Editor’s note: Mr. Roadshow wanted to share some of his favorite columns and stories from more than 30 years of informing, entertaining and getting things changed for Bay Area drivers. He’ll be back on the road with new material soon. In the meantime, please keep sending Mr. Roadshow your comments or questions toThere was no crying at Roadshow’s Prius Party on Sunday, where a couple of hundred people gathered in the Mercury News parking lot.
We’ve known that this day was coming. Six years ago, in an effort to fuel sales of hybrid cars and wean us from our gas-guzzling ways, the state issued carpool stickers to drivers of the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic and Honda Insight hybrids. But the privilege expires July 1. Bay Area air district officials set up a booth to help drivers line up carpools. Several super-clean drivers showed off their Nissan Leafs, Prius plug-ins, Tesla and cars that run on compressed natural gas. All those vehicles still qualify for solo driving in the diamond lane.
Now, with the yellow carpool stickers soon obsolete, the stickers most coveted by California drivers are white ones. As of last week, the state had issued 15,459 of the white stickers that give all-electric cars and those that run on alternative fuels a pass into the carpool lane — up from 10,000 earlier this year.