Freeways should be kept free

Re “It’s time to go with toll-lane flow,” column, Dec. 2

All toll lanes will do is squeeze the same number of commuters into fewer freeway lanes, or, worse, push commuters onto surface streets while making life easier for those who can afford the toll.

If a pricing plan is going to be used to manage traffic, viable and practical options to get from point A to point B must be integral to the effort.

Why not simply take over all carpool lanes, partition them off and put trains in them? Because Caltrans already has the right of way, we could lay down the track and build the necessary infrastructure over the next five years to move many more people than just about any other option available.

Once people have viable options, one of the other lanes could be redesigned as a three- or four-person carpool lane or as a toll lane.

It’s all about capacity, options and incentives.

Robert Kahn

Los Angeles

I find Steve Lopez’s vision of toll lanes on Los Angeles-area freeways an elitist’s dream. For many reasons -- some logistical, others ethical -- this is the wrong thing to do.

The most obvious logistical reason is that we are a city of working commuters from home to job, not one of primarily airport to civic center travel.

Among the ethical reasons is the fact that we have already paid for the freeways through state and exorbitant gasoline taxes.

An $8 surcharge to use a “freeway” will crowd the poor onto the remaining lanes no matter how many occupants they have in their vehicles and create a taxpayer-built express lane for the affluent.

Steven Johnson

Redondo Beach

Let’s thwart the foul smell of manipulation and smother this effort, no matter the lofty promises.

Turning carpool lanes -- many of which are busting at their seams with vehicles already -- into toll lanes will provide no tangible benefit to the average commuter and certainly won’t relieve congestion.

The ploy behind this effort, as always, is to create a source of revenue.

Once the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has planted this money tree of the evergreen variety, it will be nurtured to grow large and healthy so that it may provide fertile ground to the singular goal of yielding ever more cash at the expense of all of us.

Michael E. White

Burbank