Any Inconvenience for a Carpool Lane

From the Register website this a.m.:  'Orange Crush' road work to close 22 Freeway tonight.  In part,

Late-night journeys through the "Orange Crush" tonight will take a little patience.  For the next couple of nights, there will be closures to allow construction crews to work on the freeway’s $549.6 [up from $493] million widening project.

And kudos to OCTA Directors Curt Pringle and Carolyn Cavecche for ripping Caltrans a new one at last Monday's Board Meeting when they took apart Deputy District Director for concrete and paint James Pinheiro and his proposed two-year study proposal for its lack of value, its presumption that OC drivers might not understand a new and revolutionary way for entering and exiting these ridiculous carpool lanes, and being "unprepared" to look into ALSO opening up these wastes of resources to EVERYONE's use during non-peak hours.  Cavecche also said she questioned these lanes altogether, and I suspect if she was running the OCTA Board now instead of the bearded one from Buena Park, something positive might actually happen.

And to his credit, Director Mark Rosen suggested eliminating carpools lanes and TESTING how that might improve overall traffic flow.  One damn good idea there.  How about two years of THAT, Caltrans??

Comments

Sure, what a great idea! The 22 will just be like the Santa Monica Freeway. Bigger parking lot for everyone.

[KSA]

During peak hours even the carpool lane is often bumper to bumper traffice on most major highways. Any improvement would be marginal. If you really want some significant improvement you would do well to get the County's toll roads opened up to the masses. If OCTA bought out TCA and opened up the 241, 261, 133, and 73 to the masses you would have a dramatic increase in the flow of traffic now instead of 5-10 years from now. I honestly don't think the 91 expess lanes make much sense either considering it just creates gridlock near the entrances for people tyring to jump in and out of the left lanes.

[Bladerunner]

The prudent approach is to open up the car pool lanes to all users in non-peak hours. It's done elsewhere, why not here?

And then allow people the right to go in and out of them at anytime...

Carolyn Cavechhe is a rising star in the OC GOP. She's bright, affable and true conservative.

[Gridlock]

Has an Expressway ever been considered for the 91Frwy to the 15 Frwy?? An expressway with an entrance on the 91 and exiting on the 15 would help with all traffic issues into and out of Corona. Anyone have any comments???

[calwatch]

The prudent approach is to look at studies that have shown that lowering carpool restrictions without study are a complete disaster (and by the way, it was a Dem, Hilda Solis, who proposed this stupid bill). Read the summary of the report here. And this was just to drop the carpool lane restriction from 3 to 2. Imagine if you drop it altogether. Expect any legislator's phone that proposes that to have their phone ring off the hook, and the feds to take swift action to withhold federal highway funds since removing carpool lanes puts the metro area out of conformity, violating the Clean Air Act.

[Lurk]

Apples and oranges, Cal. You're referencing a bus lane that's specifically designed to terminate in a single place, not unlike the Metrolink carrying commuters on its own right-of-way into LA.

Why wouldn't a legislator's phone also ring off the hook if HOV lanes were eliminated, freeing them for EVERYONE'S use (especially since everyone pays for them), releasing that resource during all hours? Your research doesn't reference the State of NJ which told the Feds it was eliminating HOV lanes, yet they were able to keep their funding.

Caltrans and the bureaucrats are too gutless to eliminate an HOV lane just to see what might happen -- and what would be the harm in that -- that it might actually relieve congestion? God forbid.

The other thing that amazes me about these studies is that one never sees any figures on the number of vehicles not driven due to ride sharing, and the resultant savings in fuel and costs. Soccer moms in the HOV lanes aren't what they're built for, and we haven't got the luxury of dedicating pavement for buses that (as they OCTA has surveyed) the middle class won't ride.

[calwatch]

New Jersey's carpool lanes were woefully underused. Orange County's carpool lanes aren't. Here's the federal report on New Jersey. Vehicles per hour in the morning ranges from 330 on I-287 to 900 on I-87, which is abysmal. You'll note on page 15 of the Orange County HOV report that the carpool lanes in Orange County hit at least 1,000 with most carpool lanes substantially exceeding this value. You'll also note the charts in the report that show a consistent flow of carpool lane traffic during the middays and on weekends, thus making useless any move to change the carpool lanes to off peak.

The engineers (and I am one, licensed PE) know that carpool lanes work. They remove some vehicles so traffic can flow better. CalTrans and the feds know this too, which is why they will be reluctant to approve any NJ-style reversions any time soon.

[Brandon]

The other morning, the 91 was jammed as usual except for the car pool lane. As I drove past a woman broken down at the side of the road, a CHP officer was writting a ticket to a driver in the car pool lane. It seems this is their priority.