UCI Forum Focuses on Car-Pool Lanes : Conference Held Amid Growing Controversy on Commuter Aids

About 150 transportation officials from as far away as Denmark and Canada met Thursday in Irvine to discuss the pros and cons of bus ways and car-pool lanes.

What they heard were predictions of doom if more of the special lanes are not built, even though their impact on regional travel has not been fully researched.

Coincidentally, the two-day conference--sponsored by UC Irvine’s Institute of Transportation Studies--comes amid mounting controversy over a new commuter lane on the Costa Mesa Freeway and another one planned for the Ventura Freeway in west San Fernando Valley.

Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R--Thousand Oaks) announced last week that he will introduce legislation in January to ban installation of more commuter lanes in California to force legislative debate on their merits.

On Wednesday, conference participants toured the Costa Mesa Freeway project and the El Monte Busway on the San Bernardino Freeway to decide for themselves.

But there was no doubt that most speakers at the Irvine conference believe that more commuter lanes are necessary.

James Gosnell, transportation planning director for the Southern California Assn. of Governments, said Thursday that the demand for highway and transit facilities in California will exceed “everything we have now and we’re planning to do by 37%” in the next 14 years.

Earlier at the conference, held at the Irvine Hilton, ITS researcher Genevieve Giuliano said: “Most HOVS (high-occupancy vehicle lanes) save travel times and trips.”

Such lanes were installed successfully on several highways in Santa Clara County when major Silicon Valley employers realized that they were losing employees as a result of gridlock, said Robert L. Such, communications and government relations manager for ESL Inc. in Sunnyvale.

But during a question-and-answer session, Giuliano conceded that there have been few studies to determine how many of the ride-sharing vehicles that use a particular commuter lane involve people who already were car or van pooling in regular freeway lanes or on surface streets.

Bill Ward, a member of Drivers for Highway Safety, a small but vocal group critical of the project on the Costa Mesa Freeway, challenged Giuliano to explain why such research is rarely attempted.

“Isn’t this like putting the cart before the horse?” asked Ward, referring to construction of such commuter lanes without information about the sources of the ride sharing they attract.

Giuliano replied that more research on how commuter lanes influence public behavior is feasible but costly and time consuming, with few public agencies able to pay the bill or incur the burden.

On safety issues--a major concern of Drivers for Highway Safety--conference participants said most commuter lanes should be separated from regular traffic by barriers rather than by painted stripes, the technique used on the Costa Mesa Freeway. But they also said such barriers can lead to less use of the special lanes because they restrict entering and leaving.