State Drops Diamond Lane Plan for Ventura Freeway

State Department of Transportation officials Friday abandoned a plan to create a “diamond lane” on the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

The decision was a sharp setback for state traffic planners, who regard diamond lanes, restricted to car pools and buses, as one of the most effective ways of increasing the carrying capacity of the region’s freeway system at a time when highway construction funds cannot keep pace with congestion.

In Orange County, where local transportation officials recently voted to make the year-old car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway permanent, critics of the special lanes said the Caltrans decision Friday encourages them to continue fighting.

“We’re going to have a public meeting to talk about car-pool lanes on the evening of March 11 at the County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana,” said Joe Catron, a car leasing executive and former race car driver who heads Drivers for Highway Safety, a small but vocal organization that opposes car-pool lanes. “We have not given up. We still believe the car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway are as unsafe as ever.”

Catron’s group contends that barriers are needed to separate high-speed traffic using the car-pool lanes from adjacent, slower traffic that is changing lanes.

Bill Ward of Costa Mesa, one of the group’s engineering analysts, was instrumental in persuading many members of the Ventura Freeway advisory committee to oppose the San Fernando Valley project or at least question the validity of Caltrans data, according to committee members.

On Friday, Catron blamed his group’s failure to generate a similar response in Orange County on an inability to persuade any local politician to lead the opposition to the lanes. Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), a staunch opponent of car-pool lanes, helped lead the attack on the Ventura Freeway project.

The situation in Orange County may change, however. State Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), who occasionally has expressed concern about the car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway, is considering a tougher stance, according to Seymour’s staff. The senator has scheduled a news conference about the special lanes for next week. He could not be reached for comment late Friday.

Despite Friday’s decision on the Ventura Freeway project, Caltrans officials said they plan to continue pushing similar projects on other heavily congested Southern California freeways.

Three such lanes are in operation in Southern California, and Caltrans engineers have penciled in proposed diamond lanes on about a dozen other Southland freeways.

Donald L. Watson, Caltrans’ Southern California district director, said widespread opposition from Valley residents and elected officials persuaded Caltrans to drop the plan for the Ventura Freeway, the nation’s busiest with 270,000 vehicles daily.

“We have said all along we will not put in these lanes unless the community supports them,” he said.

Continue in Strategy

However, because money for freeway expansion is lacking and because there is little room left in which to expand some freeways, Watson said, diamond lanes will continue as a “important element” of the department’s strategy for “getting more people-moving capacity out of the existing system.”

In the next few months, he said, Caltrans engineers will begin studying the feasibility of such a lane on the San Diego Freeway between the Ventura Freeway and the Orange County line.

Caltrans’ policy on car pools and buses is echoed by the California Transportation Commission, which controls highway spending in the state.

Robert Remen, deputy executive director of the commission, whose nine members are appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian, said the commissioners unanimously voted in 1984 to direct Caltrans to “do a study every time a new lane is authorized as to whether it would be the best use of that lane to restrict it to car pools and buses.”

Opponents of diamond lanes insist that the claimed benefits for the lanes are not proved and that the lanes discriminate against motorists for whom car-pooling is not practical.

Antonovich Is Opposed

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, a leading opponent of the plan, said that Caltrans should have “learned its lesson with the Santa Monica Freeway (diamond lane) experiment, which nearly resulted in freeway gridlock and was blamed for a higher accident rate and headaches for commuters and law enforcement.”

Watson agreed that the Ventura Freeway proposal “carried some unfortunate baggage” from the ill-fated Santa Monica Freeway lane, which was halted by court order after five months of operation in 1976.

However, he said, unlike that much-criticized project, diamond lanes currently in use and proposed will operate on new lanes because “we absolutely will never take another lane away from the public.”

He predicted that as motorists are made aware that no existing lanes are being proposed as diamond lanes, “support for these lanes will increase.”

Instead of the proposed eastbound diamond lane and a westbound lane open to all vehicles, Caltrans will add one general-use lane in each direction between Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills and the Hollywood Freeway, a 13-mile stretch.

Lanes Will Shrink

As with many new lanes being added to Southland freeways, the new Ventura Freeway lanes will be created by narrowing existing lanes from 12 feet to 11 feet and by taking space from the median strip.

Assuming that Caltrans abides by its promise not to convert existing lanes to diamond lanes, Friday’s decision means that there will never be a diamond lane on the Ventura Freeway, because Caltrans has no intention of expanding the freeway beyond five lanes in each direction.

Caltrans’ engineers forecast a bleak future for the freeway, which now experiences about eight hours of congestion daily.

Ronald Klusza, Caltrans’ Southern California coordinator for diamond lanes, said that after the new lanes are completed in 1989, “there will be maybe 18 months or 24 months of relative freedom from congestion. Then it will resume and I see nothing ahead to alleviate it.”

In making a case for the diamond lane, Caltrans officials had predicted that as congestion resumed following creation of the new lane, motorists would form car pools or ride buses, thus expanding the freeway’s capacity.

Heated Debate

The Ventura Freeway diamond lane proposal has been the subject of heated debate for more than a year, and Friday’s decision came on the heels of two setbacks earlier in the week.

The most important came on Tuesday, when county supervisors voted 4 to 0 to oppose the project. The supervisors had what amounted to veto over the project by virtue of state legislation passed in 1984 that requires that two-thirds of the 11-member Los Angeles County Transportation Commission approve a diamond lane on the Ventura Freeway. Since all five supervisors are members of the commission, their vote indicated that there would not be the necessary eight votes required to approve a diamond lane.

On Thursday, a Caltrans-created advisory committee of representatives of employers and developers, elected officials and homeowners voted 22 in favor of restricting the new lane to car pools and buses, 20 for a new lane open to all vehicles and 3 for no new lanes at all.

The narrow margin of passage heartened opponents, who had complained for nearly a year that Caltrans, in creating the committee, had weighted it in favor of those likely to favor a diamond lane.

Almost all business representatives voted for the diamond lane, reflecting increasing concern among employers that future freeway congestion will make it difficult to attract employees.

Homeowner Opposition

Most homeowner organization representatives were opposed, while elected officials were split about evenly.

Advisory committees created to study diamond lanes for the Costa Mesa (California 55) and Artesia (California 91) freeways voted overwhelmingly for the lanes, both of which are in operation.

Klusza said that experience with those two diamond lanes, plus the decade-old El Monte Busway, have proved that such lanes work in persuading motorists to car-pool or ride buses, and also have generated public support.

Since the Costa Mesa Freeway diamond lane was opened in November, 1985, Klusza said, average automobile capacity has climbed from 1.15 to 1.26.

He called the increase a “significant change in driving habits that is helping us stretch out our limited freeway-building funds.”

Times staff writer Jeffrey A. Perlman contributed to this story from Orange County.