3 Legislators Push Bills to Block Freeway ‘Diamond Lane’

Three state legislators who last year played a key role in killing a “diamond lane” proposed for the Ventura Freeway, Friday unveiled legislation aimed at thwarting efforts by smog regulators to revive plans for a car-pool lane.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District has threatened to go to court unless a new eastbound lane on U.S. 101 in the San Fernando Valley is restricted to vehicles with at least two occupants.

In injecting itself into the controversy over diamond lanes proposed for the Ventura and other Southern California freeways, the air-quality district utilized new powers given it in 1987 by the Legislature.

State Sen. Ed Davis, (R-Valencia), who said he voted to expand the air-quality board’s jurisdiction to cover cars and other mobile sources of pollution, declared at a Woodland Hills news conference Friday that he has had second thoughts and now wants to reduce the board’s powers.

In promoting diamond lanes, Davis said, smog board members are “ramrodding their impracticable, elitist ideas on the commuters of Southern California.”

Besides Davis, those proposing legislation are Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Camarillo) and Assemblywoman Marian W. La Follette (R-Northridge).

12,000 Protest Letters

One year ago, Davis, McClintock and La Follette urged their constituents to write the state Department of Transportation demanding that the proposed eastbound lane be open to all vehicles.

Caltrans leaders cited the 12,000 protest letters that followed in announcing that they were dropping their diamond-lane plan. Caltrans officials had said earlier that they would restrict the lane to car pools and buses only if there was a consensus in its favor.

At its Feb. 5 meeting, the air-quality board voted 8 to 2 to give Caltrans until March 4 to reverse itself again and redesign plans to widen the freeway to include an eastbound diamond lane between Topanga Canyon Boulevard in Woodland Hills and Universal City.

Caltrans leaders say substituting a diamond lane for a mixed-use lane at this point would force a one-year delay in the widening and add $30 million to the $22-million cost of the project. Work on the widening is to get under way in one year.

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

Boost Carrying Capacity

Highway planners say the restricted lanes induce commuters to form car pools or ride buses, thereby increasing the capacity of a freeway.

Critics contend that the lanes cause accidents and that most motorists whose schedules permit them to form car pools have already done so.

Air-quality board member Larry Berg said Friday that meetings with top Caltrans officials thus far had produced “no breakthrough, so we will probably be voting to go to court to force them.”

Berg said attacks on the air-quality district by Davis, McClintock and La Follette are “part of a larger pattern of harassment aimed at intimidating the board,” which, he said, is “just doing what the Legislature told it to do, to clean up the air.”

He said the proposed Ventura Freeway diamond lane has widespread support, noting that seven of the eight Los Angeles City Council members representing the Valley have endorsed the plan.

In a telephone interview Friday. state Sen. Robert B. Presley (D-Riverside) noted that his legislation that broadened the smog board’s powers was passed with strong bipartisan support in both the Assembly and Senate and signed into law by Gov. George Deukmejian, a Republican.

“And I have not detected any sentiment in Sacramento for reopening the issue,” he said. “And it certainly would be a mistake to move on the basis of just one decision by the district.”

At Friday’s news conference, Davis said he has introduced legislation under which the votes of eight of the air-quality district’s 11 board members would be weighted to reflect the populations of the county they represent.

He said the change would give Los Angeles County’s two board members 48% control and sharply reduce the power of board members from the district’s four other counties.

‘Restore Balanced Order’

He said the change would “restore a balanced order” to the board but stopped short of predicting that the board’s diamond-lane policy would change as a result.

McClintock said he has introduced a bill to require that all air-quality district regulations, including its ride-sharing rules, be reviewed by the state Office of Administrative Law.

The office would veto any rules unless it found them to be “economically feasible, justifiable and not duplicative or contradictory with existing regulations,” he said.

He called it a “small step toward limiting the kind of abuse we have seen on the diamond-lane issue.”

A bill introduced by La Follette would direct the legislative analyst to study whether diamond lanes impair safety and have an effect on air pollution.

She predicted that the study results would “refute this foolishness once and for all.”