photo credit: California Department of Transportation
The widened Marin-Sonoma Narrows on Highway 101 with HOV lanes created a 52 mile stretch of 
freeway corridor between Sausalito and Windsor with carpool lanes.

Motorists on Highway 101 in the North Bay will soon see another change to carpool hours.

After public push back, the state's transportation agency is changing up the HOV lanes in Sonoma and Marin counties...once again.

High occupancy vehicle, HOV or carpool lanes, are restricted to cars with two or more drivers during commute times.

The new carpool hours on Highway 101 in Marin and Sonoma counties will be from 6 to 9 A.M., and in the afternoon, 3 to 6:30 P.M., Monday through Friday.

Last year Caltrans "aligned" the carpooling hours on a 52-mile stretch of Highway 101 from Windsor in Sonoma County to the Richardson Bay Bridge just north of Marin City.

The change increased the carpool restrictions for drivers in Sonoma County, and it wasn't popular said Caltrans District 4 spokesperson Jeff Weiss.

"We received a lot of feedback on the carpool hours, and most of it was 'please change the carpool hours back to something similar to what we had before,'" Weiss said.

Caltrans is keeping increased on-ramp metering on the highway corridor, but Weiss said they're shortening the carpool hours.

"Our goal was forward thinking to get people to think about taking the bus and carpool, but it didn't work out that way," Weiss said. "I think eventually we'll come to that point, but it's not now."

The new reduced carpool hours on Highway 101 in Marin and Sonoma counties shaves off two hours of HOV restrictions in the morning, and half an hour in the afternoon. The carpool hours currently run from 5 A.M. to 10 A.M. and 3 P.M. to 7 P.M.

"We're hoping that that will come to some sort of middle ground where the car pool lanes will be enticing for other people to use but the mixed flow lanes won't be as congested as they were with the new hours that we introduced back in September," Weiss said.

Weiss said carpool lanes have long been part of the planning process through the Marin-Sonoma Narrows, and the North Bay corridor as a whole.

"We can't expand outwards anymore," Weiss said. "We can't add any more lanes without buying businesses and houses and things like that. It would be an an enormous task to widen again. So, we want to encourage car pooling, we want to encourage bus riding."

Weiss said the new, shorter carpool hours will go into effect once all of the nearly 200 signs have been changed.

That's expected to be by late February.