Measure M a Big Waste of Money and Not the Answer to Unclogging Orange County’s Freeway System

The Times Jan. 2 editorial headline labels the Measure M Supreme Court challenge a “conspiracy.” Such extreme language is probably the result of The Times’ enthusiastic editorial support of Measure M. It’s unfortunate, though, that the writer forgot a basic journalistic duty: “Check your sources.”

Drivers for Highway Safety shares The Times’ dedication to transportation system improvement. We differ, however, about how it should be done. After independently analyzing the abundant cost and performance record for car-pool lanes, rail transit, and Transportation Systems Management, we have come to the conclusion that Measure M would be a unconscionable waste of scarce transportation funds.

Car-pooling helps relieve congestion; car-pool lanes make it worse. Why? Because the insignificant amount of new car-pool formation caused by a car-pool lane does not nearly make up for the wasted space required to maintain the car-pool lane incentive. Accounting for the measured amount of new car pools they create, a car-pool lane only adds about half the person-carrying capacity of a general purpose lane.

At the same time, new state-of-the-art car-pool lanes--such as those just added to the San Diego Freeway--are more than twice the cost of a general purpose lane. To minimize the increased risk of accidents caused by car-pool lanes, they have an additional 14-foot-wide buffer lane between the 12-foot-wide car-pool lane and the adjacent lane. Half the capacity, more than twice the cost. That’s one-fourth the congestion relief per dollar compared to a general purpose freeway lane.

As bad as car-pool lanes are, Measure M’s spending $1 billion on rail transit would be worse. One has only to look at what has occurred in Los Angeles County to see how bad rail transit can be.

With the support of The Times, Los Angeles County voters approved a one-half cent sales tax increase for transportation improvements that included a light rail line from Long Beach to downtown Los Angeles. The voters were told that the 22-mile-long line would cost $411 million and would haul 54,000 passengers per day. Five months after opening, the Blue Line hauls only 15,000 mostly ex-bus riders per day, with a final construction cost of more than $877 million. More importantly, with the fare box returning less than 10% of the cost of operation, the Blue Line will require huge public subsidies as far into the future as anyone would care to look.

Nationally, rail transit has fared no better. Systems built over the last 10 years in Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle, Sacramento and Pittsburgh, suffering huge cost overruns, have not made a dent in traffic congestion, according to the Urban Mass Transportation Agency. With extremely poor ridership, these systems’ average fare box return on the cost of operation is less than 7%.

Aside from the technical issue of whether car-pool lanes and rail transit will ever solve traffic congestion, with far less than a two-thirds vote, the Measure M sales tax increase should be judged to have lost at the polls.

Drivers for Highway Safety strongly believes that asking the state Supreme Court to review Measure M, as it applies to Propositions 13 and 62, is both reasonable and appropriate. It certainly was not a hasty decision. The Orange County Board of Supervisors was notified, in writing, of our intent before its decision to place Measure M on the ballot.

And finally, The Times characterizes the Supreme Court litigation as reprehensible. Would it be equally fair to characterize The Times’ and transportation bureaucracy’s misinformation campaign to get Measure M passed as “shameful?”

WAYNE KING, Drivers for Highway Safety, Orange