Sometimes 2 Lanes Aren’t Better Than 1

Dear Traffic Talk:

My concern is on the 134 Ventura Freeway at the Cahuenga on-ramp going east: There are two lanes that merge into one. Sometimes we get backed up pretty far. I’m wondering, with the addition of the car-pool lanes, are we going to have a car-pool lane on this particular on-ramp? It would make sense.

Since it squashes from two to one and there is plenty of room for two lanes to go all the way on [to the freeway], if we aren’t going to have a car-pool lane, could we have two lanes that go onto the freeway instead of two that go into one?

Alan Wilson

Northridge

Dear Reader:

For all their value in encouraging more drivers to leave their vehicles at home, California’s High Occupancy Vehicle lanes aren’t used along freeway on-ramps already packed with cars. Not all vehicles carry enough passengers to use car-pool lanes, so they could actually make a crowded situation worse.

Don’t expect to see many two-lane on-ramps along state freeways, either. Although the Cahuenga Boulevard on-ramp can accommodate a second lane, that too would create more of a problem than it solves, said Russ Snyder, spokesman for the California Department of Transportation.

“If you had two cars side by side, trying to enter the freeway at the same time, it could be very dangerous,” Snyder said.

Imagine trying to merge into traffic to your left while a driver to your right is attempting to cross through your lane of traffic and do the same thing.

Dear Traffic Talk:

I would like to know the reason for empty yellow school buses to be traveling on freeways and busy streets during school hours. It’s most annoying for them to be on the freeway during busy traffic time.

I hope you can answer this for me, so I won’t be so frustrated at seeing them take up space.

Frances LeVine

Northridge

Dear Reader:

Everyone has to be somewhere.

The buses you see are probably returning to a storage yard or traveling to a campus for a midday field trip, according to officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District.

As you point out, school buses take up considerable space. Larger schools can have as many as 30 or 40 buses bringing in students, and there isn’t room for several buses to sit in campus parking lots. School neighbors aren’t likely to welcome them onto their residential streets day after day, either.

This leaves these automotive behemoths to trundle back to their storage yards--traversing freeways and city streets to get there--until needed later in the day.

Traffic Talk appears Fridays in The Times Valley Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic in the Valley. Please write to Traffic Talk, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth, Calif. 91311. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted. To record your comments, call (818) 772-3303. Send fax letters to (818) 772-3385.