Police
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state to enforce the law, to protect the lives and possessions of citizens, to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their powers include the legitimized use of force; the term is most associated with the police forces of a sovereign state that are authorized to exercise the police power of that state within a defined legal or territorial area of responsibility. Police forces are defined as being separate from the military and other organizations involved in the defense of the state against foreign aggressors. Police forces are public sector services, funded through taxes. Law enforcement is only part of policing activity. Policing has included an array of activities in different situations, but the predominant ones are concerned with the preservation of order. In some societies, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, these developed within the context of maintaining the class system and the protection of private property. Police forces have become ubiquitous in modern societies.
Their role can be controversial, as some are involved to varying degrees in corruption, police brutality and the enforcement of authoritarian rule. A police force may be referred to as a police department, police service, gendarmerie, crime prevention, protective services, law enforcement agency, civil guard or civic guard. Members may be referred to as police officers, sheriffs, rangers, peace officers or civic/civil guards. Ireland differs from other English-speaking countries by using the Irish language terms Garda and Gardaí, for both the national police force and its members; the word police is the most universal and similar terms can be seen in many non-English speaking countries. Numerous slang terms exist for the police. Many slang terms for police officers are centuries old with lost etymology. One of the oldest, "cop", has lost its slang connotations and become a common colloquial term used both by the public and police officers to refer to their profession. First attested in English in the early 15th century in a range of senses encompassing' policy.
This is derived from πόλις, "city". Law enforcement in ancient China was carried out by "prefects" for thousands of years since it developed in both the Chu and Jin kingdoms of the Spring and Autumn period. In Jin, dozens of prefects were spread across the state, each having limited authority and employment period, they were appointed by local magistrates, who reported to higher authorities such as governors, who in turn were appointed by the emperor, they oversaw the civil administration of their "prefecture", or jurisdiction. Under each prefect were "subprefects" who helped collectively with law enforcement in the area; some prefects were responsible for handling investigations, much like modern police detectives. Prefects could be women; the concept of the "prefecture system" spread to other cultures such as Japan. In ancient Greece, publicly owned slaves were used by magistrates as police. In Athens, a group of 300 Scythian slaves was used to guard public meetings to keep order and for crowd control, assisted with dealing with criminals, handling prisoners, making arrests.
Other duties associated with modern policing, such as investigating crimes, were left to the citizens themselves. In the Roman empire, the army, rather than a dedicated police organization, provided security. Local watchmen were hired by cities to provide some extra security. Magistrates such as procurators fiscal and quaestors investigated crimes. There was no concept of public prosecution, so victims of crime or their families had to organize and manage the prosecution themselves. Under the reign of Augustus, when the capital had grown to one million inhabitants, 14 wards were created, their duties included capturing runaway slaves. The vigiles were supported by the Urban Cohorts who acted as a heavy-duty anti-riot force and the Praetorian Guard if necessary. In medieval Spain, Santa Hermandades, or "holy brotherhoods", peacekeeping associations of armed individuals, were a characteristic of municipal life in Castile; as medieval Spanish kings could not offer adequate protection, protective municipal leagues began to emerge in the twelfth century against banditry and other rural criminals, against the lawless nobility or to support one or another claimant to a crown.
These organizations became a long-standing fixture of Spain. The first recorded case of the formation of an hermandad occurred when the towns and the peasantry of the north united to police the pilgrim road to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, protect the pilgrims against robber knights. Throughout the Middle Ages such alliances were formed by combinations of towns to protect the roads connecting them, were extended to political purposes. Among the most powerful was the league of North Castilian and Basque ports, the Hermandad de las marismas: Toledo and Villarreal; as one of their first acts after end of the War of the Castilian Succession in 1479, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile established the centrally-organized and efficient Holy
Bus lanes in New York City
Since 1963, New York City has been using a system of bus lanes that are intended to give priority to buses, which contain more occupants than passenger and commercial vehicles. Most of these lanes are restricted to buses only at certain days and times, but some bus lanes are restricted 24/7; as of July 2018, there are 120 miles of bus lanes within New York City. The lanes are used to speed up MTA bus routes on the city's public transport system, which would be otherwise held up by traffic congestion. Bus lanes are a key component of the Select Bus Service bus rapid transit network, improving bus travel speeds and reliability by reducing delay caused by other traffic. Since implementation, the lanes have helped to increase bus reliability citywide. However, there have been controversies on the benefits of the bus lanes due to the resulting increased traffic and the methods used to enforce bus lanes during their operating hours. In 2010 the city began enforcing the rule by placing cameras that take photos and videos of violators, leading to increased reports of bus-lane violations.
