Paying Car Poolers Is Not a Good Idea
Thank heavens Assemblyman Gil Ferguson is on the Assembly Transportation Committee to oversee, and hopefully stop, Caltrans and the Orange County Transit District from redistributing the gas tax monies instead of using them to improve the freeways (“Ferguson Criticizes Car-Pool Incentives,” Dec. 8).
Their newest plan is to pay car poolers for car-pooling. You would think that with the present price of gasoline, those who could car-pool would. And probably do.
But too many people need the flexibility of their cars to conduct their businesses. Why should they have to subsidize those who don’t?
And then there are the real costs of the plan. For the projected removal of the infinitesimal number of 1,000 cars from the freeway per day, out of 200,000, they would have to set up a new bureaucracy to check on who was qualified to get the coupons for free gas or public transportation and hire an army of inspectors to be sure no one was cheating them out of the free vouchers.
It would sure use up a lot of those highway funds that are supposed to be used to improve the freeways.
GOLDIE JOSEPH, Newport Beach
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