If You Hate Car-Pool Lanes, You’d Better Brace Yourself

Dear Street Smart:

I’m in outside sales. Some days I get on the freeway and head to Long Beach. Other days I’m on my way to Pasadena or Valencia.

I would like to car-pool so I would be able to use the diamond lane instead of sitting on the freeway with thousands of other cars.

Obviously, I can’t.

Could you please find out how our government can spend so much money building a special lane for so few cars? It irks me that they are allowed to spend my tax dollars building roads and then they tell me I can’t use them.

Mort Smiley

Van Nuys

Dear Reader:

I’m not the most perceptive person in the world, but I’m guessing that your question is rhetorical. I’m guessing you oppose the use of your tax dollars to build car-pool lanes that you cannot use.

OK, I’ll play along. For the sake of interesting reading, I’ll take the role of a diamond lane advocate, arguing that these lanes are the best thing since individually wrapped cheese slices.

First some background: Caltrans plans to spend about $6 billion over the next 30 years to add car-pool lanes on virtually every freeway in Los Angeles County. Much of the construction is already beginning. Most of the money for the lanes will come from a half-cent sales tax increase we voters approved in 1990.

Caltrans officials hope to get up to 20% of motorists to use the lanes.

In most cases, the new lanes will be built on the freeway medians. Existing lanes will be narrowed by about a foot and the road shoulder width will also shrink. No general-use lanes will be eliminated to make way for car-pool lanes.

Now, it is true that if you drive alone and your job makes ride-sharing impossible, you won’t be able to use the lanes. But if only 10% or 15% of all drivers use the lanes, you will get some benefit too--you will be able to drive in much smoother-flowing freeway traffic.

Also, think of what these lanes will mean to you if you change to a job that allows you to car-pool. You can jump into a car with several other neighbors or co-workers, cruise to work on your own unobstructed freeway lane and chomp on donuts while you laugh at all those single-passenger motorists crawling to work in traffic.

That alone should be worth it.

Dear Street Smart:

Our traffic signals are slowly acquiring turn arrows, which is a good thing when you want to make a left turn. However, not all signals have the same sequence.

One sequence is superior. That is the one in which there is a green arrow and a green light together, followed by the green light alone. That way you can still turn left on the green light alone when traffic permits.

This occurs at the intersection of Ventura and Reseda boulevards and elsewhere about half the time. Why not all the time?

Merwin Lucas

Glendale

Dear Reader:

So, you like the signals that have a green arrow, but you don’t like those signals with red arrows that prohibit you from turning left when oncoming traffic permits? Well, the red arrows are for safety.

The city of Los Angeles and most other cities prefer to install those signals that allow left turns when traffic allows. This type of signal is called the “protective-permissive” signal.

But Brian Gallagher, a city traffic engineer, said the signal system that uses a red arrow to keep you from making a left turn is usually installed at intersections with a history of accidents involving left turns.

The red arrow may keep you from making a left turn because of poor visibility--such as at an intersection near a hill--or when oncoming traffic is rushing through the intersection at high speeds, he said.

So, think of the red arrows as a safety device, sort of like a seat belt. Both are a pain in the neck, but it’s a neck they just might save.

Dear Street Smart:

During the past several years I have noticed construction on the west side of the San Diego Freeway between the Sepulveda Boulevard and Sunset Boulevard off-ramps. What are they building? Is it part of the Metro Rail system that is supposed to go to the Valley or is it just construction of more houses?

Anthony J. La Monica

Panorama City

Dear Reader:

Neither, Anthony. Most likely what you are noticing is construction for the Getty Center, a multimillion-dollar project that will include a campus-like arrangement of six buildings set amid gardens and terraces covering 24 acres in Brentwood.

The work you see immediately next to the freeway is construction of the tramway that will carry visitors from the six-level, 1,200-car underground parking structure to the top of the hill where the six buildings will be located.

The center will have a museum, an auditorium, a building housing the trust offices and the Getty Art History Information program, a building for the Getty Grant Program, the Getty Center for Education in the Arts and the Getty Conservation Institute.

For a very short time, there were rumors of even adding the Getty Video Arcade and Fun House. But I think they discovered a clause in the J. Paul Getty trust documents that prohibits the use of the billionaire oilman’s money on things that are liable to rot a child’s brain.

Dear Street Smart:

I would like to find out the phone number to report drivers who don’t have their children in car seats.

Sandra Russell

Van Nuys

Dear Reader:

The law says you have to put your child in a child restraining seat if the child is under four years of age or weighs less than 40 pounds. (At that age, I think I weighed about 80 pounds, so my parents used to force me to jog alongside the car as a slimming-down measure.)

If you see someone who you think is violating the law, you can call a nonprofit group calledSafety Belt Safe U. S. A. at (800) 745-SAFE. They will send you a form to fill out to report the alleged violator. They will ship the completed form to the California Highway Patrol, which will send the car’s registered owner a warning letter.

By the way, if you see parents forcing their kid to run alongside a car, like I used to, tell the parents that can have negative effects on the child’s psychological development. Heck, the kid could grow up to be--you may shudder to contemplate this--a traffic columnist.

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Valley Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around the Valley. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to Hugo Martin, c/o Street Smart, The Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St . , Chatsworth 91311. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited and no anonymous letters will be accepted. To record your comments call (818) 772-3303. Send fax letters to (818) 382-6651.