A curbside bus lane runs along the curb. Vehicles are not allowed to park or stand this lane, but may enter this lane to make right turns unless otherwise specified. An offset bus lane is placed one lane away from the curb. In this setup, vehicles are able to park or stand at the curb, but are not allowed to double park or stop on the bus lane. Vehicles may enter this lane to make right turns unless otherwise specified. There are median bus lanes, which are placed in the center of the road; this setup is only used along East 161st Street in the Bronx, used by the Bx6 and Bx6 Select Bus Service routes. As early as 1959, the city wished to build exclusive bus lanes on Lafayette and DeKalb Avenues in Brooklyn; the lanes would be built on streets. They were intended to increase the speed of bus service on these avenues, since without the bus lanes, the routes were projected to lose riders. However, traffic commissioner T. T. Wiley disapproved of the proposal, since the city did not install exclusive bus lanes.
The first two bus-lane corridors implemented in New York City were installed on May 5, 1963. One set of bus lanes was placed on Victory Boulevard in Staten Island, at the approach to the Saint George Ferry Terminal; the other set was placed on Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn between Boerum Street and Flatbush Avenue. The same year, the city's first highway bus lane was installed on the Long Island Expressway in Long Island City, under the proposal of Traffic Commissioner Henry A. Barnes; the Brooklyn bus lane soon encountered frequent traffic slowdowns, leading officials to propose adding no-parking signs and more traffic agents to enforce the lane. Another bus lane was soon installed along Hillside Avenue in Queens, with the westbound bus lane extending to the subway station at 169th Street. In 1969, one of the most congested corridors, 42nd Street between Third Avenue and Eighth Avenue, received a rush-hour-only bus lane. Crosstown bus service on 49th and 50th Streets in Manhattan had one of the slowest speeds of those on any crosstown street in Manhattan: 3 miles per hour.
As a result, on June 12, 1979, to speed travel, lanes were implemented to be dedicated for use by crosstown buses and taxis. Cars without a destination on this pair of streets were prohibited on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. between Third Avenue and Seventh Avenue. A seven-minute reduction in travel time resulted from the change. On May 26, 1981, the New York City Department of Transportation implemented Commissioner Sam Schwartz's plan for bus lanes on Madison Avenue; these were the first exclusive concurrent dual bus lanes on a city street. Two lanes along Madison between 42nd Street and 59th Street were reserved for buses between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m on weekdays in order to reduce congestion and increase mass transit usage. Twenty-nine traffic enforcement agents monitored the operation; this plan was one of three major transportation initiatives undertaken by the Koch Administration. The plan was put into place after the city took a study of traffic going down Madison Avenue: 24,000 people were moved by bus, while only 11,000 moved by car between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m..
The maximum time to ride on a bus along the corridor was decreased from 36 minutes to 15 minutes. The Federal Urban Mass Transit Administration provided a grant of $788,000 for the project. While intended to only last for a year, the plan was so successful that the bus lanes were maintained. Local bus speeds increased from 2.9 miles per hour to 4.8 miles per a 65 % increase. Express bus speeds increased from 2.9 miles per hour to 5.8 miles per a 100 % increase. While it was expected to decrease speeds for private cars and taxis, the overall speed of traffic on the remainder of the avenue increased by 10%. Additional bus lanes were added in the 1980s. By 1981, Manhattan alone had 12 miles of priority bus lanes along First, Third and Eighth Avenues. Another federal grant of $575,000 allowed the city to hire 22 traffic agents to enforce bus lane rules. In 1982, the city started a pilot project in which it installed red thermoplastic strips along 10 bus lanes in Manhattan; the strips were installed to remind motorists of heavy bus-lane penalties.
