Carpool Lane Congestion
* The Orange County Transportation Authority’s plan to relieve carpool lane congestion by charging vehicles with fewer than three occupants for using the lane, including solo drivers (July 29), deserves comment.
Existing carpool lanes can appear to be overcrowded when in fact they are not because of the jams that occur when fast-moving vehicles in the carpool lane seek to exit into adjacent slow-moving lanes of regular traffic.
The best solution, of course, would be to abandon the carpool lane experiment and open the lanes to all vehicles, thereby smoothing out traffic flow.
As an alternative, simply abandon the entry and exit points and allow drivers to enter and leave car pool lanes anywhere they wish. This would preserve the concept of the carpool lane so that transportation bureaucrats would not have to admit that carpool lanes have been a mistake and a failure.
THOMAS A. SCHENACH
Huntington Beach
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