Park This Carpool Plan
Pretty much everybody loves hybrid cars, and for good reason. They’re slick-looking, and so far the technology appears reliable. They have lower emissions and higher miles per gallon. In fact, they’re so beloved that it’s almost necessary to offer a disclaimer before stating a key policy point: They don’t belong in the carpool lanes with only a driver aboard, as a feel-good bill in the Legislature would allow.
The state created carpool lanes to ease the flow of traffic by encouraging more people to travel in fewer cars. If the lanes were meant to encourage better citizenship through better gasoline mileage, lumbering Suburbans would have been banned from them long ago. Besides, the public hardly needs incentives right now to buy the hybrids. Goaded by high prices at the pump, Californians already queue up on months-long waiting lists to buy the gasoline-electric vehicles.
In a peculiar bit of circular reasoning, AB 2628 would limit the number of carpool- eligible hybrids to a total of 75,000 by 2008. That’s the number of Prius, Insight and Civic hybrids that the state forecasts would be sold in California by then without the carpool program. (Only those three models qualify, based on emissions and gas mileage. The state would impose the limit by issuing decals.) If that many hybrids would sell without the incentive, what’s the point of offering it?
If the state really wanted to save gasoline, it would keep hybrids in the regular lanes. In a quirk of the breed, they generally get better mileage in the 25- to 45-mph swing of clogged roads than in free flow.
Many carpool lanes are at or near capacity during peak hours. The bill’s backers concede the problem; that’s another reason the number of eligible cars is, and must remain, limited. But that also means it cannot be used to keep demand for hybrids strong.
There’s more reason to like the proposal by Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn to grant hybrids free parking. The city would give up nominal meter revenue in exchange for less air pollution, a good trade. It might prove impracticable, though, since about 30 conventional models also are rated as having ultra-low emissions, with more to come. Who’s going to keep track of all these cars?
Still, the Hahn plan has more merit than the state bill, which goes to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Aug. 2. The carpool incentive would sunset in 2008. That gives a car buyer in 2007 little reason to pick one of the three eligible cars. And the awkward reasoning behind this bill gives us no reason to support it.
