CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2020, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FREEWAY TOLL LANES: THE
BAIT-AND-SWITCH EXPANDS”
Diamond
lanes for the rich. Lexus lanes. A classic bait-and-switch. Social engineering
on a massive scale. Taking the free out of freeways.
Republican
officials working for then-President George W. Bush in 2008 didn’t apply any of
those epithets to their plan to charge tolls and allow solo drivers into
carpool lanes on freeways in some of the most crowded parts of California.
Rather,
they dangled hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives before state and
local officials to get them to adopt this benighted idea – and the locals bit,
big time. It started with a grant of more than $200 million about 10 years ago
from Bush’s Department of Transportation, which turned existing carpool lanes
into toll lanes on the Interstate 10 freeway in eastern Los Angeles County. The
idea has spread, even though it does not really work.
As a
result, many thousands of California drivers put transponders in their cars and
get charged from 25 cents per mile on up for driving in lanes once occupied by
carpoolers only – the result being that carpool lanes in many places are now as
crowded as all the others.
Now an
enormous expansion of toll lanes is in its early stages. This idea has three
goals: Allow toll lane drivers to move at faster speeds than they do now. Make
other lanes so congested that drivers switch to different modes of transport,
where available. And convert as many existing carpool lanes to toll ones as
possible in order to produce more and more revenue to finance ever more toll
lanes.
The
biggest new push is about to come in the 405 Freeway corridor between West Los
Angeles and the vast San Fernando Valley portion of Los Angeles, a distance of
about 10 miles of almost constant congestion despite California’s recent slow
growth, which state officials say cost Los Angeles County about 96,000
residents over the last year.
More
than $5 billion in local sales tax revenue is already available for this
project, which would try to find space for two new toll lanes in the existing
right-of-way, along with building a new, parallel north-south light-rail line,
either on a monorail or in a multi-billion-dollar tunnel. With the Trump
Administration not exactly in a giving mood toward California, the extra $4
billion to $9 billion this project would need likely must come from borrowing
against future road tolls.
So
drivers would essentially pay tolls to finance a plan aiming to get them out of
their cars. All this because city planners – ignoring what happened when Los
Angeles hosted the Olympic Games in 1984 – expect vast amounts of traffic
during the upcoming 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Never
mind that traffic was at historic lows during the ’84 event, partly because
thousands of Angelenos went elsewhere during those Games to avoid massive
traffic that never materialized.
Toll
lanes are in the offing in many other places, too. Orange County planners
contemplate new ones on four freeways there, with plans for new lanes rather
than converting existing carpool ones. Toll lanes are also expected on several
San Francisco Bay area freeways, including the 101 and 880 freeways, where
carpool lanes would most likely be converted.
It’s
all part of a steady “We know best” approach by city, state and county
planners, who have never taken a public vote on toll lanes, first sold to
voters as being reserved for carpools only, with tolls not mentioned. That
makes all this a classic bait and switch.
No one
knows whether the trend will lead to a public revolt on the scale of what
happened in the mid-1970s, when then-Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration
converted regular traffic lanes on the I-10 Santa Monica Freeway in West Los
Angeles to carpools only. The outcry forced the state’s transportation director
to resign and the lanes reverted. There are still no carpool lanes on that
stretch of freeway.
Every
time the public speaks on this issue, it opposes new toll lanes or anything
else aimed at driving them out of their cars. But so far, there have been no
rebellions at the ballot box. Does Gov. Gavin Newsom really want to bet on that
passivity continuing?
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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