The NYCDOT started painting bus lanes red in 2007-2008, with the introduction of Select Bus Service. The first bus lane, painted red was installed on 57th Street in 2007, but the red paint was removed two years later; the NYCDOT chose an epoxy-based red paint for visibility reasons, but after extensive
Traffic sign
Traffic signs or road signs are signs erected at the side of or above roads to give instructions or provide information to road users. The earliest signs were simple wooden or stone milestones. Signs with directional arms were introduced, for example, the fingerposts in the United Kingdom and their wooden counterparts in Saxony. With traffic volumes increasing since the 1930s, many countries have adopted pictorial signs or otherwise simplified and standardized their signs to overcome language barriers, enhance traffic safety; such pictorial signs use symbols in place of words and are based on international protocols. Such signs were first developed in Europe, have been adopted by most countries to varying degrees. Various international conventions have helped to achieve a degree of uniformity in Traffic Signing in various countries. Traffic signs can be grouped into several types. For example, Annexe 1 of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, which on 30 June 2004 had 52 signatory countries, defines eight categories of signs: A.
Danger warning signs B. Priority signs C. Prohibitory or restrictive signs D. Mandatory signs E. Special regulation signs F. Information, facilities, or service signs G. Direction, position, or indication signs H. Additional panelsIn the United States, Ireland and New Zealand signs are categorized as follows: Regulatory signs Warning signs Guide signs Street name signs Route marker signs Expressway signs Freeway signs Welcome signs Informational signs Recreation and cultural interest signs Emergency management signs Temporary traffic control signs School signs Railroad and light rail signs Bicycle signsIn the United States, the categories and graphic standards for traffic signs and pavement markings are defined in the Federal Highway Administration's Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices as the standard. A rather informal distinction among the directional signs is the one between advance directional signs, interchange directional signs, reassurance signs. Advance directional signs appear at a certain distance from the interchange, giving information for each direction.
A number of countries do not give information for the road ahead, only for the directions left and right. Advance directional signs enable drivers to take precautions for the exit, they do not appear on lesser roads, but are posted on expressways and motorways, as drivers would be missing exits without them. While each nation has its own system, the first approach sign for a motorway exit is placed at least 1,000 metres from the actual interchange. After that sign, one or two additional advance directional signs follow before the actual interchange itself; the earliest road signs were milestones, giving direction. In the Middle Ages, multidirectional signs at intersections became common, giving directions to cities and towns. In 1686, the first known Traffic Regulation Act in Europe is established by King Peter II of Portugal; this act foresees the placement of priority signs in the narrowest streets of Lisbon, stating which traffic should back up to give way. One of these signs still exists in the neighborhood of Alfama.
The first modern road signs erected on a wide scale were designed for riders of high or "ordinary" bicycles in the late 1870s and early 1880s. These machines were fast and their nature made them difficult to control, moreover their riders travelled considerable distances and preferred to tour on unfamiliar roads. For such riders, cycling organizations began to erect signs that warned of potential hazards ahead, rather than giving distance or directions to places, thereby contributing the sign type that defines "modern" traffic signs; the development of automobiles encouraged more complex signage systems using more than just text-based notices. One of the first modern-day road sign systems was devised by the Italian Touring Club in 1895. By 1900, a Congress of the International League of Touring Organizations in Paris was considering proposals for standardization of road signage. In 1903 the British government introduced four "national" signs based on shape, but the basic patterns of most traffic signs were set at the 1908 International Road Congress in Paris.
