Diamond Lanes

So Caltrans officials want to add more diamond lanes (June 30). Perfect. I'm sure they've spent millions studying the situation, but apparently failed drive a road like the 10 Freeway, eastbound from downtown, during rush hour. Had they, they would have seen bumper-to-bumper traffic barely moving next to an empty diamond lane, the typical pattern. Caltrans hasn't figured out, or refuses to admit, that most people's jobs, geography and schedules won't allow them to car-pool. So it refuses to do the one thing it could do to improve traffic flow: open the diamond lanes to regular traffic.

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.

I would like very much to support Gov. George Deukmejian's highway improvement program as outlined in his recent speech in Irvine. However, I can not support his program as long as the additional freeway lanes are required to be diamond lanes. I realize that the governor must rely on information from those supposed to be expert on this subject. However, in this case he is being isolated from the facts. In all instances where diamond lanes have been added to freeways, accident rates increase, as with the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Garret Anderson is heading home and he doesn't know what to think. When the Dodgers visit the Angels for the start of the Freeway Series on Friday night, Anderson will be returning to Angel Stadium for the first time since he parted ways with the club with which he spent the first 14 years of his major league career. The Angels declined Anderson's $12-million option after the 2008 season, starting a sequence of events that led him to the Atlanta Braves last year and the Dodgers this spring.

Special diamond traffic lanes to promote carpooling would be banned in California by Jan. 1, 1989, under legislation that has been introduced in the Assembly. "Diamond lanes don't alleviate congestion--they perpetuate it," Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), said Friday in a statement announcing the proposal. "Diamond lanes increase the risk of accidents."

An environmental group announced Tuesday that it has taken the first step toward suing the state to force construction of a car-pool lane on the heavily congested Ventura Freeway in the San Fernando Valley and on about 60 other miles of Southern California freeways. If successful, the suit by the Coalition for Clean Air could delay Ventura Freeway widening for a year or more, state Department of Transportation officials said.

The late Michael Harrington, who examined the roots of American inequality more closely than anyone before or since, loved nothing better than to end the day with a few beers and a good argument. On one such occasion, he raised his glass, looked at the reporter across the table and said, "The great thing about beer is that it's one of the few good things in life that the rich do not begrudge the poor."

Re "A Park With a Powerful Spell," July 17 I remember an interview with Walt Disney (circa 1962) in which he talked about his pride in the monorail and his hopes that the system would be eventually expanded to his original intent, which was to cover Orange County and L.A. with a net of overhead rails. The expansion would allow Disneyland to expand into the areas reserved for parking, with the public parking at the outlying stations and riding to the park (and to the beaches, work, church, airports, etc.)

More nonsense. Put big money into road repair (Feb. 19). Open diamond lanes to hybrid vehicles (Commentary, Feb. 19). Why does Southern California have the most congested and poorest freeways and roads? Not because the roads are not kept up! Not because diamond lanes are not open to single-driver hybrid vehicles. I've never seen diamond lanes that are not fully congested when the main road is also fully congested. The answer is a no-brainer. Mass transit? Sure, but that would cost hundreds of billions of dollars for quality light rail and subways.

California's "diamond lanes" -- designed in the early 1970s to encourage carpooling, reduce traffic congestion and cut air pollution -- have, by most measures, been a great success. Today, there are 1,112 miles of diamond lanes in California, and in Los Angeles alone they're used by about 700,000 people each day. But rather than rest on that success, it's time to take the next step against pollution by opening diamond lanes to single- occupant gas-electric hybrids.

I don't know how I missed them, the Kiss 'N' Ride signs at various rail stations in the L.A. area. Being quite interested in the subject, and the possibility, of kisses, I asked around and was told these were signs posted at short-term parking where one might drop off one's spouse or very good friend, sending them to work with a kiss.

Gov. Gray Davis has signed legislation that will once again require a minimum of three people in vehicles using the El Monte Busway diamond lane during peak commuting hours. Davis signed the law on Monday. Transit officials on Wednesday were hoping to have the new minimum requirements in place by the end of the month and to see an end to delays that have plagued the San Bernardino Freeway busway since the beginning of the year.

Re "Analyst Urges Overhaul of State's Carpool Lanes," Jan. 9: The logic behind the concept of carpool lanes is to reduce overall congestion on the freeways. Two or more potential drivers in the same car mean only one car instead of several cars on that freeway. To encourage this we grant these car-poolers special lanes, etc. This would seem logical enough. However, this idea only works if all persons in that car are drivers who otherwise would be in their own individual cars. It defies logic to include individuals with small children or other nondrivers in this privileged group.

In a report likely to generate renewed debate about the merits of carpool lanes in Orange County and throughout the state, a new legislative analysis concludes that California's 925 miles of the restricted lanes are underused and have not persuaded drivers to change their habits.