Mixed-Use Lane Plan for Riverside Freeway Stalls

County officials have backed off a controversial proposal to allow cars with three or more occupants to ride free and to charge all others to use a future lane on a 10-mile stretch of the Riverside Freeway.

In abandoning that idea, the Orange County Transportation Authority board on Monday voted instead to consider it for the Orange Freeway.

The board voted in July to study the idea of creating a HOT lane, or High-Occupancy Toll lane, on the Riverside Freeway from the northern tip of the Costa Mesa Freeway to the Los Angeles County line. Under the plan, cars bearing three or more occupants would have been allowed to use the lane free of charge, while all others would pay between $1 and $5.

Officials had reasoned that allowing non-carpoolers to use the lane, for a fee, would have reduced congestion in the other lanes and brought in revenue of as much as $30 million during the first five years.

A survey conducted at the time indicated that 74% of those who regularly used the Riverside Freeway favored the HOT lane idea.

But opponents criticized the idea of charging drivers to use a freeway lane built with tax dollars.

On Monday, Dave Elbaum, the OCTA’s director of planning and development, reported that planners cannot get all of the required approvals and install toll collection equipment by late 1999, when the new lane is scheduled to open.

“The timing isn’t what we thought it would be,” he said.

The new lane now will be a regular carpool lane, open to cars with two or more people and closed to others.

The board voted to shift the focus to the Orange Freeway, where a new lane already has been approved but is further from completion. Elbaum predicted that preliminary study of the proposed HOT lane for that freeway would take at least a year.

Monday’s discussion rekindled a debate that had begun in July.

“The concept of charging people to use a road that they already paid for [with taxes] is unconscionable,” said board member Todd Spitzer, who voted against any further consideration of the idea for the Orange--or any other--freeway. “I think it’s outrageous. I see a slippery slope; we are creating a transportation model where only people who can pay can play.”

Board member Sarah L. Catz, on the other hand, voted with the majority to study the idea of creating a HOT lane on the Orange Freeway.

“We have to put on our long-range planning hats,” she said. “We need to explore this option.”

And Lisa Mills, OCTA’s executive director, welcomed Monday’s vote as a step in the right direction.

“It will keep this option open and alive,” she said. “People are looking to Orange County as a leader in this regard.”