Speeders in Car-Pool Lane Annoy Law-Abiding Drivers
Dear Readers:
The spotlight shifts to car-pool lanes this week. Street Smart has received several questions about how the lanes operate.
Dear Street Smart:
I will no longer drive in the car-pool lane. When I drive in it at 55 to 59 m.p.h., there are belligerent drivers attempting to force me to go faster. I would estimate that cars drive an average of 70 to 75 m.p.h. in that lane. How does a person take advantage of the lane without breaking the law?
Donna Tracy, San Clemente
The ideal solution would be to move over a lane, and let the faster traffic pass you by. Obviously, you cannot change out of a car-pool lane so easily. Furthermore, you may lose the benefit of traveling in a congestion-free lane by doing so. Unfortunately, there is no good solution to your dilemma.
The CHP recommends that you either ignore the tailgaters or leave the lane at an appropriate point, to let speeders pass, according to Officer Kevin Livingston, a spokesman in the Santa Ana office.
Caltrans is experimenting with a dual car-pool lane arrangement on the southern portion of the San Diego Freeway that would make passing easier. However, such lanes would be limited to places where room is available, if the experiment is deemed successful.
Joe El-Harake, the local car-pool coordinator for Caltrans, acknowledges that speeders can plague the car-pool lanes. But he said speeding tends to occur when traffic is light on the freeway as a whole. If you find this so, you might do better to abandon the car-pool lane and keep your peace of mind. The regular lanes might carry you along nearly as fast.
Dear Street Smart:
On a recent trip to the San Francisco Bay area, I noticed that the freeways had car-pool lanes almost identical to Orange County’s with two notable exceptions:
* The lanes were for car pools only from 6 to 10 a.m. and 3 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.
* The car-pool lanes were identified by white diamonds in the middle of the lane, but they did not have double-yellow lines to prevent entry or exit to the lanes.
It doesn’t take a degree in highway engineering to understand the common sense logic. The lanes are available 88% of the time to the taxpayers who funded them but restricted during the hours when car-poolers are most likely to be, in fact, car-pooling. The driver’s freedom to make lane changes whenever and wherever he feels it is safe and convenient significantly reduces the number of accidents. Why haven’t these two simple, and less costly, improvements been made for Orange County’s car-pool lanes?
Richard L. Hobbs, Newport Beach
Two other readers raise concerns similar to yours. Burt Bradley, of Mission Viejo, agrees that only a driver can know when it is safe to move from the car-pool lane into regular traffic lanes. Likewise, Carl E. Joyce, of South Laguna, calls the exit points “arbitrarily located” and drawn up by people in Sacramento unfamiliar with Orange County traffic patterns and densities.
But according to Caltrans, Orange County’s car-pool lanes operate differently than those up north because Orange County car-pool lane use is greatly different from the Bay Area.
Lanes down here are used heavily even during “non-peak” hours, according to Caltrans’ El-Harake. When traffic is light in the car-pool lanes, it is also light on the regular freeway lanes, making it unnecessary to open the car-pool lane to mixed use.
A county-ordered study of car-pool lanes use supports what El-Harake said. Peak demand was found to stretch from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Opening the car-pool lanes to general use after these hours, when freeway traffic volume is low, “would offer no time advantage to general purpose traffic,” the report concluded. Furthermore, Caltrans contends that opening lanes to mixed use during these limited “off-peak” hours would be confusing and push the violation rate up.
As for the exiting issue, El-Harake says that frustrated drivers should keep in mind that car-pool lanes are designed primarily as expressways. The point is to deliver car-pooling commuters across longer distances, not to carry drivers for only a few miles.
With that in mind, motorists should become familiar with several car-pool-lane exit points at the end of their commute, not just the one closest to the freeway exit that they use, El-Harake said. The closest exit may be too crowded to use at some times of the day, while perfectly fine at other times. Drivers should never exit when it is unsafe, he said.
“You have to prepare in advance, especially if you drive the route everyday. You will really know if you are exiting in the proper place,” El-Harake said.
The local Caltrans office limits access to car-pool lanes to keep traffic flowing freely, El-Harake said. The freer the access, the slower the traffic will be in the lane, he said.
A compromise suggested by reader Bradley would make it OK to exit anywhere, while entrance access would remain limited. But that plan might give drivers the wrong impression, El-Harake said.
“If you make it to exit anytime it’s safe, then people will get the message that it is OK to enter anytime it is safe,” El-Harake said.
Dear Street Smart:
I’m writing in response to one of your readers who uses the car-pool lane with tired kids. The car-pool lanes were designed for car-pooling adults, to help reduce traffic, not for mothers with sleeping children, babies in car seats or pregnant mothers-to-be. It’s time the state started citing drivers using these phony excuses.
Danny J. Dempsey, Huntington Beach
You’re not alone in wanting the lane limited to adults or those of driving age.
“That’s a hot issue,” car-pool-lane coordinator El-Harake said “Some people get really sensitive about seeing mothers with babies.”
As the law stands, two or more people in a car make driving in the car-pool lane legal. There have been some weird attempts to call unborn infants and corpses car-pool “people.” Neither group makes the grade, according to Caltrans.
Limiting car pools to licensed drivers only has been considered, but it would complicate enforcement, El-Harake said. The CHP might have to make judgment calls about whether a passenger was of driving age before pulling someone over, for example. Beyond that, it might not be worth the effort. El-Harake said the number of people driving with only children in the car is very low.
