AQMD Demands Diamond Lane for Ventura Freeway

Emboldened by legal advice that suggested they would prevail in court, Southern California air pollution regulators demanded Friday that the state reverse itself again and construct a “diamond lane,” restricted to car pools and buses, on the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley.

The vote by South Coast Air Quality Management District board members places another cloud over the oft-delayed widening of the nation’s busiest freeway, which carries more than 270,000 vehicles daily.

In a vain effort to get the AQMD to back off, state Department of Transportation officials argued Friday that opposition to a diamond lane in the San Fernando Valley is too strong to be disregarded.

Caltrans leaders also contended that substituting a diamond lane for a general-use lane at this point would force a one-year delay in the widening and add at least $30 million to the $22-million cost of the project.

Undeterred, AQMD board members voted 8 to 2 to give Caltrans one month to agree to redesign the widening to include an eastbound car pool lane. They also demanded that Caltrans add diamond lanes to “any similar future freeway construction” elsewhere in the region.

Caltrans has three diamond lanes in operation in Southern California and is studying whether to add the lanes to more than a dozen other freeways in the region.

Highway planners say that because there is not enough money for needed new freeways and there is little room left to add lanes to existing freeways, the best solution in many cases to traffic congestion is to increase vehicle occupancy rates through diamond lanes.

While legal action was not discussed in open session Friday, AQMD board member Larry Berg said after a closed session of the board that “sentiment seems to be very strong in favor of going to court if Caltrans won’t change its mind on this.”

He said Curt Coleman, the district’s chief legal counsel, informed board members that a suit against Caltrans would stand a good chance of prevailing if based on the argument that by ignoring state transportation policies favoring car pool lanes, the highway agency was violating the federal Clean Air Act.

Berg and several other AQMD board members said that their advocacy of car pool lanes parallels a two-month-old board policy of seeking to reduce air pollution by forcing employers to get their workers to form car pools or ride buses.

AQMD leaders say they aim to cut rush-hour traffic by as much as 25% with new ride-sharing regulations approved in December.

Unaffected by the board’s action is an $18.3-million project in which the freeway will be widened to four lanes each way between Valley Circle and Topanga Canyon boulevards in Woodland Hills. Work on that project is to begin within two weeks.

The AQMD action is aimed at Caltrans’ plan to expand U.S. 101 to five lanes each way between Topanga Canyon Boulevard and the Hollywood Freeway. That project is to get under way in a year.

While the westbound fifth lane has been designated as a general-use lane from the outset, the use of the eastbound lane has been the subject of heated controversy for more than two years.

Caltrans initially sought to sell its diamond lane plan for the freeway to a study committee of elected officials, business leaders and homeowner representatives studying the question.

But Caltrans reversed itself a year ago when car pool lane advocates could muster only a 22-20 margin endorsing the diamond lane from study committee members. Caltrans officials said the vote fell short of the consensus they were seeking. Opponents also swamped Caltrans with more than 12,000 letters of protest.

In the study committee vote, most homeowner leaders opposed the restricted lane, most business representatives favored it and elected officials split about evenly on the issue.

Since then, the widening project has remained in limbo while the U.S. Highway Administration determined whether it would demand that the eastbound diamond lane be reinstated as a condition of federal aid for the project.