Car-Pooling’s Point

Eileen Rose-Busby’s commentary on opening car-pool lanes to all traffic (“Why Car-Pool Lanes Should Be Opened to All Vehicles and Not Just a Select Few,” Sept. 17) ignores the operating principle behind car-pool lanes and the fundamental problem of planning for growing traffic in Southern California. Freeways, and car-pool lanes especially, are designed to move people, not cars. Car-pool lanes are particularly efficient at this as they allow more people to travel an equal-width freeway segment at peak hour than a congested freeway without such a lane.

Ignoring car-pooling and other measures to manage our traffic demand places excess reliance upon building new freeways. Traffic is simply growing too fast to build our way out of the problem. There are simply not enough dollars nor is there a popular will to raise enough of them for such an approach to work. San Diego needs more car-pool lanes and more incentives to use them, not retrograde actions generating more trips and air pollution, which only guarantee that our freeways mimic our congested cousin to the north.

BYRON M. BUCK

San Diego