City of Los Angeles to Open Up Carpool Lanes – for a Fee
In an effort to improve traffic on the city’s busy freeways, the transportation board of Los Angeles has approved a move to allow single occupancy cars to drive in selected carpool lanes for a charge. The change will not be round the clock, but rather only opening up carpool lanes during rush hours. The board hopes this will cause an increase in off-peak driving, although this may be hard to see if these drivers were already willing to drive at rush hour in the regular lanes.
Drivers wishing to take advantage of the new rules will have to get a transponder that will track when the driver uses the carpool lane and automatically charges the fee to their credit card.
The exact price to be charged is still to be determined. Estimates vary by country, with Orange County looking at between $1.20 to $10, and between $0.50 to $4.00 in San Diego. These lanes will remain free to people carpooling with three or more passengers in the car.
The money raised through these fees will be used to improve the state’s public transit systems. The expected benefits for global warming come in two ways. First, this is expected to improve the flow of traffic, which will reduce the amount of time people are sitting in their cars idling on a busy free way and spitting carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Second, improvements to the mass transit system should help lure more people into using them, taking more cars off the road and helping these individuals to reduce their carbon footprint. How successful the fee is for creating either of these benefits remains to be seen.
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