Car-Pool Lane Access for Price Will Be Studied : Transportation: OCTA members’ proposal for solo drivers aims to maximize roadway use. Some oppose the plan as elitist.

Solo drivers someday may be able to zip along Orange County’s car-pool lanes--if they’re willing to pay.

As part of a new transportation idea called “congestion pricing” that aims to maximize use of roadways, members of the Orange County Transportation Authority on Monday asked their staff to study the idea of letting solo drivers buy their way onto car-pool lanes.

“Right now it seems like (car-pool lanes are) just being underutilized and this would be a good opportunity to generate some revenue,” said OCTA Vice Chairman Dana Reed, who suggested the idea at a meeting Monday. “There’s room for a lot more vehicles.”

The proposal is still in its infancy, and, if approved, would probably not go into effect for at least five years. Reed hopes to start the experiment on the San Diego Freeway, but other OCTA officials said the Riverside Freeway is a more likely trial spot because there the pay-as-you-go lanes could hook up with a privately owned segment of the road that soon will levy a toll against all drivers except car-poolers.

Transportation leaders said they were unsure how much riding in the car-pool lane would cost solo drivers, or even whether they would buy monthly passes or be charged per use, determined by an electronic scanner reading a device on the car. But a key point in the plan is to use the revenue for other ride-sharing programs.

“If the money just goes in the general fund and is frittered away, then forget it, it isn’t worth it,” said Reed, a Newport Beach attorney who is the only non-elected official on the 11-member OCTA board. But “if it’s going to be used for more (car-pool) lanes or mass transit, that’s fine with me.”

A similar proposal is underway for an eight-mile stretch of the Interstate 15 in northern San Diego County and is being considered in Arizona, Dallas and Houston.

San Diego officials got a federal grant of $230,000 to implement the program, but await passage of state legislation that would let them charge fees on a public road. OCTA members said they may try to join the San Diego bill, which is pending in the Assembly transportation committee, scheduled for a hearing March 29.

Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, a libertarian who introduced the car-pool “buy-in” idea at an OCTA conference on Saturday, said it was first discussed at a three-day seminar last June in Washington on congestion pricing.

“I don’t think that the HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) buy-in is going to do a huge amount by itself to solve the traffic congestion problem,” Poole said in an interview. “But as a way of introducing the idea that people would be able to pay a premium price to get premium service, testing that idea, I think it would be tremendously valuable.”

Solo drivers who spend hours each day sitting in traffic watching car-poolers whiz by to their left may be thrilled with the option of paying to join the faster lanes. But environmentalists worry that the idea defeats the original purpose of the car-pool lane and that it is unfair to less-affluent drivers.

“The whole idea behind HOV lanes is to encourage people to ride-share. So if you allow people to go single and pay to get on there, maybe you’re defeating the purpose,” said John Stevens, principal staff consultant for the Assembly’s transportation committee. “And what about those who don’t have the ability to pay? They’re stuck in traffic, and because folks are a little wealthier, they get to ride in the faster lane? I’m not sure there’s equity there.”

“I think it’s an elitist tool,” agreed Tom Soto, president of the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Cleaner Air. “I, for one, consider it a light form of discrimination.”

But backers of the plan say it simply maximizes the potential of car-pool lanes and helps raise sorely needed funds for mass transit. To ensure that the lanes remain fast-flowing, access for solo drivers would be limited--officials haven’t determined how--and prices would be steepest during peak hours.

Genevieve Giuliano of Irvine, an associate professor at USC who recently conducted a study of car-pool lanes, said the buy-in would be ideal for Orange County, where use of the lanes is low and the median income is high.

Poole, who rarely car-pools but said he would be willing to pay to join the faster-flowing lanes, shrugged off the equity question, likening the buy-in to Federal Express.

“You have a perfectly acceptable alternative at the post office for first-class mail but if you decide you want a premium service you pay a premium price,” Poole pointed out. “We have coach and first-class service on trains, planes . . . that’s a principle we accept in all parts of our lives.

“Plus, the funds that are raised will be used for a good public purpose,” Poole added. “If we can get wealthier people to pay for our public transportation, I’m all for that.”