High Occupancy Vehicle Lanes

The days may be numbered for hybrid car owners who have enjoyed traveling solo in California's carpool lanes. The stickers granting that privilege to 85,000 hybrid owners are set to expire Jan. 1, 2011. There are proposals in Sacramento to extend the deadline, but they would exclude most of the vehicles that originally qualified for the program, such as the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic hybrid and the original Honda Insight. "We're bummed," said Cathy Margolin, president of the 250-member Orange County Prius Club.

Construction began Friday on the last leg of a carpool lane for the northbound San Diego Freeway through western Los Angeles, a $1-billion project designed to ease congestion on one of the busiest traffic corridors in the nation.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority on Thursday set the tolls that for the first time will allow solo motorists to drive in carpool lanes on two of the region's most congested freeways. Los Angeles' first experiment with so-called congestion-based pricing is slated to begin in late 2010 or early 2011.

Tim Wolfe lives in West Covina, in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley. As an electronics salesman, his territory is the distant San Fernando Valley, miles to the west. By his own count, Wolfe spends about half of his workday in his car. The other half is spent with customers.

The federal government has offered Los Angeles County $213 million to convert carpool lanes to special, congestion-pricing toll lanes on three freeways, according to county government documents. The freeways involved first would be short stretches of Interstates 10 and 210 in the San Gabriel Valley, and then, if any money remained, part of the 110 south of downtown Los Angeles. The federal funding, however, would come to L.A.

Declaring that it's time to try something new in the war on traffic, Los Angeles County transportation officials unanimously voted Thursday to make some motorists pay tolls to use carpool lanes on two local freeways. If all goes as planned, tolls for those lanes will take effect on the 10 and 210 freeways in the San Gabriel Valley by the end of 2010. On the 210, it is expected that tolls will be implemented between Pasadena and the 605 Freeway.

Hybrid owners hoping to drive solo in the fast lane are out of luck. The state Department of Motor Vehicles announced Friday that it had issued all 85,000 carpool lane stickers available to hybrid drivers under a state law passed in 2005. Spokesman Steve Haskins said the agency received 700 applications more than the limit for the $8 stickers, which expire in 2010.

Rushing to beat an impending state cap on permits that allow the drivers of hybrid cars to drive solo in carpool lanes, William Ha sent in his paperwork soon after purchasing his Toyota Prius last month. But he was too late. So many people had applied for the permits that officials ran out before they received Ha's. "It was heartbreaking," said the 24-year-old financial analyst, who commutes from Fountain Valley to downtown Los Angeles each weekday.

Whether to allow solo Orange County freeway motorists to drive in carpool lanes during off-peak hours will be decided by local Caltrans officials rather than those in Sacramento. That increases the possibility that solo drivers will be able to use the carpool lanes, as they can in parts of the Bay Area and Sacramento, Carolyn Cavecche, chairwoman of the Orange County Transportation Authority, said Monday. County Supervisor Bill Campbell first made the request about a year ago.

A California lawmaker hopes to force illegal solo drivers out of carpool lanes by taking a page from the parents' handbook: He plans to use shame and guilt. State Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria) has introduced a bill that would encourage motorists to report carpool cheats. Those complaints would warrant warnings -- not tickets. Maldonado believes that solo drivers would be less tempted to break the law if they knew extra eyes were watching them.