55 Freeway’s New Commuter Lanes Called Hazardous

Alarmed at the potential for collisions on the new Costa Mesa Freeway commuter lanes, a group of regular freeway travelers has begun a campaign to persuade county officials to open the lanes to regular traffic.

Frustrated motorists crawling in 20-m.p.h. traffic directly adjacent to commuters whizzing by at up to 60 add up to “a very dangerous situation” for all motorists using the freeway, said Joe C. Catron of Yorba Linda, organizer of the committee that includes a longtime accident investigator and a police driving instructor.

Reasons for Unhappiness

The 37-member committee also includes drivers unhappy with the commuter lanes because they are too narrow, make it harder to gauge home-to-work time and take up freeway space that ought to be available to all motorists, not just car-poolers, Catron said.

The commuter lanes--one in each direction on a 12-mile stretch between the Riverside and San Diego freeways--were opened in mid-November on a 90-day trial basis to determine their effectiveness.

The new lanes, striped into the median of the freeway in part by narrowing the six adjacent regular travel lanes, are restricted to buses and cars with two or more occupants.

Mayor James H. Beam of Orange, a member of the Orange County Transportation Commission and chairman of the advisory committee that is making recommendations on whether to continue the commuter lanes beyond February, said of the committee’s concerns: “All of the issues that have been raised are valid ones and the same ones that we’ll be studying. . . . The hazard is there; there’s no question about it.”

Disagreement on Hazards

Beam said statistics, however, have shown that accidents have decreased, rather than increased, along the 55 Freeway since the commuter lanes were put in place. “So far the numbers do not prove that the hazard is there, or at least, it’s not creating accidents, he said.”

Early figures also show that the commuter lanes have substantially reduced travel time for car-poolers, trimming what used to be a 35-minute commute to just 11 minutes. Traffic in the adjacent normal-flow lanes has eased up as well, moving along the freeway in about 18 minutes, according to the California Department of Transportation.

But members of the newly formed committee, scheduled to meet at 6 p.m. Jan. 16 at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, say they will try to convince the county Transportation Commission to suspend the commuter lane program after its 90-day trial run is up at the end of February.

“My big problem with that thing is it’s just too darned dangerous,” said Jerry O’Brien, senior vice president of the Academy for Defensive Driving, which trains law enforcement officers in advanced driving techniques and conducts educational programs for drunk drivers in Orange County.

“Perhaps because I’m more aware of some of the driving situations that we get into that are dangerous than the average driver would be, I just really got concerned,” O’Brien said. “During rush hours, the existing three lanes are just stuffed with people, and the lane along the inside, those guys are doing 50, 60 m.p.h.”

Accidents Predicted

If a slow-moving driver were to unexpectedly pull into the car-pool lane to avoid an accident or to take advantage of the faster-moving traffic, the result would be “catastrophic,” O’Brien predicted. “We’re going to have a severe accident and it’s not going to be just a little rear-ender, it’s going to be four or five people seriously injured or killed.”

“The tension level has gone up on the drivers, believe me,” O’Brien added. “I’ve been approached by my friends, and they all agree with me. They’re frightened of that freeway.”

Warren E. Clark is a 15-year California Highway Patrol veteran who currently works as a free-lance accident investigator for the Orange County district attorney and public defender offices. He also teaches collision reconstruction at Golden West College and accident forensics at California State University, Long Beach.

“One of the things that comes out first and foremost in all studies that have ever been done is that you don’t want to do anything to a highway that disrupts the patterns of behavior. People develop habits in driving over the years, and anything that breaks a pattern of long standing is tantamount to collision time,” said Clark, an Anaheim resident.

Illegal Use of Lanes

Clark said he is now working on a case involving an accident that occurred on the Costa Mesa Freeway near Chapman Avenue shortly before the commuter lanes opened. A driver illegally using the new commuter lane clipped another motorist while changing lanes and fled. The other motorist, a young man, is still in a coma, Clark said.

With only a narrow painted barrier between the commuter lanes and regular traffic, motorists will be inclined to cross into high-speed traffic unexpectedly, Clark said. “People just don’t want to sit in traffic at 20 m.p.h. when they can do 55. And they’re going to take that gamble.”

When that happens, he said, the motorist coming up from behind in the commuter lane at 60 m.p.h. is bearing down at 88 feet per second. Assuming the usual minimum 1.5-second reaction time, it will take that motorist 132 feet to even hit the brakes, and a total of 303 feet to stop--somewhere on top of the intruding driver’s car, no doubt.

“This is just pure physics. This isn’t anything we can do anything about,” Clark said.

Most Accidents Rear-enders

Reports from the California Highway Patrol show that there were 26, 14 and 24 accidents, respectively, during each of the first three weeks of commuter lane service, compared to 28 accidents recorded during one week in October. Most of the accidents were rear-enders that occurred when high-speed drivers came upon unexpected pockets of congestion.

On the Artesia Freeway, where a similar commuter lane experiment has been under way for the last four months, accidents have also not been a problem, Caltrans officials said. Over the four-month period, 11 accidents directly related to the commuter lanes have occured, all relatively minor in nature and involving some minor injuries but no fatalities.

Two accidents occurred when drivers illegally entered the commuter lane, two occurred as a result of illegal exits and two were rear-end mishaps. In addition, one car hit the median barrier after skidding through the commuter lane, one vehicle skidded into the commuter lane and was hit by another vehicle, one car hit a rock in the commuter lane, and two accidents occurred when disabled vehicles that were parked legally on the shoulder were struck by vehicles being driven illegally on the shoulder. (Unlike Orange County’s, the Artesia Freeway commuter lanes are in effect only during rush hour. At other times the lanes are used as a shoulder.)

Flow Called Irregular

Beam said the advisory committee “will probably recommend doing some fine tuning as far as the entry points and exit points and so on.”

But Catron said committee members have concerns other than safety. Some drivers report that for unknown reasons traffic flow in the regular lanes is irregular. Thus a typical ride to work can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, and drivers can no longer reliably predict how long the commute will take.

Other drivers are concerned that their tax dollars are paying for lanes that they are not able to use, Catron said.

“Our goal with the petition we’re asking people to sign is to have all four lanes (in each direction) to be open to all motorists,” he said.