Carpool Lane Foes Get New Ammunition

In New Jersey, diamonds aren’t forever.

On Monday, the state plans to open up diamond lanes, previously restricted to car-poolers, to all drivers, moving into the fast lane a debate over whether California should proceed with its multibillion-dollar plan to add hundreds of miles of carpool lanes to freeways.

In California, the diamond lane’s glitter definitely is in the eye of the beholder.

Diamond lanes are strongly supported by the California Department of Transportation. Convinced that the lanes have prevented even worse congestion, Caltrans plans a substantial increase in the number of freeway carpool lanes.

But California foes of diamond lanes are taking heart from the New Jersey action.

Orange County, which has more diamond lanes per mile of freeway than any county in the state, has produced strong opposition from a county supervisor and a vocal citizens transportation group.

As the county prepares to complete its network of diamond lanes by adding some to the Garden Grove Freeway in a $212-million project, some local transportation leaders have expressed second thoughts about the project and the entire concept of high-occupancy vehicle, or HOV, lanes.

“There’s a big push in Orange County to finish the HOV system and then study whether or not they’re effective,” Supervisor Todd Spitzer said. “We’re spending all this money and we just don’t know if HOV is working. No one knows. But there’s this momentum to keep going anyway.”

Critics point out that despite its wealth of carpool lanes, Orange County has the region’s lowest number of car-poolers per capita.

San Fernando Valley Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Northridge) plans to reintroduce a bill to study whether the lanes work and to declare a “diamond lane holiday.”

“The moment any of these lanes is opened to all traffic, the difference is going to be so dramatic that their days will be numbered in California,” said McClintock, whose bill to study the lanes sped through the Assembly but stalled in the Senate this year.

New Jersey is the first state to petition the federal government to forgive repayment of $240 million provided for construction of its carpool lanes.

A Federal Highway Administration spokeswoman said the agency is considering the request, “mindful of the public policy implications that [it] has for [diamond lane-style] projects around the country.”

Critics complain that space goes wasted in adjoining carpool lanes. And they wonder why, if the carpool lanes are so good, just 14.5% of Southern Californians share rides--a percentage that has remained virtually unchanged for years despite an assortment of incentives and messages on freeway signs such as “Take a bus, Gus; share a ride, Clyde.”

Caltrans officials say that carpool lanes remain one of the best strategies for keeping traffic flowing in the Los Angeles region, which recently was ranked No. 1 in the nation for traffic congestion--for the 15th year in a row.

In the 25 years since the first diamond lane opened in California on the San Bernardino Freeway, the state has become home to the nation’s most extensive existing and proposed network of carpool lanes.

Over those years, the lanes have acquired their own commuting lore: a pregnant woman claiming an unborn child as a passenger, the driver of a hearse pointing to the body as a passenger and motorists putting dummies in passenger seats or hats on dogs--all to gain access to carpool lanes. For the record: Only living--and born--human passengers count, the Highway Patrol says. There also are stories about how car-pooling led to romances and even the reunion of two long-lost sisters.

Caltrans plans to double the number of carpool lanes on freeways--from 305 miles to 680 miles--in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties by 2015. The lanes also may form the backbone for a network of busways under consideration for Los Angeles after voters approved ending local funding for new subway construction.

One State Calls It Quits

New Jersey is abolishing the diamond lanes on I-287 after 11 months of operation and on I-80 after four years because, officials say, they have failed to stimulate car-pooling and, in fact, have added to congestion and air pollution.

State officials say that defiant solo motorists weaving in and out of the clogged regular lanes and free-flowing carpool lanes increased the probability of accidents and ignited outbursts of road rage. State officials said the lanes also were poorly used. One carpool lane carried as few as 32 vehicles per hour; at times there were as many law-breaking solo commuters in the lane as car-poolers. The other carpool lane did better, carrying 700 to 1,200 vehicles per hour--better than some of the carpool lanes in the Los Angeles region.

“We have taken a long, hard look at New Jersey’s HOV lanes and concluded that they simply are not producing the results that we all had hoped for,” Gov. Christine Todd Whitman wrote in a letter to federal officials. “Despite an aggressive public relations and marketing campaign, New Jersey was unable to change the driving patterns of motorists using the roads.”

New Jersey also faced a commuter rebellion reminiscent of the 1976 public revolt over the Santa Monica Freeway’s diamond lanes.

The Santa Monica project, abandoned after five months, was cursed by motorists who were forced out of the fast lane. Since then, Caltrans has never again taken away lanes but rather adds lanes dedicated to carpools.

Asked about New Jersey’s decision, Dawn Helou, a Caltrans senior engineer who oversees HOV operations in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, said, “They’re going to regret it.”

Caltrans holds firm to the view that carpool lanes are necessary for dealing with projections that a population equivalent to two cities the size of Chicago will move into Southern California by 2020.

Caltrans also contends that high-occupancy lanes have encouraged car-pooling, noting that Southern California’s ride-share rate has held steady, even as the population has increased and as car-pooling has declined nationally.

And, they contend, the lanes have reduced traffic congestion in the regular lanes.

“People ask me all the time that if HOVs were supposed to relieve congestion, why am I stuck in congestion?” Helou said. “People don’t realize that their peak period of congestion . . . has been reduced” where carpool lanes have been built, she said.

