Carpool Lanes

Officials broke ground on what will be Los Angeles County's first freeway toll lanes, taking a gamble that drivers will be willing to pay significant sums to avoid rush-hour traffic. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and other officials on Wednesday hailed the project as a major improvement to L.A.'s clogged freeway system. Officials plan to convert a total of 25 miles of existing carpool lanes on the 10 and 110 freeways into high-occupancy toll lanes. Carpools and buses will be able to use the lanes for free, while solo drivers will pay up to $1.40 a mile during peak rush-hour traffic.

Their solo days are done Re "Hybrids? In the past lane," July 2 Some drivers have the misguided impression that a carpool lane is "the fast lane," and they routinely break the speed limit. I don't, and I don't care for the aggressive driving of those who do. Recently one driver was able to bully me (by tailing me) all the way up to 85 miles per hour before I was finally able to exit the lane and let him blow past. Had I kept increasing my speed, I have no doubt he would have matched whatever I did and kept the same dangerous distance from me. Speed-limit enforcement has been very lax in recent years, and if the state were serious about its budget woes, increased enforcement would be an ideal place to start generating more revenue.

The elites of California freeways — carpoolers and hybrid owners — were adjusting to diverging fortunes as new rules of the road brought better commutes for some and worse commutes for others. Beginning Friday, owners of hybrid cars were kicked out of carpool lanes and forced to crawl to work with the rest of the solo drivers. Though the change is lamented by hybrid owners, some carpoolers are cheering. Transportation experts say the shift could reduce traffic in carpool lanes at a time when some of the lanes are becoming more congested.

Life in the fast lane is coming to an end for hybrid drivers. After a six-year run, the yellow stickers that allow owners of about 85,000 older hybrid vehicles to drive solo in carpool lanes are expiring July 1 — this time for good. The day of reckoning has been postponed twice before, but now that hybrids are popular and the carpool lanes are getting jammed, the Department of Motor Vehicles said there won't be any additional extensions. "It's done," said Jaime Garza, a DMV spokesman.

Advising Sarah Palin Re "Behind Sarah Palin, a low-profile but high-impact aide," Column One, March 17 Sarah Palin's choice of Rebecca Mansour as a top advisor is surprising. Mansour lives in "Sodom and Gomorrah" (Hollywood), was a fundraiser for an enemy-infested university (Harvard) and wrote a short film with a questionable R-rated title ("Something Between Us"). Sounds like a tainted liberal to me. Phyllis Landis Ocean Hills, Calif. This article makes me wonder: Can't political candidates think for themselves?

Welcome to thrift Re "Got knocked down, got up, and then got better," Opinion, March 13 Apparently the irony is lost on Ann Brenoff, who comes off as quite smug over discovering thrift and saving all by herself. She relegates those of us who are employed to the status of clueless voyeurs, blithely overspending while she valiantly sees the light, bartering and cutting coupons. But the fact that she still shops at Macy's, One-Day Sale or no, and still eats at Subway tips one off to the fact that she's a recent convert to this exciting notion of frugality.

For the most part, the contract between citizens and the government is a simple, straightforward one: Citizens pay taxes, and in return, the government provides services. In most cases, those services are available to all citizens regardless of how little they pay in taxes. Whether you're a billionaire or a burger flipper, you generally get the same police response when you dial 911 and the same right to cavort in municipal parks or drive on the freeways. Of course, that's not always how it works.

An experiment to charge solo drivers to use speedier carpool lanes on two of Los Angeles' most congested freeways has hit renewed opposition in Congress as two influential lawmakers ? a Republican and a Democrat ? say the plan is unfair to taxpayers and would create a two-tier transportation system for rich and poor. Rep. Gary G. Miller of Diamond Bar, the senior California Republican on the House Transportation Committee, said the toll of up to $1.40 a mile during peak periods "absolutely infuriates me. " Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles)

Motorists entering one of the busiest gateways between Los Angeles and Orange counties will be hit hard over the next three years by a $277-million freeway project that requires a series of road closures, including one of the main portals to a veterans' hospital and a major state university. The work will be done in two segments, and lane and street closures are to be sequenced to minimize some of the traffic impacts. When completed in 2014, the so-called West County Connector project built by the Orange County Transportation Authority will create a seamless link between carpool lanes and ease rush-hour bottlenecks on the 405, 22 and 605 freeways.