Group Attacks Plan for Car-Pool Lanes on 405

Construction of car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway in Orange County has been scheduled to begin in March, even though the results of a controversial, yearlong experiment with similar lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway are not yet known, state and county officials said Monday.

The project was immediately criticized by Joe Catron, chairman of Drivers for Highway Safety, who said the new lanes will be unsafe because they place high-speed traffic next to slower moving vehicles with no barrier separating them.

“They’re going to have the same, unsafe condition there that they have on the (Costa Mesa) freeway,” said Catron, whose grass-roots organization has spearheaded public criticism of the special commuter lanes.

But Orange County Transportation Commission spokesman Tom Fortune and other officials said the go-ahead for the Interstate 405 project is based partly on assurances from the California Department of Transportation. Lessons learned from the controversial Costa Mesa Freeway experiment can be incorporated into the design of the new lanes on the San Diego Freeway, they said.

Officials added that such designs already include several improvements, such as increased lane widths, buffer space between car pools and regular traffic in adjacent lanes, and the first use of overhead signs in addition to pavement markings.

The San Diego Freeway will be widened by adding a new car-pool lane in each direction on the median. The car-pool lane will run from the San Gabriel River Freeway in Seal Beach to the junction of the the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways in Irvine.

The first 10-mile segment between Seal Beach and Costa Mesa will be completed by the end of 1988, according to the OCTC report. The remaining 14 miles through Irvine will be opened to commuters in mid-1989.

The entire project is expected to cost about $68 million, officials said.

Like the commuter lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway, the new car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway will be restricted to vehicles occupied by two or more people.

But, the OCTC report states, “These lanes are designed to a much higher design standard than on Route 55 (the Costa Mesa Freeway), with many design features built on experience gained from the Route 55 demonstration project.”

Lanes for Merging Traffic

Such improvements, for example, include installation of auxiliary lanes for merging traffic at on- and off-ramps. Existing lanes will not be narrowed to make room for the car-pool lanes, as they were on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Catron said, however, that the striped buffer zone separating the car-pool lanes from regular, slower traffic in adjacent lanes will be only six inches wider than the 18-inch zone now used on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Catron’s group has charged that the accident rate has increased about 30% since the special lanes were opened on the Costa Mesa Freeway last November.

Caltrans has issued widely varying accident rate estimates but insisted recently that the increase is no more than 6% to 8%, well within the normal variation experienced over the years on most freeways.

OCTC has contracted with UC Irvine for an independent analysis of the accident rate in hopes of resolving the accident-rate controversy.

But Drivers for Highway Safety has complained that the analysis has been structured unfairly, without consulting it about what questions need to be asked and answered in the study.

Study of Accident Rates

For example, the group would like the study to include an estimate of what the accident rate would be if the commuter lanes were opened to all types of traffic, not only to car pools, but OCTC and UC Irvine officials have refused. Those officials insist that the purpose of the study merely is to resolve the dispute over accident rates before and after the special lanes were constructed.

Bill Ward, one of Catron’s colleagues in Drivers for Highway Safety, told OCTC members Monday that the group’s own survey shows that 75% of 102 respondents favor opening the lane to all types of traffic. The remaining 25% favor continued operation of the car-pool lanes.

Commission Chairman Harriett Wieder, who is also a county supervisor, asked Ward if he’s a professional pollster. Ward said he is not.

The survey was conducted by having volunteers hand questionnaires to drivers as they were entering the on- and off-ramps to the Costa Mesa Freeway last week. The distribution was stopped by the Orange Police Department after 675 questionnaires had been distributed. Police cited a city ordinance prohibiting the distribution of handbills.

Angered by the incident, Catron said Monday he is writing a letter to the police disputing their interpretation of the ordinance. Catron said the law allows distribution of handbills to people who agree to take them. The ordinance was aimed at curbing commercial advertisements placed on cars in shopping center parking lots, he said.