Bus Stops Have Become Hottest Pickup Spots in Town : Diamond Lane Drivers Fill Quotas There

Darlene McCain and Ginger Klein were in trouble. They had less than an hour to get to work downtown from their homes in the eastern San Gabriel Valley and it was sure to take longer. The San Bernardino Freeway is molasses in the morning.

Normally the women take the freeway’s diamond lane, which is reserved for buses and cars carrying three or more people. But today one of their car pool members was sick and the other had an appointment.

But McCain knew what to do. She stopped in Covina and drove up to a bus stop near the freeway, where commuters line up for a popular downtown-bound express bus.

Violation of a Taboo

“Anybody want a ride downtown?” Klein called from the passenger window. Soon a young man in a suit stepped forward and got into the back seat. It was a match made in heaven. He was going to save the $2.60 fare and McCain and Klein were going to be at their desks with time to spare.

It was, on the face of it, a violation of one of urban life’s prime taboos: don’t get in a stranger’s car. Yet during morning rush hours the sight is common at major commuter bus departure points along the San Bernardino Freeway, where the difference between heaven and hell is a place in the freeway’s diamond lane, an 11-mile stretch from El Monte to downtown that is used by as many as 70 buses and 1,000 cars an hour.

Caltrans created the lane--the only one in Los Angeles and Orange counties that requires three riders per car--to encourage car-pooling and bus use. But officials never could have envisioned the free-form pairing of riders and motorists that has evolved and spread by word of mouth over the years.

On this morning at the Southern California Rapid Transit District’s Route 498 bus stop on Barranca Avenue in Covina, more than a dozen well-dressed motorists, most of them driving late-model cars, pulled up to solicit riders between 7 and 8 a.m

The drivers rolled down their passenger-side windows and called out the intersection of their destination--”City Hall!” “Broadway Plaza!” From a passenger line that ranged between a handful and 40 people, interested bus riders took a couple of steps toward the car and called back their own intersection--”6th and Flower!”--and, sometimes after a bit of negotiation, a deal for a free ride was struck.

Each driver eventually found one or two willing passengers--even the dark-suited driver in the big black Chrysler who was turned down by a primarily female line of bus riders who found him a bit intimidating. He simply drove around the block and made a second successful pass, finding two similarly dressed men.

Drivers estimated that they saved between 30 and 60 minutes by qualifying for the diamond lane.

“I took the bus for a year before I switched to driving and picking people up,” said Sharon Frey, of San Dimas, who works as a bank secretary. “I’d been picked up by drivers while I was in line. Driving this way always works.”

Sometimes, particularly as the hour approaches 8 a.m., it is more a driver’s than a rider’s market.

“It gets pretty competitive,” said Herman Santos, who pulls up to the bus stop each day with his wife, Sylvia. “We like to take one but sometimes we get two or three individuals who want a ride.”

In the line of bus passengers, who leaned against a four-foot-high brick wall and tried to avoid scores of pieces of broken glass on the sidewalk, Nella Jarett waited and kept her eyes open. She had her pre-purchased ticket, but she was looking for a car.

“I rode with someone every day last week,” she said.

She, like others who occasionally accept rides from motorists, finds it wiser to buy individual RTD tickets rather than the $92 monthly pass, enabling her to save money each time she is picked up.

A subtle protocol governs the choices that many bus riders make when they decide to enter a car.

Most, especially the women, say they try to ride with people whose faces they recognize either from the bus or from having accepted rides in the past.

“I think you can tell from the way people look,” Jarett said. “I don’t ride in a car that’s dented.”

Jarett has not accepted rides from men, regardless of the condition of their car, a habit that was echoed by most of the female riders at the Covina stop.

“Men have more trouble than women,” Frey said. “If the women don’t recognize him as a (former) bus rider, they won’t get in.”

Since a sizeable majority of morning downtown bus passengers are women, that hesitancy presents a problem. But Jeff Birkel, who drives his car by the bus stop in search of riders, said he has found a silver lining.

“I’ve made four or five dates with women by picking them up this way,” he said. “It’s a good way to meet people.”

Cecilia Rasmussen, who takes the bus downtown from the RTD’s El Monte bus station, said she has enjoyed watching women drivers become more aggressive about soliciting riders.

“It used to be a couple years ago women were afraid to,” she said. “It’s hard to get up the courage to ask, ‘Would you like a ride?’ ”

Not even women drivers are ensured of success, however.

Some People Wary

“Some people just tend to be a little wary,” Darlene McCain said. “Some jump right in, other times they look at you like you’re an ax murderer.”

Sharon Frey has now been driving the diamond lane with the help of cooperative riders for several months, and has built up an informal group of about 20 people who look for her car after they reach the bus line.

“One of the reasons I enjoy doing this,” she said, “is that all of these people have little stories to tell. We talk about the world situation, where they were during the earthquake. It gets to be real interesting. If you haven’t ridden with someone for a week and a half and you pick them up, they get in the car and right away it’s: ‘So, did your son call from the Air Force?’ The conversation picks right back up.”