Seeking better use of region’s carpool lanes

Re “Let All Use Carpool Lanes in Off-Hours, Transit Official Asks,” Dec. 12

I think either of these solutions would serve Los Angeles better.

* Eliminate carpool lanes altogether, realizing that doing so would negatively affect a valuable source of ticketing revenue.

* To really free up freeway congestion and ensure ticketing revenue, I’d offer a compromise: Designate all freeway lanes as carpool lanes and ticket anyone driving alone, realizing that such a draconian measure would force Angelenos to use surface streets. That would simply be the price we’d all have to share in the name of “progress.” Decorating holiday trees with retired onramp meter lights would also be a festive alternative.

MONTE MCINTYRE

North Hollywood

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Bill Campbell, chairman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, suggests that Southern California emulate carpool lanes in Northern California by letting single drivers use them during non-peak hours. I like his idea, but he has missed the real reason Northern California traffic flows more smoothly. Unlike Southern California, there is not a double-double yellow line preventing drivers’ legal entry and subsequently allowing traffic to gradually merge into the carpool lanes.

I commute daily from Lake Forest to Long Beach (35 miles, 1 1/2 hours) and witness drivers merging abruptly, dangerously and even stopping in traffic lanes so they can legally access or exit the carpool lane in the designated dotted white-lined zones. The doubledouble yellow line does not make the carpool lane safer, it creates a bottleneck at every onramp and offramp, and it needs to go.

JOHN BROECKER

Lake Forest