Study Suggests Toll for Car-Pool Lanes : Transportation: Two UCI professors say usage by solo drivers who pay would enable the roads to serve more motorists.

Two UC Irvine professors are recommending that Southern California’s car-pool lanes be opened to solo drivers who are willing to pay tolls for the privilege.

They would become High Occupancy Toll Lanes, or HOT lanes for short.

In a study funded by the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank that advocates application of free market principles wherever possible, Gordon J. (Pete) Fielding and Daniel Klein suggest that car-pool lanes are not used enough except during morning and evening rush hours, and ask: Why not sell the unused capacity?

“The main barrier to implementation is political,” Fielding and Klein wrote in their report, released Friday. “Drastic change is politically unpopular.”

But the two professors contend that political obstacles can be overcome by phasing in tolls one lane at a time, and allowing free passage for car pools of three or more people.

“Current (car-pool) lanes are not very effective at reducing traffic,” they wrote. “Forty-three percent of car-poolers are members of the same household. They cost everyone but serve few drivers.”

Tolls in car-pool lanes perhaps would range from 20 cents a mile during uncongested periods on some routes to $1 a mile during rush hour on costlier, elevated lanes built above existing freeways.

Private toll lanes are already being installed in the median of the Riverside Freeway between the Riverside County line and the Costa Mesa Freeway in Orange County. That project, however, does not involve taking existing lanes away from current users. The second model is the planned conversion of two reversible car-pool lanes on Interstate 15 in San Diego County.

Caltrans officials could not be reached for comment, but the study’s findings were welcomed by Stan Oftelie, chief executive officer of the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“We think very highly of Pete Fielding and we take everything he says quite seriously,” Oftelie said. “We’d be a little bit wary of the operational costs involved, such as installing toll collection or enforcement equipment on existing freeways. But we’re interested to see what happens on the Riverside Freeway and San Diego projects.”

Fielding, a former Orange County Transit District official, is a professor of social science. Klein is an assistant professor of economics.

An early proponent of the Riverside Freeway project, Fielding was also a researcher for it. The project involves installation and operation of all-electronic toll lanes by a private firm that has a 35-year franchise from the state.

The state’s first toll road since 1929 began collecting fees on Monday in Orange County. The initial, 3.2-mile segment of the Foothill tollway, which extends from Portola Parkway near Lake Forest to another section of Portola Parkway near Irvine, does not give free access to car-poolers.

Foothill tollway officials said Friday that the road is starting to regain some of the patronage it lost beginning Monday, after a free, two-week get-acquainted period.