Opening Day Termed Successful : Drivers Praise Life in the Express Lane

Sue Clark arrived for work at a wholesale food distributing firm in Irvine 30 minutes earlier than usual Monday and was overjoyed.

“The new car-pool lane was great,” she said. “Normally we’re only going up to 20 miles an hour and today it was 40 or 50 all the way.”

Clark’s reaction was echoed by other users of the express lane on the Costa Mesa Freeway, which opened Monday for vehicles with two or more occupants.

Donald Watson, regional Caltrans director, said about 600 drivers used the southbound express lane between 6 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., about 100 more than the 500 that would have qualified the lanes as a first-day success (northbound traffic was not measured Monday morning).

Gloria Jones, a Pacific Bell employee who car pools to Irvine from Riverside, said of her first day experience: “I loved it. I think this morning we saved 20 or 30 minutes. But traffic didn’t seem as heavy as it normally is. Maybe that’s because we were using the express lane. That may have made it better for everybody.”

But Jones and Clark did complain that it was difficult to know when to exit the express lane to reach an off-ramp.

‘Windows’ of Opportunity

Entering and exiting the new lanes is permitted only when the solid, double yellow lines give way to a broken white line. There are only three such “windows” of opportunity for lane changes in the 12-mile route from the Riverside Freeway to the San Diego Freeway.

Transportation officials said the current system for lane changes will be modified if necessary.

Glenn Hubner, a van pool driver who had 17 passengers Monday on the trip from Claremont to Irvine, said the express lane cut “seven to 10 minutes off” the commute, even though he drove out of his way to get to the freeway at a point farther north.

His passengers were “all wanting to make sure that we tried it this morning,” Hubner said. “They were all happy about it.”

CHP officials said they issued warnings Monday to drivers in the express lanes without passengers. The CHP will begin ticketing after Nov. 24.

Caltrans officials were not available to comment on how express lane commuters fared during the evening rush hour. But CHP Officer Aaron Willamson said: “Traffic moved exceptionally well in the (express) lane.”

Traffic averaged about 30 m.p.h. in the regular lanes and “was flowing pretty good. And the (express) lane was breezing by at 55,” said Willamson, who patrolled the 55 freeway from 2 p.m. to 10 p.m.

But Willamson said several drivers without passengers were in the express lanes.

“We also had a guy who had a flat tire and decided to change it right in the (express) lane,” he said, underscoring a problem Highway Patrol officers have encountered with the new lanes.

“There’s really absolutely no place for us to make a car stop. There’s no place to go but the center divider (about two feet wide) if we choose to pull someone over,” Willamson said. “It’s gonna be a lot of education that’s needed so people know how to use the lanes. If it’s possible, tell people to pull over to the right and not to change tires in that lane, and unlike the metered on-ramps, motorcycles are not permitted in the (express) lane unless they have a passenger.”

By and large, however, “it seems to be working,” Willamson said, adding: “With any experiment you’ve got some kinks to work out.”

Traffic in the three regular lanes in each direction also seemed to move faster than normal during the Monday morning rush hour. Caltrans officials credited the quicker pace, and initial public acceptance to the fact that they added a new lane and did not take a regular lane out of service.

Caltrans and county officials predicted that this key difference would mean success for the Costa Mesa Freeway express lane compared to the failure of the controversial diamond lanes along the Santa Monica and San Diego freeways in Los Angeles.

Government officials declared the new lane a success before the first day of the 90-day experiment was half over.

“It’s amazing what use, for an inauguration, was being made of the new lane,” Orange County Transportation Commission Chairman James Roosevelt said at a 10:30 a.m. ceremony at the Mall of Orange.

The ceremony, attended by about 100 officials, included a round-trip bus caravan down the express lanes, escorted by a fleet of California Highway Patrol cars and motorcycles.

“I’m very pleased with the project. . . . I think it’s going to work,” Watson told reporters.

Supervisor Ralph B. Clark, who also is chairman of the Orange County Transit District, said the decision to go ahead with the express lanes was partly a reaction to the June, 1984, defeat of Proposition A, a 1% sales tax that would have financed mass transit and highways.

Clark said the message from voters was to “make the best of what we have.”

Referring to the express lanes, Clark added: “We’re using existing resources to the maximum, and I think the public is going to like it.”

Sue Clark (no relation) was certainly pleased. The ride back to Riverside in the express lane shaved 15 or 20 minutes off her normal 4 p.m. commute home.

“We flew on the 55, “ Clark said Monday night. “It was really nice. Friday it took two hours to get home.” Monday it took about 35 minutes, she said. “We’re just waiting for them to do it on the 91 now!”