Group Says Road Ahead Is the One Behind--Freeways

Picture an Orange County crisscrossed by many more freeways, none with a carpool lane, and little mass transit in sight.

That is the vision of a group called Drivers for Highway Safety, which sees the traditional all-American freeway--not carpool lanes nor mass transit nor electric vehicles--as Orange County’s most promising future.

Not exactly a politically correct position for the ‘90s. Nor one that predominates among the county’s transportation elite, who have consistently tried to ease traffic and improve the environment by weaning people from their cars.

But the unpopular vision has fueled debate for the past 10 years and made Drivers for Highway Safety well known in Orange County transportation circles.

“If it weren’t for us,” said Wayne King, a former Rockwell engineer and one of the group’s earliest members, “there wouldn’t be any citizens at [Orange County Transportation Authority] meetings asking questions.”

They’ve been asking questions since 1986, when Orange County began testing its first carpool lanes. Future members of the group, noticing an inordinate number of accidents on the new lanes caused by lane changes, began organizing around the issue of highway safety. Later, they carried their analysis further: The carpool lanes, they reasoned, were not encouraging very many people to form carpools. They were only wasting space, while congestion and emissions on all the other lanes increased.

The argument failed. The carpool lanes were built in droves and continue to be built today.

The group, whose nine members include engineers, chemists, systems analysts, inventors and a former professional athlete, next took on rail transit, which they consider inefficient and overly expensive.

The group also has tried to spread the word that, in their view, electric cars are neither practical nor cost and energy efficient.

“They’re using phony science to push electric cars,” said Jack Mallinckrodt, one of the group’s founding members.

Not many transportation officials agree. Yet the group persists. Meeting every two weeks in a garage study in Mallinckrodt’s Santa Ana backyard, they debate the latest actions of the OCTA. And nearly every time the agency’s board of directors gathers for a meeting, at least one member of Drivers for Highway Safety is there to argue for the cause.

“They are an excellent group of people,” said Don Saltarelli, an OCTA board member who has publicly agreed with them on several major issues. “They are very educated and very professional.”

OCTA board chairman William G. Steiner, who disagrees with the group on almost everything, nonetheless said the members “bring important issues to our attention. They are very important in bringing their perspective forward.”

The main focus of that perspective is a $3-million OCTA study analyzing six alternatives, including a light rail system, for developing the county’s most heavily traveled transportation corridor, a 28-mile strip from Fullerton to Irvine.

Group members are critical of the fact that the alternative they consider most viable, more freeways without carpool lanes, was eliminated early on by researchers who said it lacked support in a public survey.

For some time, according to Mallinckrodt, the group has been pressuring OCTA officials for various data used in the OCTA study, which they contend will prove that their alternative was unfairly overlooked. So far, he said, they have met resistance.

“One might conclude that they are trying to hide something,” Mallinckrodt said.

All that may change this week, however, according to Steiner. After six months, the board chairman said, he has persuaded OCTA officials to turn over the data without charging the $800 fee they had earlier requested.

“It’s public information,” Steiner said. The group has “a right to see this; there should be nothing to hide.”

Group members are convinced that the data on which the OCTA study was based will prove their long-held contention: that freeways without carpool lanes are still the most efficient and cost-effective way of moving people from point A to point B.

Even if that point is ultimately lost in the shuffle toward the future, the transportation rebels contend, it’s a point worth making.

“At least,” Wayne said, “there’s somebody watching the store.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to 966-7711 or e-mail him David.Haldane@latimes.com Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.