The Spirit of the Freeway

In a big ceremony Tuesday, the earthquake-damaged sections of the busy Santa Monica Freeway reopened more than two months ahead of schedule. But the joy is muted with regret over the elimination of the freeway’s car-pool lane and frets about two bridges that still need work.

The unexpectedly early reconnecting of the nation’s most heavily traveled freeway is surely an occasion for celebration to those motorists who must regularly use it. However, the crash rebuilding program left two replacement bridges without adequate retrofitting; work to fix that will continue apace, at an additional cost of $300,000. The state’s decision to proceed full speed ahead before retrofitting the bridges is perhaps questionable, when to have done the job right in the first place would have added only a few weeks to the project. But assuming no other serious problems surface with this reconstructed stretch of Interstate 10, there can be no doubt that the rebuilding project was a real achievement.

But the freeway’s reopening should not end discussion of a car-pool lane for the I-10. One is planned or already in place for virtually every other regional freeway. Without an incentive to car-pool, too few people will do it. Unfortunately, Tuesday’s traffic jams were evidence of that.

The last four months have demonstrated that car-pools can work even on as busy a freeway as the Santa Monica. The idea should not die now. Car-pooling and other innovations arising from the aftermath of the Jan. 17 earthquake show that California is moving again. Along with signs that the economy here may finally be recovering from its dreadful torpor, a new energy level from both government and the private sector, which cooperated so well on this project, will help revive California.