offenses. They would follow you and accumulate.

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Travis Snell, with the Washington Department of Transportation, testified during a recent House Transportation Committee hearing.

“The current penalty of $136 for an HOV violation provides little deterrent to violators,” Snell said. “In some cases, 50 percent of HOV users do not meet the minimum occupancy requirements.”

Snell testified that most of the HOV systems in the state are not meeting performance standards.

“It certainly makes it questionable about the value of the HOV lanes when we have a lot of folks that are using it that shouldn’t be,” Representative Jake Fey, the bill’s sponsor, testified.

Representative Shelley Kloba questioned whether increasing the penalties is the proper solution, or should they focus on enforcement.

“This bill takes the approach of making it hurt,” Kloba said.聽 She wondered if added enforcement could be added to the bill to make it stronger.

State troopers in King County routinely pull over more than 11,000 HOV violators each year, some of them are multiple offenders. Troopers have told us that it is hard to find safe places to pull over HOV violators in the urban core, especially during peak hours, but they do take the violation seriously.