California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

Vehicle occupancy verification is a principal impediment to more efficient HOV/HOT lane enforcement. However, no automated solution has yet been developed for permanent field implementation. Given widespread plans for development of HOV and HOT lanes in a number of metropolitan areas, improved vehicle occupancy verification techniques urgently need to be explored as well as the legal and institutional barriers to their implementation.

A research project to evaluate the technologies for vehicle occupancy verification was conducted by California PATH of University of California at Berkeley. The main role of the research team, under the sponsorship of Caltrans, was to act as independent evaluators in the process of identifying, selecting and testing concepts and methods for automated vehicle occupancy verification (AVOV) that can be adopted for future field implementation. Two subject areas are covered within this report: one on the evaluation of automated enforcement via the use of roadside infrared camera and the other on surveys of self-declaration systems and implementations.