Plan to End Gridlock Hits Roadblock--Traffic Cones : Transit: Cost of placing--and replacing--lane markers ends Sepulveda Boulevard car-pool experiment.

Ultimately, it was those little orange traffic cones that may have brought the car-pool lane on Sepulveda Boulevard to a dead end.

The cones were used to create a northbound lane for about a mile on the southbound side of the street where it crosses Sepulveda Pass, giving homeward-bound car-poolers and buses an unobstructed drive from the Westside into the San Fernando Valley every weekday afternoon.

But Los Angeles transportation officials suspended the pilot program Wednesday, saying that the few cars using the lane do not justify the $267,000 annual cost of the three-person crew that set up, maintained and removed the brightly colored markers.

The city’s Department of Transportation decided to discontinue the program last month, but because of miscommunication, the word did not reach the road crew until Wednesday.

Officials say it is unlikely the program will be revived.

“So far, the numbers don’t seem to show that the lane attracted a whole lot of car pools,” said Tim Crowder, a city traffic engineer.

Nonetheless, Tom Conner, general manager of the transportation department, said the city has not given up on the idea of installing temporary lanes on surface streets. He said a committee has been formed to identify other streets where such lanes could be added.

The Sepulveda car-pool lane was introduced in 1991 by former Mayor Tom Bradley as a way to reduce congestion into the Valley.

But initial studies showed that the number of cars using the lane was dropping, from 265 vehicles an hour when the lane was established in June, 1991, to 143 vehicles an hour five months later.

But Conner said keeping the cones in place was the program’s biggest problem.

When the program started, the car-pool lane was bordered on both sides by a row of cones, he said. But cars trying to leave the lane would knock the cones about, requiring city road crews to constantly drive up and down the lane to right the cones, Conner said.

Later, he said, the double row was replaced with a more user-friendly single row of cones, making it easier for motorists to exit the lane. But still the cones were hurled about.

The decision to suspend the program drew fire from Nick Patsaouras, a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. He called the decision “another indication of the incompetence” in the city’s Department of Transportation.