New Car-Pool Lane Opens Wednesday

Congestion-weary motorists will be able to use a 5-mile stretch of a new car-pool lane on the northbound San Diego Freeway beginning Wednesday, transportation officials said Monday.

The long-awaited opening, between the Springdale Street bridge in Westminster and the junction of the San Gabriel River Freeway (Interstate 605) in Seal Beach, is scheduled to occur early Wednesday morning, Leslie Hall, a spokeswoman for the California Highway Patrol said. A news conference is scheduled this morning to furnish details.

Caltrans and county transportation officials had hoped to open the 5-mile segment in November, but delays in delivery of signs and cold weather preventing restriping of the pavement forced two postponements.

The car-pool lane will be restricted to vehicles carrying two or more people.

The southbound car-pool lane will remain closed, even for the short stretch, partly because it is needed to provide access for construction crews finishing the rest of the car-pool lane project, officials said.

The 5-mile stretch is part of the 24-mile, $57-million widening of the San Diego Freeway between Seal Beach and Irvine. Another section of the northbound car-pool lane is expected to open when construction crews, working southward, reach the Corona del Mar Freeway (California 73) in Costa Mesa this summer.

By July, 1990, the car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway are scheduled to extend from the junction with the Santa Ana Freeway in Irvine to the San Gabriel River Freeway in Seal Beach.

Motorists have seen a strip of fresh concrete on the 5-mile stretch in Westminster and Seal Beach since September, but the lane has been blocked off by orange cones, awaiting final inspections and approvals by Caltrans officials from Sacramento.

The County Transit District, Transportation Commission and Caltrans are planning more than 100 new miles of car-pool lanes on five of six Orange County freeways and toll ways during the next 10 years.

Orange County’s first car-pool lanes opened on a 11-mile stretch of the Costa Mesa Freeway (California 55) on Nov. 18, 1985.

Controversy has followed ever since, with some critics alleging that the accident rate has increased on the Costa Mesa Freeway as a result of drivers weaving between the faster-paced special lanes and slower traffic in adjacent, regular lanes, which are separated only by stripes on the road.

More recently, debate has focused on whether the lanes actually increase car-pooling or merely rearrange the way existing car-poolers use local roads.

County transportation officials insist that it is better to attract the most efficient commuters--car poolers--to the freeway than those who drive alone, since any new lane will fill up almost immediately with traffic anyway.

CAR-POOL LANE TO OPEN

New car-pool lane to open Wednesday along 5-mile stretch of northbound San Diego (405) Freeway between Springdale St. and San Gabriel River (605) Freeway.