Car-Pool Lanes Add to Growing O.C. Network : Commuting: The 20 miles on Orange Freeway will open to traffic June 12, a year early and under budget.

For 16 long years, Don Exelby has been car-pooling to work at Beckman Instruments in Fullerton, creeping up the congested Orange Freeway and longing for the day a special lane existed just for ride-sharers like him.

On June 12 he and his co-workers will get their wish: The $25-million car-pool lanes on the Orange Freeway will open to traffic a year ahead of schedule and millions of dollars under budget.

“I’m looking forward to it,” said Exelby, of San Clemente. “I’m sure it will help motivate more people to try car-pooling.”

The Orange Freeway project--the first to be completed under Orange County’s half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements--is the latest addition to what promises to be a vast network of car-pool lanes in Orange County.

The new project adds 20 miles of car-pool lanes to the 72 miles on the Costa Mesa and San Diego freeways that already make Orange County the car-pool-lane capital of California. By 2000, every freeway in Orange County will have car-pool lanes, with the possible exception of the Garden Grove Freeway, running the total up to 181 miles.

“This is a tremendous feat when you consider that six years ago we had nothing,” said Caltrans operations specialist Joe El-Harake.

But not everyone is as thrilled as El-Harake, or as confident as Exelby that the special lanes will produce car-pool converts.

Despite millions of dollars invested in more than 40 car-pool-lane projects throughout the United States and Canada, critics point to a steady decline in ride-sharing since the end of the Arab oil embargo of 1973. The 1990 census, for example, showed that 13.7% of Orange County commuters car-pool, down from 16.1% in 1980. There’s been a similar decline statewide and across the United States.

Drivers for Highway Safety, a small Orange County group strongly critical of both car-pool lanes and mass transit, calls the special lanes a “boondoggle” because they divert money from other badly needed freeway projects that would benefit the vast majority of commuters.

The special lanes, reserved for vehicles carrying two or more people, are expected to help reduce air pollution, energy consumption and traffic congestion. But studies to determine whether car-pool lanes deliver these benefits are inconclusive.

For example, researchers at USC and the University of California generally agree that right now, car-pool lanes are a very expensive way to achieve relatively small increases in ride-sharing. But they also say that more of the special lanes, coupled with employer incentives such as free parking or bonuses, may turn things around.

While the research continues and the debate rages, construction of car-pool lanes is moving ahead.

That’s because several powerful agencies--including the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Southern California Assn. of Governments (SCAG)--believe that car-pool lanes are essential if Southern California is to meet clean air and congestion management laws.

SCAG, a regional planning agency that influences transportation funding priorities, rejects virtually any major freeway improvement proposal that does not include car-pool lanes. And Congress and the Bush Administration have adopted policies that make car-pool projects eligible for a greater percentage of federal matching funds than other road projects.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Andrew Card told The Times last week that the low numbers of car-poolers haven’t shaken his faith in the usefulness of car-pool lanes.

“I think they’re definitely part of the solution,” Card said. Declines in car-pooling may reflect the recent recession, he added. And “maybe companies aren’t providing the right incentives.”

Manuel Puentes, a government affairs officer for the Automobile Club of Southern California, was initially critical of Orange County’s plans to build car-pool lanes. But no longer.

“We’re encouraged by the fact that we’re able to provide the additional capacity that the freeways in Orange County need,” Puentes said. “Of course, we’d like to see other freeway improvements too.”

Proponents argue that car-pooling will catch on as air quality regulations make solo driving more onerous and the completion of the car-pool-lane network makes ride-sharing more appealing.

Genevieve Giuliano, an associate professor of urban planning at USC, co-authored a 1990 report on the Costa Mesa Freeway that showed that installation of car-pool lanes there resulted in a 3% to 4% shift from solo driving to ride-sharing.

But Giuliano said the low figure is still significant, considering that the car-pool lanes on the Costa Mesa Freeway were relatively new and aren’t yet connected directly to car-pool lanes on any other freeway.

A recent spot-check of firms attempting to comply with air quality regulations showed that car-pooling has increased significantly at those sites, Giuliano said. Thus, society as a whole may not be taken with car-pooling, but it can work on a localized, facility-by-facility basis.

But the jury is still out.

At the University of California’s Institute of Transportation Studies, for example, researchers are following the car-pooling habits of a small sample of commuters, including 1,000 workers from the Irvine Business Center.

