Car-Pool Lanes

First-day results of the car-pool lane on the 405 (San Diego Freeway) showed significant improvement in all lanes. Caltrans expresses “amazement” and “excitement” at the results and offers this as further proof that the car-pool lanes really do work. Our perspective on this is a lot different.

Of course adding a lane to the freeway improves things. Even if it’s a car-pool lane. But this has nothing to do with car-pool lane effectiveness.

In the midst of all the excitement, (it) seems like everyone has neglected to ask the real question, which should be:

“How much better (or worse) is the freeway as a whole working now, as compared to what it would if that new pavement were operated as a mixed-flow lane?”

Caltrans doesn’t want that question asked nor answered. That’s why they have vowed, since the disastrous Santa Monica Diamond lane experience, “Never again to take a lane away from the people” (that is, never again to permit a direct test of the car-pool lane vs. mixed-flow alternatives). Rather, they smuggle the car-pool lane in as a new lane and then in a burst of publicity, attribute the inevitable improvement to the car-pool lane operation.

But on the 405, the car-pool lane takes between two and three normal lane widths of pavement. If that pavement were used for mixed-flow, it would provide at least a two-lane increase of capacity.

The perception of car-pool lane effectiveness is a delusion based on superficial analysis, wishful thinking, and misleading hype.

JACK MALLINCKRODT

Drivers for Highway Safety

Santa Ana