Carpool lane’s sticker shocker A sticking point over the carpool lane
If you like a big hog of a vehicle like a Cadillac Escalade, how about a little bump from the state of California to transform this mondo cruiser into an environmental symbol?
In an effort to spur so-called fuel-efficient vehicles, California has ventured into a strange trade-off involving fuel efficiency, carpool lanes, black markets and inflated resale values.
You might call this the legal realm of bizarre consequences -- intended or not -- that began when the Legislature decided to allow certain vehicles to use carpool lanes even when the car or truck is carrying only the driver.
As Southern California commuters know, the Legislature granted certain hybrid owners yellow stickers -- known as clean-air stickers -- for approved vehicles, giving them unlimited carpool-lane privileges. Obviously, that’s a monumental convenience in a city like Los Angeles, where traffic often crawls at 25 mph or less.
The law initially granted this privilege to the Toyota Prius and two hybrids from Honda.
The Legislature, acting through the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Air Resources Board, wanted to encourage people to buy more environmentally friendly vehicles.
At first, the state issued 60,000 of these stickers, which were quickly claimed. It set up a waiting list for a new batch and then last year added an additional 25,000 of them, said DMV spokesman Armando Botello. The stickers ran out last year. Want to be put on a waiting list? There isn’t a waiting list any longer.
Guess what happened then: Stickers started turning up on the black market. DMV investigators found one case of these stickers being auctioned on EBay. What’s nice about these stickers is that they don’t expire until 2011, even when the car is sold.
As a result, a Prius with carpool-lane stickers on it now is worth $2,000 to $4,000 more than a Prius without the sticker, according to Jesse Toprak, a senior analyst with the car valuation service Edmunds.com.
“If the goal is to have more green cars with low emissions, it achieved the goal,” Toprak said. “It made it easier to deal with the atrocious L.A. traffic. [But] a lot of people I know with these stickers aren’t green environmentalists. They just want to get home quicker.”
Another funny thing happened: The state agreed to replace any lost or damaged stickers, and so far 11,000 of those replacement stickers have gone out the door.
Exactly how do you lose a sticker that won’t come off a bumper?
“They are hard to steal,” acknowledged Botello. “When you try to peel it off, part of it stays on the car.”
The program has left new Prius buyers fuming, but the state decided to venture further. The Legislature decided it would be nifty to do the same kind of program for alternative-fuel vehicles, including compressed natural gas and all-electric vehicles. They granted a second class of stickers, known as the white stickers, for these low-emission vehicles.
Last September, the Air Resources Board posted a list of vehicles that qualify for white stickers. There you will find the Escalade, F-150, Silverado, Dodge Ram and even the Crown Victoria, which include alternative fuel versions. That’s a lot of heavy iron. (Let me add that there are also Civics, RAVs and Phoenix Lios, an electric vehicle, on the list.)
The net result is that a Prius cannot get a sticker, while the buyer of a 6,000-pound truck can. “It is an environmentally friendly vehicle for the type of vehicle it is,” Air Resources Board spokeswoman Karen Caesar explained about the Escalade.
Only 7,815 white stickers have been handed out so far. That’s because many of the vehicles that can burn compressed natural gas or operate only on battery power are leased or fleet vehicles. They are out of reach to many consumers.
All of this brings me back to the carpool lane. In 2007, the California Highway Patrol issued 43,903 citations for carpool lane violations, many of them to motorists who were using them without a passenger in the car, said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.
As the freeways get filled up with too many cars, people will do anything to get around more quickly, including risking a fine of hundreds of dollars for illegally using the carpool lanes or paying up to a $4,000 premium for a car with stickers.
I’m not sure that allowing drivers of giant SUVs to buy their way into the carpool lane is the right policy, particularly when people driving more fuel-efficient vehicles are stuck in the slow lane.
To my mind, it would make more sense to give them free camping privileges at state parks, but that might not have the same appeal as driving in a carpool lane, even for an environmentalist.
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