Double troubles of the carpool lanes

If you’re traveling down a two-lane highway in what’s left of rural California, it’s pretty obvious what a double yellow line means: No passing.

And most of the time drivers follow the letter of the law. But a lot of people are either defiant or ignorant when it comes to double yellow lines that mark off carpool lanes on urban freeways.

Almost every day, you can see cars and trucks veering over double yellow lines to get in or out of carpool lanes, rather than waiting for a legal access point.

“It is a pretty common violation,” said CHP officer Katrina Lundgren. “A lot of people for some reason don’t think it’s a violation.”

The CHP handed out more than 19,000 violations last year to motorists who exited high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes in the wrong places, a ticket that is not a generic double yellow line violation but a carpool infraction that carries a minimum $341 fine for the first offense (soon to increase to $351), according to the L.A. County Municipal Court.

Let’s see, that’s $6.5 million in annual statewide fines, which might seem like a lot of money but is probably not enough to discourage those who blatantly violate the law.

So why does it happen, and are state highway engineers partly to blame?

California has built more than 1,100 miles of HOV lanes, intended to encourage car-pooling and increase the number of people who can be transported on the freeway system.

In the next 25 years, the state plans to nearly double the number of carpool lanes, even while it opens them up to commuters who were never intended to benefit from the lanes -- drivers of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles.

Critics consider carpool lanes a fiasco that has failed to encourage ride-sharing. Assemblyman Ray Haynes (R-Riverside), for example, argues that carpool lanes carry only 7% of traffic on average, yet take up 25% of the space on a four-lane freeway. In the last 25 years, the state has paid $2.3 billion to build the carpool lane system.

“As California’s major freeways become increasingly congested, the lanes have become more and more controversial,” Haynes says. “They encourage gridlock by forcing single-driver vehicles to crowd together in the remaining lanes.”

On its website, Caltrans unabashedly declares, “The central concept for HOV lanes is to move more people rather than more cars.” It works that way part of the time.

Instead, they are used by parents with a baby in the back seat, taxi drivers with customers and others who do not fit the definition of car-poolers. Some pregnant women have argued that their unborn children qualify as a second person, a logic that carries no legal merit under the motor vehicle code.

Nonetheless, carpool lanes get strong political support and are encouraged under federal policy. Even if they fail to increase the number of people a freeway can transport, they are considered a just reward for the socially responsible folks who avoid driving alone.

But the design of the carpool lanes leaves a lot to be desired.

The lanes are typically marked with double yellow lines and a single white line. Normally, double yellow lines separate traffic going in opposite directions. Ideally, double white lines would be used to create an imaginary wall between vehicles going in the same direction, but traffic engineers generally think double white lines are an oddity that few motorists understand.

In any case, many drivers are confused. After all, it is legal to turn left over a double yellow, and some drivers think it is only illegal to cross a double yellow to pass another vehicle, judging from the letters I have received.

Some drivers also think you can cross the double yellow lines when a lane is not designated for car pools at certain hours. No, the motor vehicle code doesn’t make that exception.

However, there are other exceptions, both explicit and implicit. The motor vehicle code specifically allows motorists to cross over the double yellow lines to get out of the way of an emergency vehicle flashing red lights. The law does not allow a driver to cross the lines to get around an obstruction or a stalled vehicle. But “common sense would tell you that you can do that,” says CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.

The second problem with the carpool lanes involves access. In many cases, exit points are so close to approaching freeway off-ramps that motorists cannot safely cross all the lanes of traffic. For example, the northbound San Diego Freeway carpool lane has an exit point so close to the Seal Beach Boulevard offramp that drivers must cross five lanes in less than three-quarters of a mile. That’s tough to do safely in heavy traffic, particularly at night.

Such problems could be fixed if signs indicated when to leave the carpool lane in time for an approaching exit. These signs exist in a few places, but they are not uniform. Until drivers are given better information, they are going to be tempted to illegally cross the double lines.

Ralph Vartabedian can be reached at ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.