Caltrans officials also point to use of the carpool lanes. The Foothill Freeway carries up to 1,800 vehicles per hour in the carpool lane during the peak period--so many that car-poolers often slow to about 45 mph during rush hour. Each of the two elevated carpool lanes on the Harbor Freeway, opened last year, carry up to 1,400 vehicles per hour during peak periods. (Capacity of a carpool lane is about 1,800 vehicles per hour before traffic begins slowing to less than 45 mph, Helou said.)

In contrast, the Ronald Reagan Freeway carpool lane carries up to 500 vehicles an hour during the peak period, but Caltrans officials say the number has been increasing.

Caltrans officials contend that if carpool lanes are opened to everyone, they would rapidly fill up and traffic would be just as bad.

Helou cited her own commute on the Ventura Freeway through the San Fernando Valley where, she contends, traffic is just as bad as it was before a regular lane was added because of public opposition to a carpool lane. The lanes rapidly filled up as drivers flocked back to the freeway from parallel city streets such as Ventura Boulevard, Helou said, adding that the lanes also promoted growth in Camarillo and Thousand Oaks.

While New Jersey is moving to open up its carpool lanes to all drivers, some transit experts recommend opening up carpool lanes to toll-paying solo commuters. These are called high-occupancy toll, or HOT, lanes.

“It’s a bit pointless to ask whether we should have gone in for HOV,” said Peter Samuel, editor of Toll Roads newsletter. “Well, we have gone in for HOV. We’ve sunk several billion dollars into HOV facilities. The question now is how we make best use out of what we’ve got.”

Joy Dahlgren, a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, added: “The advantage of HOT lanes is that you always have an opportunity to get where you want in a decent time, if you’re willing to pay.”

But converting HOV lanes to high-occupancy toll lanes is politically hot. Critics call the toll lanes “Lexus Lanes,” saying they create a separate and unequal transit system for the rich and the poor.

In Houston, the carpool lanes on the Katy Freeway were restricted years ago to cars with three or more occupants because the lanes were becoming too congested with two-person carpools. But the lanes were opened up this year to two-person carpools willing to pay $2 a trip. Solo commuters remain excluded from the lanes.

Orange County, with its miles of diamond lanes, should be the crown jewel of California car-pooling. Instead, it suffers from disappointing ridership and, for the past decade, has been home to one of the most vocal HOV opposition groups in the nation.

Spitzer, the county supervisor, led a failed effort in August to commission an in-depth study of HOV lane effectiveness before moving forward with the project.

Grappling With the Future

Carpool lane advocates say that the momentum is logical and needed--the true test of the system, they say, will come only when the lanes are in place everywhere and commuters can be enticed by long, uninterrupted stretches of carpool lanes that will shave considerable time from their commutes.

“You can’t judge it until it’s complete,” said Sarah L. Catz, director of the Orange County Transportation Authority. “We’re not there yet. When the system is in place, then we’ll be able to really see how effective they are.”

As commuting patterns become more dispersed--away from the traditional suburbs-to-downtown commute--carpool lanes can serve those types of travel markets better than a light rail or fixed bus system, said Katherine Turnbull, assistant director at the Texas Transportation Institute.

“In many areas, and Southern California is probably one of the better examples, you’re seeing fairly well-utilized HOV lanes on circumferential freeways or serving travel markets that aren’t just oriented toward the downtown area,” she said.

But those same patterns also present a problem when it comes to actually putting two or more commuters in a single car. The sprawl of Southern California sends its workers shuttling off in every direction. On any block in Long Beach or Mission Viejo or Woodland Hills, how many neighbors are headed to the same freeway exit at the end of their commute?

“I’d love to carpool, but it’s just not going to happen,” said Kevin Lindsay, a stockbroker who leaves his Garden Grove home before dawn to make the trek to his Century City offices. “I think it’s something everyone should try to do, but it doesn’t work for me.”

It also doesn’t work for Tricia Price, Ventura County manager for California RideShare, who has worked for more than two decades with the agency that extols the benefits of car-pooling. “I do not carpool, I’ll be honest,” Price said. “I have outside appointments and it doesn’t work for me. I don’t think it’s realistic in our business to say that the whole world is our market.”

Others are joining McClintock in the drive to reexamine the carpool lane construction program, but for different reasons.

“HOV lanes don’t work,” said Gloria Ohland, Southern California project manager for the Surface Transportation Policy Project, which advocates increased spending on mass transit, bikeway projects and making it easier for people to walk. “Does it make sense to invest another $2 billion on roads in the region that has the worst air quality in the country? . . . The more money we spend on building roads, the more we will encourage people to drive.”

Jack Mallinckrodt, a 72-year-old retired engineer, has railed against carpool lanes for 15 years as a founding member of Drivers for Highway Safety, a citizens group that has met every other Monday near Mallinckrodt’s North Tustin home. Needless to say, the dozen or so members who attend drive to the meetings alone.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Mallinckrodt said with a chuckle. “But we’re not against car-pooling. Carpools are great. But they don’t need a special lane. Carpool lanes are dangerous and wasted [freeway] capacity.”

Mallinckrodt and his group’s members have compiled a sheaf of studies through the years arguing that carpool lanes increase gridlock, car crashes and even pollution (by causing more stop-and-go traffic, which creates more exhaust).

Although the group’s members have been dismissed as tiresome gadflies by Orange County officials, its work was cited by some of the New Jersey advocates who led the crusade against that state’s diamond lanes.

“Nationally, I think people are hearing us,” Mallinckrodt said. “We had a minor effect on New Jersey’s situation and there’s a satisfaction in that. It makes nearer the day when it’s going to happen around here. I’ve always been absolutely convinced that the situation will be righted. And the momentum is building now.”