No HOT Lanes for Orange Freeway, Transit Officials Rule

You won’t be able to buy your way out of gridlock on the Orange Freeway any time soon: County transit officials voted unanimously Monday to back away from a hybrid toll-carpool lane project for the busy freeway.

The so-called HOT lanes, which would allow non-carpool vehicles to use the carpool lanes for a fee, are a concept county transit planners have been flirting with for some time. A similar system is already in place on the privately operated 91 Express Lanes, which run along the median of the Riverside Freeway near the Orange and Riverside County line.

But bringing such lanes to the Orange Freeway would have cost between $267 million and $392 million, in part because of costly right-of-way acquisition, and may have worsened a bottleneck at the Orange Crush, according to a yearlong study completed in March. There also is the issue of obtaining permission for any HOT lane project, since building such toll lanes on a California freeway requires special legislation.

The political climate for approval may have proved sticky, with toll roads in the state under harsh scrutiny since the failed attempt to sell the private toll lanes on the Riverside Freeway late last year. Some critics of toll roads, including state Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, have vowed to block the expansion of toll facilities.

Transit officials say they will now try to unclog the road by adding auxiliary and truck climbing lanes along some stretches. Truck climbing lanes are additional lanes added only on hills so slow-moving trucks don’t obstruct other traffic.

“Instead of looking at HOT lanes, we will be concentrating on choke points on the 57--three in particular,” said Dave Simpson, spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority.

Transit planners have not ruled out HOT lanes in the future, Simpson said.

“It was never the intention to say that HOT lanes don’t work,” he said. “It is more to say that what we get out of it as of right now isn’t enough.”

The study needed before adding auxiliary lanes will cost about $415,000 and will likely take a year to complete, Simpson said.

Added lanes are proposed to ease bottlenecks on the northbound Orange Freeway between Orangethorpe Avenue and Imperial Highway and Katella Avenue and the Riverside Freeway. A truck climbing lane has been proposed northbound between Lambert Road and Tonner Canyon.

In other business, transit board members voted to approve additional funds for regional ride-share programs that had been requested by the Southern California Assn. of Governments. The approval of the additional funds had been halted in March after board members questioned SCAG’s accountability.

Monday’s vote gave the go-ahead for $72,000 above the $450,000 already budgeted for the next fiscal year. As a condition of the funding, Supervisor Todd Spitzer, a transit board member, asked that SCAG be required to give quarterly reports on their ride-share program.

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Heimlich Maneuver

In hopes of unclogging chokepoints along the Orange Freeway, transit officials want to add auxiliary and truck lanes along the chronically congested route.