“Car-pool lanes are not the most effective incentives to get people to shift away from solo driving,” said David Brownstone of UCI, where some of the institute’s research is being conducted. “Our findings suggest that other incentives will work better, even when people don’t have a car-pool lane at their disposal.”

Since construction of car-pool lanes is expensive, Brownstone said, their cost-effectiveness is doubtful when compared to simply “bribing” motorists with ride-sharing bonuses and other incentives.

So far, Brownstone said, the study suggests that combining car-pool lanes with free parking, a financial bonus and a guaranteed ride home if you miss your car-pool ride will result in an 18% shift from solo driving to ride-sharing.

The existence of a car-pool lane by itself can be expected to produce only a 2.6% shift among the workers who always drive alone now, according to the study.

Though Drivers for Highway Safety is a vocal opponent of car-pool lanes, it has not struck a chord with the public here. The organization has had more success in Los Angeles County, where it led a successful grass-roots effort to kill a car-pool-lane project on the Ventura Freeway in the west San Fernando Valley.

A small organization led by professional engineers, Drivers for Highway Safety has developed elaborate mathematical “proof” that car-pool lanes don’t work.

Greatly simplified, the group’s analysis shows that the benefits achieved with installation of a car-pool lane are more than offset by its costs to other motorists, both in terms of additional congestion in general-purpose lanes and added insurance premiums because of accidents caused by the weaving that occurs between lanes.

“If anybody would take the time to look at our data,” says group member Jack Mallinckrodt, “they would see that we’re right. . . . So far, nobody has successfully challenged it.”

Some limited support for critics of car-pool lanes comes from a mathematical model developed by three UC Berkeley researchers who concluded that adding a new car-pool lane to the Santa Monica Freeway, for example, wouldn’t result in drastic changes “in either the short or the longer term” if reducing travel times, fuel consumption and emissions are the goals.

That’s partly because car-pool lanes can fill up quickly during peak traffic periods, offsetting the time-savings and performance benefits they delivered when first opened to traffic.

But Caltrans and Orange County Transportation Authority officials take a dim view of such analyses.

Caltrans’ El-Harake, for example, argues that even if car-pool lanes are congested, they have still diverted cars that would otherwise be in the general-purpose lanes, freeing up space for solo drivers who were avoiding peak-hour traffic on the freeway altogether.

“The problem we face,” El-Harake said, “is that any new lane fills up during peak hours. The lane will be full, believe me. So why not fill it with more people in fewer vehicles?”

That’s exactly what has happened on the Costa Mesa Freeway, El-Harake said. The car-pool lane has lost much of its allure, especially in the late afternoon, because it’s packed with commuters. Travel times for car-poolers thus have increased. But it’s still carrying more people--if not more cars--than any adjacent general-purpose lane during peak hours.

In the final analysis, El-Harake said, current and upcoming anti-smog and congestion-management regulations can’t work if people don’t have alternatives to solo driving.

“We can debate (car-pool lanes) all you want,” El-Harake said, “but you need something to encourage ride-sharing or it will never have a chance.”

Typical Peak Hour Car-Pool Lane Vehicle Volume San Diego Freeway (I-405) Northbound (6-7 p.m.): 1,435 Southbound (5-6 p.m.): 1,531 Recent 24-hour period (both directions combined): 23,273 Initial daily usage (both directions combined): 14,037 Violation rate (of two or more occupancy rule): 4% Costa Mesa Freeway (55) Northbound (4-5 p.m.): 1,714 Southbound (7-8 a.m.): 1,453 Recent 24-hour period (both directions combined): 27,863 Initial daily usage (both directions combined): 12,272 Violation rate (occupancy rule): 5% Systemwide general purpose lane: 1,500 to 1,700 vehicles per hour average Source: Caltrans, U.S. Census

Car-Pool Network Growing

The scheduled opening of the Orange Freeway car-pool lanes on June 12 will add 20 miles to the 82 that already make Orange County the car-pool-lane capital of California. By 2000, car-pool lanes will be available to commuters on all Orange County freeways with the probable exception of the Garden Grove Freeway. Commuters Who Car-Pool

Orange County California U.S. 1980 16.1% 15.9% 13.4% 1990 13.7 14.6 19.4%

Source: state Department of Transportation, Orange County Transportation Authority