Carpool Lanes Should Belong to Carpoolers

Re “Hybrid Cars Get a Big Push; Not So Fast, Others Say,” July 20: The biggest concern for people who don’t want hybrid cars approved for the carpool lanes seems to be about overcrowding the lanes. No one, however, has mentioned that a lot of the overcrowding now is caused by carpool-lane violators.

I travel the 405 between the 110 and 105 every day to and from work. Easily, in one of every five cars is someone violating the two-plus-persons rule.

Until the Highway Patrol figures out a way to enforce this better, these violators will continue to do so because they know the chances of being caught are almost nonexistent.

Adding a few hybrids would hardly have any effect at all if we moved the violators back into the crowded lanes, where they belong.

Ricardo Aguero

San Pedro

Opening carpool lanes to single drivers does nothing to encourage mass transit.

That proposal is really just a gift to the automaker and the high-profile contributors who can afford the latest trendy car.

Lenora Kirby

Oak Park

Jordan Rau’s story notes the opposition to allowing single-rider hybrids to use the carpool lanes due to the possibility that it may clog those critical lanes. However, there is another solution.

Since the reason for encouraging the purchase of hybrid vehicles is to reduce the nation’s fuel consumption and promote the ancillary benefit of cleansing the air, why not remove sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks from the carpool lanes to make room for the hybrids.

As a starter, one can simply ban the Hummers, which are the most flagrant consumers of fuel and are difficult to monitor in the carpool lanes due to the difficulty of seeing through their high windows to determine whether they have a second passenger.

Howard Kayton

Mar Vista