Fear of Fines: New Signs Cut Car-Pool-Lane Violations

Dear Street Smart Readers:

What’s black and white, about two feet across and makes motorists shiver in their bucket seats?

Give up? It’s one of the new signs on the Costa Mesa Freeway that warn drivers about the $246 fine one faces for a car-pool-lane violation.

As innocuous as the signs might have seemed at first, they have helped persuade many a scofflaw that steering into the car-pool lane minus a passenger just isn’t worth the risk. Since the signs went into place about a month ago, violation rates on the freeway have plummeted, California Department of Transportation officials say.

In the southbound car-pool lane, the violation rate has dropped from about 7% in 1988 to 2.5% in recent days, Caltrans officials say. The northbound commuter lane has experienced an even greater decline, skidding down from 7.2% in 1988 to 1.5% now that the signs are in place.

Joe El-Harake, Caltrans’ commuter lanes coordinator in Orange County, says the reason for the falling violation rates seems clear.

Surveys conducted by Caltrans have indicated that many motorists were not aware of the steep fines attached to a car-pool-lane ticket, which can soar to more than $600 for three or more violations. The signs, El-Harake says, simply let motorists understand the hefty stakes involved with zipping unaccompanied onto the restricted strip of pavement.

“Many people are really surprised when they realize just how much money it will cost them if they’re caught in the car-pool lane,” he says.

The signs, financed by the Orange County Transportation Commission, are installed at several entrance ramps to the Costa Mesa Freeway. With the sort of positive results they have seen, Caltrans officials say the placards could soon become fixtures along other car-pool lanes in the state.

Dear Street Smart:

Coming west on Yorba Linda Boulevard and swinging onto the on-ramp to go south on the Orange Freeway is very dangerous. You can’t tell if the meter is on until you are almost at it. And because the ramp is so long and curves, most cars have reached such a speed that they can’t stop. If they try, they have a good chance of being rear-ended. They need a “meter-on” sign just as you turn onto the ramp.

Lynn Dani

Mission Viejo

Most everyone has been stuck in such a predicament, zooming around a cloverleaf trying to gain speed to merge with freeway traffic when--lo and behold!--there sits a big red signal light at the end of the ramp.

Whoa! Throw on those brakes, Nellie!

Since the middle of 1989, Caltrans has been routinely installing flashing “meter-on” signs to warn motorists that they face a signal just ahead. But many older on-ramps have yet to be outfitted with these warning devices. Such is the case at the Yorba Linda Boulevard ramp.

Caltrans officials say they plan to eventually upgrade most freeway on-ramps so they include the warning signs, but the work is relatively low on the priority list, well below such big-ticket items as widening the Santa Ana Freeway.

If a particular ramp has a bad accident history, the agency will step in and install one of the signs, but the Yorba Linda Boulevard on-ramp is not one of those cases, according to Caltrans officials. The ramp is free of obstructions that might block a motorist’s view of the upcoming freeway signal, and the cloverleaf is a sharp enough curve that only the truly daring go much faster than 30 m.p.h., they say.

But don’t give up hope. After hearing of your concerns, a Caltrans official said he would order an agency road crew to swivel the upper signal lights so that they can be better seen by approaching motorists further up the ramp.