> There's a few trucks hauling freight

There's a lot of trucks hauling freight. The US has the largest train network in the world, it notoriously handles primarily freight, and still, more than 70% of freight in the US goes by truck.

If these roads are the average urban interstate highways, then about 10%ish of the traffic is heavy truck traffic.

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/statistics/2020/v...

I meant there's few trucks during rush hour. Overnight it's a different story. Last month I was going down south I-35 around midnight and got stuck in construction traffic in Waco and it was about 80% trucks.

Ah, I see. That's really just another reason why a 500k vehicles/day problem shouldn't be approximated as a problem of moving 500k people only during rush hour.

1 vehicle = 1 person is especially noticeable when you're in the HOV lane zooming past traffic, a sea of thousands of vehicles that can't take the HOV lane.

In fact there are so few people in the HOV lane that I always feel like I'm doing something wrong when I take it, like I misunderstood the rules. It can't be this easy.

Nah, I really am the only person on the highway with more than one person in the car.