Car-Pool Lane Credited With Improving Traffic

The Costa Mesa Freeway carried more people in more vehicles at a faster clip during the first 90 days of a controversial car-pool-lane experiment than before the trial period, transportation officials said Tuesday.

Travel time dropped from 35 minutes to 20 minutes for the 12-mile stretch between the Riverside Freeway and the San Diego Freeway during peak hours.

The number of car pools increased by 43% to a total of 1,916 in the southbound lanes and by 28% to a total of 2,473 northbound, according to a study by the California Department of Transportation and the Orange County Transportation Commission.

At the same time, accidents decreased from an average of 25 per week to 23.5 and fell to 20 per week during the last seven-week period.

What’s more, the freeway carried 54% more people and 43% more vehicles during peak morning and evening periods than before the car-pool lanes opened Nov. 18, the study showed.

“The project is off to a good start,” said James Beam, chairman of a county transportation subcommittee that Tuesday recommended a nine-month extension of the experiment. “There will always be some fine-tuning, but overall, I’m quite pleased.”

Cones to Be Added

Some of the fine-tuning includes re-striping the lanes in blue and adding flexible plastic cones to separate them from other lanes, which will be completed in about a month.

But a citizens group strongly opposed to the car-pool lanes charged that statistics had been deliberately misused to exaggerate the project’s success.

“We believe that the statistical data presented to the public and this committee has been skewed to present both desire and acceptance of the project,” Don Coulson, a member of Citizens for Highway Safety, told a meeting of Beam’s panel at the county Hall of Administration on Tuesday.

A “more objective analysis of data would give this committee grave concern as to the immediate and long-range viability of the project,” he said.

Coulson also said that “given the demonstrable bias of this committee to forge ahead,” the lanes should be opened to all drivers “so that an evaluation of time, usage and safety” can be compared to the 90-day figures.

Opened on Nov. 18, the car-pool lanes stretch about 12 miles between the Riverside and San Diego freeways.

Coulson’s group contends that the car-pool lanes are unsafe because they put fast-moving traffic immediately next to traffic moving much slower, increasing the chance for collisions due to sudden lane changes.

The group also argues that congestion would be alleviated as much or more if the new lanes were available to all traffic because their mere existence increases the freeway’s capacity by a third.

The group claims the figures released Tuesday are flawed because traffic varies according to season.

State and county officials want a nine-month extension to gather a year’s worth of data that can take into account those seasonal variations.

But the same officials point out that traffic congestion and accidents have increased steadily over the years.

Reversal of that trend over a full year would support the 90-day evaluation, the officials said.

Sharon Greene, a Transportation Commission programs manager, denied that statistics have been “skewed.”

People-Moving Capacity

She acknowledged that opening the new lanes to all cars would increase the freeway’s people-moving capacity slightly over current levels and included that information in chart form in the 90-day report.

But Caltrans and Transportation Commission officials argue that such gains would be temporary, based on their experience with lanes added on other freeways.

Greene’s charts show that car-pool lanes give the freeway greater long-term capacity because cars in those lanes carry an average of more than two people.

County transportation commissioners are expected to approve the nine-month extension on March 10.

Using data from Caltrans, the Transportation Commission and the California Highway Patrol, the 90-day study also found that:

- The three existing northbound general-purpose lanes are carrying 21% more vehicles and 13% more people during the same peak period “due largely to reductions in vehicular congestion.”

- The freeway is carrying about 42,100 people daily, compared to an estimated 37,200 to 45,000 people if the car-pool lanes were open to all cars. If used to capacity and under the current rules, the car-pool lanes could carry 54,600 people daily.

- Traffic has declined on nearby streets such as Tustin Avenue, possibly because some drivers learned that traffic on the freeway has been moving more quickly.

- About 6.2% of the cars in the northbound car-pool lane during rush hour have only one occupant. The figure is 9.1% in the southbound lane.

Support Disputed

Meanwhile, public support for the project was in dispute Tuesday.

Citizens for Highway Safety, claiming that the public rejects the experiment, urged officials to consider it a “failure.”

But Greene cited figures showing that phone calls to several agencies favored the car-pool lanes 50% to 13%.

Another 13% favored motorcycle use, and 24% favored access by all vehicles.

Letters also supported the car-pool lanes 56% to 37%.