In 1909, nine European governments agreed on the use of four pictorial symbols, indicating "bump", "curve", "intersection", "grade-level railroad crossing". The intensive work on international road signs that took place between 1926 and 1949 led to the development of the European road sign system. Both Britain and the United States developed their own road signage systems, both of which were adopted or modified by many other nations in their respective spheres of influence; the UK adopted a version of the European road signs in 1964 and, over past decades, North American signage began using some symbols and graphics mixed in with English. Over the years, change was gradual. Pre-industrial signs were stone or wood, but with the development of Darby's method of smelting iron using coke, painted cast iron became favoured in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Cast iron continued to be used until the mid-20th century, but it was displaced by aluminium or other materials and processes, such as vitreous enamelled and/or pressed malleable iron, or steel.
Since 1945 most signs have been made from sheet aluminium with adhesive plastic coatings. Befo
Taipei
Taipei known as Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of Taiwan. Sitting at the northern tip of the island, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about 25 km southwest of the northern port city Keelung. Most of the city is located in an ancient lakebed; the basin is bounded by the narrow valleys of the Keelung and Xindian rivers, which join to form the Tamsui River along the city's western border. The city proper is home to an estimated population of 2,704,810, forming the core part of the Taipei–Keelung metropolitan area, which includes the nearby cities of New Taipei and Keelung with a population of 7,047,559, the 40th most-populous urban area in the world—roughly one-third of Taiwanese citizens live in the metro district; the name "Taipei" can refer either to the city proper. Taipei is the political, economic and cultural center of Taiwan and one of the major hubs in East Asia. Considered to be a global city and rated as an Alpha City by GaWC, Taipei is part of a major high-tech industrial area.
Railways, high-speed rail, highways and bus lines connect Taipei with all parts of the island. The city is served by two airports -- Taiwan Taoyuan. Taipei is home to various world-famous architectural or cultural landmarks, which include Taipei 101, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Dalongdong Baoan Temple, Hsing Tian Kong, Lungshan Temple of Manka, National Palace Museum, Presidential Office Building, Taipei Guest House and several night markets dispersed throughout the city. Natural features such as Maokong and hot springs are well known to international visitors. In English-language news reports the name Taipei serves as a synecdoche referring to Taiwan's national government. Due to the ambiguous political status of Taiwan internationally, the term Chinese Taipei is sometimes pressed into service as a synonym for the entire country, as when Taiwan's governmental representatives participate in international organizations or Taiwan's athletes participate in international sporting events; the spelling Taipei derives from the Wade–Giles romanization T'ai-pei.
The name could be romanized as Táiběi according to Hanyu Pinyin and Tongyong Pinyin. Prior to the significant influx of Han Chinese immigrants, the region of Taipei Basin was inhabited by the Ketagalan plains aborigines; the number of Han immigrants increased in the early 18th century under Qing Dynasty rule after the government began permitting development in the area. In 1875, the northern part of the island was incorporated into the new Taipeh Prefecture; the Qing dynasty of China made Taipeh-fu the temporary capital of the island in 1887 when it was declared a province. Taipeh was formally made the provincial capital in 1894. Japan acquired Taiwan in 1895 under the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the First Sino-Japanese War. Taiwan became a colony of Imperial Japan with Taihoku as its capital; the city was administered under Taihoku Prefecture. Taiwan's Japanese rulers embarked on an extensive program of advanced urban planning that featured extensive railroad links. A number of Taipei landmarks and cultural institutions date from this period.
Following the surrender of Japan to the United States of America of 1945, effective control of Taiwan was handed to the Republic of China. After losing mainland China to the Chinese Communist Party in the Chinese Civil War, the ruling Kuomintang relocated the ROC government to Taiwan and declared Taipei the provisional capital of the ROC in December 1949. Taiwan's Kuomintang rulers regarded the city as the capital of Taiwan Province and their control as mandated by General Order No. 1. In 1990 Taipei provided the backdrop for the Wild Lily student rallies that moved Taiwanese society from one-party rule to multi-party democracy by 1996; the city has since served as the seat of Taiwan's democratically elected national government. The region known as the Taipei Basin was home to Ketagalan tribes before the eighteenth century. Han Chinese from Southern Fujian Province of Qing dynasty China began to settle in the Taipei Basin in 1709. In the late 19th century, the Taipei area, where the major Han Chinese settlements in northern Taiwan and one of the designated overseas trade ports, were located, gained economic importance due to the booming overseas trade that of tea export.
