2nd Deck Proposed for Ventura Freeway Car Pools : Transportation: Area residents, who have fought plans to add ‘diamond’ lanes and an elevated monorail along the roadway, criticize the latest plan.

State and county transportation officials are floating a plan to build elevated car-pool lanes on the Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley, although plans for car-pool “diamond” lanes and an elevated monorail on the freeway have drawn vehement public opposition in the past.

The proposal to add car-pool lanes on an elevated guideway above the freeway--the nation’s busiest, carrying 277,000 cars per day--is on a list of projects slated for construction only if new funding sources are found, state and county officials said Tuesday. Money could come from sources such as an increased federal tax on gasoline, they said.

The proposal is part of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission’s 30-year transportation plan, a blueprint for projects supported by the California Department of Transportation. The plan, approved last month, calls for more than 300 miles of new car-pool lanes in the county over the next 30 years.

A 1988 Caltrans study said adding another deck to the heavily congested freeway would be costly, but feasible. The study said an upper deck from the Hollywood Freeway to Las Virgenes Road in Calabasas would cost $910 million and would displace more than 1,000 homes and businesses.

State and county transportation officials concede that the likelihood of winning taxpayer support for an elevated guideway for car pools and buses--at a cost of about $50 million per mile--is slim. But they say traffic congestion in the future may force them to consider it.

“As time goes by, I don’t know if it will be unacceptable at all,” said Dave Barnhart, a county engineer who helped draft the 30-year plan. “I don’t think an elevated High Occupancy Vehicle lane in the middle of a busy freeway is unacceptable, but some people do.”

Five years ago, when Caltrans proposed turning a general-use eastbound lane into a car-pool “diamond lane,” it prompted a storm of protest from politicians and residents, who sent 12,000 protest letters and persuaded Caltrans to kill the project.

Opponents contend that car-pool lanes are unproved as a device for inducing motorists to form car pools or ride buses and that they are unfair to those who cannot share rides because they have irregular schedules. Several homeowner groups along the freeway also oppose a current proposal to build an elevated monorail over the freeway.

The freeway, which is a mixture of eight- and 10-lane sections, is undergoing a $37-million widening project to expand it to a uniform 10 lanes from the Hollywood Freeway to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. The project should be completed this summer.

Because a Caltrans policy forbids turning existing general-use lanes into car-pool lanes, new car-pool lanes can be added only on an elevated guideway, similar to a section that is being built on the Harbor Freeway, said Caltrans District Director Jerry Baxter.

He said Caltrans supports the concept of adding the car-pool lanes but does not expect to have the funding or the public support for the project in the near future. “It’s beyond the 30 years; I can’t even get serious about a design concept yet,” he said.

But some residents are not appeased by such talk.

“As soon as they get the money, they’ll do it and that is the problem,” said Gerald A. Silver, president of the Coalition of Freeway Residents, a group that represents homeowner groups along the freeway.

He criticized Caltrans and the county Transportation Commission for approving the plan with little public discussion. “It was like the Stealth bomber--no one saw it go through,” he said.

Silver, a vocal opponent of car-pool lanes, said he was surprised to see the plan revived.

“I thought it was a dead duck and then I saw the 30-year plan,” he said. “Lo and behold, it had raised its ugly head again.”

Advocates for car-pool lanes have included the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the Coalition for Clean Air, representatives of major employers in the San Fernando Valley, the Automobile Club of Southern California and most local chambers of commerce.

For the Ventura Freeway, Caltrans engineers calculated that a diamond lane and four general-use lanes would, after several years of use, carry 12,800 people an hour during peak commuting hours, while five general-use lanes would carry 12,000.

Caltrans has already unveiled plans to add car-pool lanes in the medians of almost every other section of freeway in the Valley. The first will probably be built on the Simi Valley Freeway in both directions between the Golden State Freeway and the Ventura County border. Construction is expected to begin in 1994 and take a year to 18 months.

Caltrans officials have also accelerated plans to build nearly 24 miles of car-pool lanes on three other sections of freeway in the Valley: on the San Diego Freeway in both directions between the Ventura and Golden State freeways; on the Hollywood Freeway in both directions between the Ventura and Golden State freeways, and on the Ventura Freeway in both directions between the Hollywood and Glendale freeways. Construction is expected to begin next year and, barring any major hitches, will be completed in 1995.

The car-pool lanes on other freeway segments in the Valley have generated little opposition.

NEXT STEP

The plan to build elevated car-pool lanes above the Ventura Freeway is included in a list of unfunded projects that Caltrans and county transportation officials support. If transportation officials can find more money somewhere, they will look to that list to decide how to spend it. Final approval by the state and county transportation commissions would be required.