New Freeway Lanes May Be Limited to Car Pools

Caltrans officials say they may restrict new lanes on the Antelope Valley Freeway to car-pool commuters only and are considering a new route for a long-delayed east-west freeway through the region.

The car-pool lanes, called diamond lanes, could emerge by the mid-1990s when the California Department of Transportation expects to build one lane in each direction on the Antelope Valley Freeway between San Fernando Road and Shadow Pines Boulevard. It will be a nearly nine-mile, $38-million segment through the Santa Clarita Valley.

The freeway expansion has already been approved, and the state agency is now considering whether the added lane in each direction should be reserved for vehicles with two or more passengers, or be opened to all traffic, said Caltrans spokesman Wally Rothbart.

Caltrans also is considering the diamond lane designation for the remainder of the freeway widening project, which will extend to Palmdale by the late 1990s. This project will add one lane in each direction between Shadow Pines Boulevard and Avenue P-8, a 26-mile, $90-million section.

Caltrans officials said the diamond lanes could encourage car pools and van pools and help reduce congestion. The state agency only designates diamond lanes when new lanes are added, after an uproar years ago when it tried to restrict existing lanes on the Santa Monica Freeway to car pools.

Rothbart, chief of the project studies branch in Caltrans’ Los Angeles office, also told a joint meeting of the Lancaster and Palmdale city planning commissions Wednesday night that he favors a different route for the planned freeway between Gorman and the San Bernardino County line from the one selected by a multi-agency study group last fall.

That group has urged Caltrans to build the six-lane freeway east from Gorman along California 138 to the Antelope Valley Freeway, then south on that freeway to Avenue P-8 and east toward San Bernardino.

But Rothbart said he favors a route that continues on Avenue D past the Antelope Valley Freeway about 10 miles to 90th Street East. The new freeway would then head south to Palmdale on 90th Street East and finally southeast toward San Bernardino.

Rothbart said the state-favored route would avoid funneling the traffic from the new freeway onto the Antelope Valley Freeway.

Work on the new freeway, planned since the 1960s, might not begin for 10 years.