In 1875, the northern part of Taiwan was separated from Taiwan Prefecture and incorporated into the new Taipeh Prefecture as a new administrative entity of the Qing dynasty. Having been established adjoining the flourishing townships of Bangka and Twatutia, the new prefectural capital was known as Chengnei, "the inner city", government buildings were erected there. From 1875 until the beginning of Japanese rule in 1895, Taipei was part of Tamsui County of Taipeh Prefecture and the prefectural capital. In 1885, work commenced to govern the island as a province, Taipeh was temporarily made the provincial capital; the city became the capital in 1894. All that remains from the historical period is the north gate; the west gate and city walls were demolished by the Japanese while the south gate, little south gate, east gate were extensively modified by the Kuomintang and have lost much of their original character. As settlement for losing the First Sino-Japanese War, China ceded the island of Taiwan to the Empire of Japan in 1895 as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki.
After the Japanese take-over, called Taihoku in Japanese
Chicago
Chicago the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450, it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area referred to as Chicagoland, the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States; the metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, the fourth largest in North America and the third largest metropolitan area in the world by land area. Located on the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed and grew in the mid-nineteenth century. After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, the city made a concerted effort to rebuild; the construction boom accelerated population growth throughout the following decades, by 1900 Chicago was the fifth largest city in the world.
Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and zoning standards, including new construction styles, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, the steel-framed skyscraper. Chicago is an international hub for finance, commerce, technology, telecommunications, transportation, it is the site of the creation of the first standardized futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, which today is the largest and most diverse derivatives market gobally, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures. O'Hare International Airport is the one of the busiest airports in the world, the region has the largest number of U. S. highways and greatest amount of railroad freight. In 2012, Chicago was listed as an alpha global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network, it ranked seventh in the entire world in the 2017 Global Cities Index; the Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products in the world, generating $680 billion in 2017. In addition, the city has one of the world's most diversified and balanced economies, not being dependent on any one industry, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.
Chicago's 58 million domestic and international visitors in 2018, made it the second most visited city in the nation, behind New York City's approximate 65 million visitors. The city ranked first place in the 2018 Time Out City Life Index, a global quality of life survey of 15,000 people in 32 cities. Landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Grant Park, the Museum of Science and Industry, Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicago's culture includes the visual arts, film, comedy and music jazz, soul, hip-hop and electronic dance music including house music. Of the area's many colleges and universities, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Chicago are classified as "highest research" doctoral universities. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams; the name "Chicago" is derived from a French rendering of the indigenous Miami-Illinois word shikaakwa for a wild relative of the onion, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum and known more as ramps.
The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as "Checagou" was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir. Henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the eponymous wild "garlic" grew abundantly in the area. According to his diary of late September 1687:...when we arrived at the said place called "Chicagou" which, according to what we were able to learn of it, has taken this name because of the quantity of garlic which grows in the forests in this region. The city has had several nicknames throughout its history such as the Windy City, Chi-Town, Second City, the City of the Big Shoulders, which refers to the city's numerous skyscrapers and high-rises. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples; the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable arrived in the 1780s, he is known as the "Founder of Chicago".
In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area, to be part of Chicago was turned over to the United States for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn and rebuilt; the Ottawa and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis; the Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. Receiver of Public Monies; the City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city. As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States.
