Car-Pool Foes Meet Rebuff in New Effort : Traffic: OCTC made no formal response to a proposal for new studies, but later a commissioner delivered a stinging rebuttal.

Less than a week after losing a court battle, opponents of car-pool lanes renewed their fight for additional studies during Monday’s meeting of the Orange County Transportation Commission.

Drivers for Highway Safety, the Irvine-based group that has been fighting to eliminate the lanes since 1986, drew no official response.

Instead, OCTC member Dana W. Reed, a Newport Beach lawyer who sits as the public’s at-large representative, waited until after the formal business portion of the meeting had concluded to praise the commission’s efforts to build more car-pool lanes and its plans to bring new rail transit systems to the county.

The clash, although indirect, points to the major philosophical split between advocates of mass transit and those who want most if not all transportation money to go for new freeway lanes open to all motorists.

Drivers for Highway Safety members are also strong critics of the county’s plans for commuter rail service.

Last Thursday, Superior Court Judge William F. Rylaarsdam ruled against the bid by Drivers for Highway Safety to prevent the opening of the new car-pool lanes on the San Diego Freeway between the Santa Ana and Corona del Mar freeways.

Rylaarsdam ruled that Caltrans probably had not obeyed the letter of the law requiring engineering studies before construction on the special lanes’ impact on safety and highway capacity. However, he declined to halt the project because Caltrans furnished engineering estimates on April 10, after Drivers for Highway Safety had filed its lawsuit.

Referring to the ruling, Wayne King, spokesman for the driver group, told the OCTC on Monday that Caltrans was “four years late.”

“The belated safety estimates,” said King, “. . . are suspiciously absent of any supporting data and (Drivers for Highway Safety), invoking the California Records Act, has demanded Caltrans provide any and all information used to make the estimates.”

King requested that the county commission “make certain” that state laws requiring specific safety and capacity findings before construction be strictly adhered to before the planned addition of car-pool lanes on the Orange, Riverside and Santa Ana freeways.

OCTC members remained silent while King waited for a response.

Toward the end of the regular business portion of the meeting, when commissioners are asked for any final thoughts, Reed delivered a stinging rebuttal.

Referring to Sunday’s Earth Day celebrations, Reed said the commission should be proud of its efforts to build more car-pool lanes and new commuter rail service that will start between San Clemente and Los Angeles on April 30.

The biggest source of air pollution is the “driver-only automobile,” Reed said.

“The members of this commission have worked tirelessly to provide alternatives,” Reed said. “We’ve done it and we have every right to be proud of it.”