Hybrid car incentives

WITH CONGRESS and the Bush administration refusing to raise fuel-efficiency standards for cars, states are on their own in encouraging the public to buy vehicles that use less gasoline and emit fewer pollutants, including greenhouse gases. Massachusetts should follow the lead of other states and permit solo drivers of hybrid cars to use the Interstate 93 lanes reserved for high-occupancy vehicles.

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Cars like the Toyota Prius, which the manufacturer says gets 48 miles per gallon, use both a conventional gasoline engine and an electric motor. Unlike all-electric cars, there is no need to recharge a battery overnight. Currently, there are an estimated 250,000 hybrids in use in the United States. If gasoline prices continue the climb of the past year, access to the HOV lanes and other incentives will hardly be necessary to spur purchase of hybrids.

But such special privileges can ensure that hybrids maintain their popularity even if gasoline prices fall. If hybrids become so popular that they begin to clog the now lightly used lanes, access can be denied to solo drivers. During his campaign for governor, Mitt Romney suggested charging higher auto-excise taxes for vehicles with low gas mileage. The head of his Office of Commonwealth Development, Douglas Foy, has suggested reserving special parking places at suburban rail stations for owners of hybrids.

All three of these proposals are worth pursuing as the Romney administration looks for further steps to reduce pollution, beyond what it already has achieved with the state's electric utilities. Because the state has relatively little heavy industry or coal-based electric generation, its greenhouse gas emissions are below the per-capita US average, according to the state's Climate Protection Plan released last year.

All forms of transportation are the source of more than 30 percent of the state's greenhouse gas emissions, making vehicles a prime target for measures to improve efficiency. The state's climate plan calls for both HOV access for clean vehicles and incentives for purchasing fuel-efficient vehicles.

Unfortunately, the hybrid use of HOV lanes requires congressional approval. Proposals to allow this privilege have been included in both the energy bill and the transportation reauthorization bill, neither of which has passed. Romney should press for a separate bill to permit hybrids in HOV lanes.

To facilitate granting hybrids access to HOV lanes or special commuter rail parking areas, the state would have to design and distribute a decal to signal the vehicles' status. This would be all to the good, because it would help demonstrate to other drivers the growing popularity of hybrids. Two years into the Romney administration, it is time for the state to show its colors in the effort to make cars more efficient and less polluting.