Chicago's first railway and Chicago Union Railroad, the Illi
High-occupancy vehicle lane
A high-occupancy vehicle lane is a restricted traffic lane reserved for the exclusive use of vehicles with a driver and one or more passengers, including carpools and transit buses. These restrictions may apply at all times; the normal minimum occupancy level is 3 occupants. Many jurisdictions exempt other vehicles, including motorcycles, charter buses and law enforcement vehicles, low-emission and other green vehicles, and/or single-occupancy vehicles paying a toll. HOV lanes are created to increase average vehicle occupancy and persons traveling with the goal of reducing traffic congestion and air pollution, although their effectiveness is questionable. Regional and corporate-sponsored vanpools and rideshare communities give commuters a way to increase occupancy. For places without such services, online rideshare communities can serve a similar purpose. Slugging lines are common in some places, where solo drivers pick up a passenger to share the ride and allow them to use the HOV lane. High-occupancy toll lanes, which allow solo driver vehicles to use HOV lanes on payment of a fee which varies depending on demand, have been introduced in the United States and Canada.
The introduction of HOV lanes in the United States progressed during the 1970s and early 1980s. Major growth occurred from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s; the first freeway HOV lane in the United States was implemented in the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway in Northern Virginia, between Washington, DC, the Capital Beltway, was opened in 1969 as a bus-only lane; the busway was opened in December 1973 to carpools with four or more occupants, becoming the first instance in which buses and carpools shared a HOV lane over a considerable distance. In 2005, the two lanes of this HOV 3+ facility carried during the morning peak hour a total of 31,700 people in 8,600 vehicles, while the three or four general-purpose lanes carried 23,500 people in 21,300 vehicles. Average travel time in the HOV facility was 29 minutes, 64 minutes in the general traffic lanes; as of 2012, the I-95/I-395 HOV facility is 30 mi long and extends from Washington, D. C. to Dumfries and has two reversible lanes separated from the regular lanes by barriers, with access through elevated on- and off-ramps.
Three or more people in a vehicle are required to travel on the facility during rush hours on weekdays. The second freeway HOV facility was the contraflow bus lane on the Lincoln Tunnel Approach and Helix in Hudson County, New Jersey, opened in 1970. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the Lincoln Tunnel XBL is the country's HOV facility with the highest number of peak hour persons among HOV facilities with utilization data available, with 23,500 persons in the morning peak, 62,000 passengers during the four-hour morning peak; the first permanent HOV facility in California was the bypass lane at the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge toll plaza, opened to the public in April 1970. The El Monte Busway in Los Angeles was only available for buses when it opened in 1973. Three-person carpools were allowed to use the bus lane for three months in 1974 due to a strike by bus operators, permanently at a 3+ HOV from 1976, it is one of the most efficient HOV facilities in North America and is being converted into a high-occupancy toll lane operation to allow low-occupancy vehicles to bid for excess capacity on the lane in the Metro ExpressLanes project.
Beginning in the 1970s, the Urban Mass Transit Administration recognized the advantages of exclusive bus lanes and encouraged their funding. In the 1970s the FHWA began to allow state highway agencies to spend federal funds on HOV lanes; as a result of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, interest in ridesharing picked up, states began experimenting with HOV lanes. In order to reduce crude oil consumption, the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act mandated maximum speed limits of 55 mph on public highways and became the first instance when the U. S. federal government provided funding for ridesharing and states were allowed to spend their highway funds on rideshare demonstration projects. The 1978 Surface Transportation Assistance Act made funding for rideshare initiatives permanent. During the early 1970s, ridesharing was recommended for the first time as a tool to mitigate air quality problems; the 1970 Clean Air Act Amendments established the National Ambient Air Quality Standards and gave the Environmental Protection Agency substantial authority to regulate air quality attainment.
A final control plan for the Los Angeles Basin was issued in 1973, one of its main provisions was a two-phase conversion of 184 mi of freeway and arterial roadway lanes to bus/carpool lanes and the development of a regional computerized carpool matching system. However, it took until 1985 before any HOV project was constructed in Los Angeles County, by 1993 there were only 58 mi of HOV lanes countywide. A significant policy shift took place in October 1990, when a memorandum from the FHWA administrator stated that "FHWA supports the objective of HOV preferential facilities and encourages the proper application of HOV technology." Regional administrators were directed to promote related facilities. In the early 1990s, two laws reinforced the U. S. commitment to HOV lane construction. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 included HOV lanes as one of the transportation control measures that could be included in state implementation plans to attain federal air qualit
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