County Claims on Car-Pool Lanes Probed by Grand Jury

The Orange County Grand Jury is investigating allegations that county transportation officials have deliberately overstated--to the public and to other government agencies--the effectiveness of the car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway.

“We are not looking at specific incidents, but we are looking at the total picture, and we have been interviewing witnesses,” jury Foreman James O. Lindberg acknowledged in an interview Thursday. “We have a responsibility to learn as much as we can on the subject, and then we’ll decide what to do.”

Lindberg declined to say what possible motive transportation officials would have in changing car-pool lane figures. But he said the inquiry was being conducted under the panel’s civil--not criminal--authority. Any report the jury issues will be merely advisory.

Planning Major System

The panel’s inquiry comes at a time when state and county transportation officials are planning a major, interconnected system of car-pool lanes and elevated transit guideways to be completed over the next 10 to 20 years. The Costa Mesa Freeway car-pool lanes are restricted to multi-passenger vehicles and motorcycles.

The Times learned from sources familiar with the investigation that complainants to the grand jury included Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach) and Les Berryman, a member of Drivers for Highway Safety, a small, grass-roots organization that has opposed the lanes since 1985.

Frizzelle could not be reached for comment. However, he issued a statement earlier this week saying that car-pool lanes simply do not encourage enough solo commuters to share rides. And he announced that he will introduce legislation that would give tax breaks to car-poolers.

Berryman said he had already testified before the grand jury and had attempted to show the panel that the Orange County Transportation Commission, the California Department of Transportation and other agencies have never objectively studied car-pool lanes.

“I’m hoping that they’re going to take a look at the whole thing,” Berryman said. “There’s never been a true test of the car-pool lane on the 55 (Costa Mesa) Freeway because nobody’s tested it as a regular lane to see how it would do.”

Critical of Analyses

Frizzelle and Berryman have been critical of the transportation commission’s analyses of various ridership studies for several years, contending that the agency has always kept the worst-case information out of such studies and has deliberately accentuated those findings that support the agency’s own plans.

Studies by consultants and by Caltrans have tended to support OCTC’s conclusion that the car-pool lane has increased the average number of occupants per vehicle on the freeway.

But Berryman cited a story in The Times last year in which transportation expert Genevieve Giuliano of USC came to different conclusions about how effective the car-pool lanes were in reducing the number of single-passenger vehicles traveling the freeway. In fact, OCTC paid another consultant, Sharon Greene, $16,000 to write an analysis of the study that Giuliano had already worked on.

At the time of the dispute, transportation commission officials said they hired Greene to simply write a report for commission members, something they never intended Giuliano to do. What’s more, Giuliano emphasized at the time that although her car-pool numbers were lower than OCTC’s figures, she still considered the car-pool lane to be a success.

Not Available for Comment

Giuliano and Greene were not available Thursday, and neither was OCTC Executive Director Stanley T. Oftelie.

Kia Mortazavi, OCTC’s senior transportation analyst, said Thursday that Oftelie was aware of the grand jury investigation and had told him that he might be questioned by the panel. “I don’t know what the issue is, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see,” Mortazavi said.

Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley, who also heads the OCTC, said: “I heard about it, but I guess I didn’t find it alarming. My position is that we must encourage car-pooling in a very strong manner.”

Bill Wills, chairman of the grand jury’s Administrative Committee, said that some witnesses have been interviewed and others will be called in or visited, but he declined to identify them.