Add more lanes to a freeway and you’ve got more cars and more traffic. But what if those two more lanes are carpool lanes?
The question comes up as CALTRANS closes its carpool lanes on I-15 in San Diego this week so it can add two more, which will be open a week from today.
One thing to keep in mind: Carpool lanes in San Diego are actually called express lanes because they aren't restricted to vehicles with two or more passengers. Solo drivers can use them if they pay a fee.
This has caused some clever people to call them “Lexus lanes.” It also means the lanes don't reduce vehicles trips, or greenhouse gas emissions, as much as they would if they were only for high-occupancy vehicles (HOVs).
Gustavo Dellarda is the CALTRANS corridor director for I-15. He can’t say whether two additional express lanes will reduce or increase car trips on I-15.
“But I can tell you that 80 percent of the vehicles on the express lanes have more than one person in the vehicle,” he said.
Elyse Lowe is director of Move San Diego, which lobbies for mass transit and pedestrian safety. She said the downside of express lanes is they don’t have as great an impact on traffic as HOV lanes. The upside is they raise money, through fees, for maintenance and mass transit.
“It's good to have some kind of revenue to pay for the maintenance of those. But at the same time we need to never, ever, ever allow congestion in those express lanes due to single-occupancy vehicles,” said Lowe.
Simply reducing congestion on freeways can reduce greenhouse emissions. Dellarda said if congestion becomes a problem, CALTRANS will make the managed lanes on I-15 HOV-only.
