Car-Pool Lanes Come to the Valley

Everywhere she looked on the Ventura Freeway Monday afternoon, Patti Perez saw stationary cars. Except in that stretch of open, freshly poured asphalt to her left.

So Perez flipped on her turn signal and maneuvered onto the newly opened car-pool lane on the Ventura Freeway--the San Fernando Valley’s first. She picked up speed and started thinking she might make it to Pasadena to pick up her mother on time.

Then she noticed the CHP car behind her with its lights flashing, and her stomach sank. She knew she had done wrong--turned into the car-pool lane through the double yellow lines intended to seal it off from regular traffic.

“I saw, like, three cars doing it in front of me, so I thought, gee, OK,” said Perez, 28, as CHP Officer John Sturman stood by her Nissan 240SX, writing a ticket.

Car-pool lanes have become a staple of Southern California road culture and on Monday they finally reached the Valley, bringing with them a bevy of new rules and hazards for motorists. After about 18 months of construction, the east- and westbound car-pool lanes on the Ventura Freeway between the Hollywood and Golden State freeways were open for vehicles with at least two occupants and for motorcycles.

The lanes, which cost $14.5 million, span a five-mile stretch along one of the region’s most heavily traveled arteries. More high-occupancy vehicle lanes are being built by Caltrans in the Valley on the Simi Valley and San Diego freeways.

Qualified motorists who entered and exited the Ventura Freeway car-pool lanes at the proper points--where the double yellow line gives way to dotted white--zipped past their peers Monday afternoon.

But on their first day, the new lanes remained relatively empty, mirroring the idle state of many other HOV lanes throughout the Southland, which critics have deemed a failure in encouraging ride-sharing and reducing the burden on regular lanes.

Perez didn’t realize the new lanes were open until she got stuck in the crush of eastbound cars just past Forest Lawn Drive. With her cousin and two children in the car, Perez figured she more than qualified, so she jumped in.

Her violation, Sturman said, is a common and dangerous one. The double yellow lines separate the car-pool lane from the rest of traffic so that car-poolers are not suddenly confronted with other cars cutting in, forcing them into the center divider.

Although eligible motorists may love the lanes, they can be a headache for the CHP. “Some people,” Sturman said, “seem to think it’s a free, open autobahn--unlimited speed.”

And others, he said, use the usually vacant car-pool lane to change flat tires or tend to mechanical problems, sometimes oblivious that a car newly liberated from traffic is hurtling toward them.

Commuters who have driven the Ventura Freeway so many times that they’ve memorized its contours will also be thrown for a loop by the new lanes, which blend into and out of merging lanes with the Hollywood and Golden State freeways, Sturman said. “I’m anticipating a lot of crashes until everybody figures it out.”