A bill sailing through the Legislature to allow hybrid cars into
High Occupancy Vehicle lanes would dash Californians best hopes for
congestion relief, say two public-interest groups from opposite
sides of the political spectrum. Even the bill’s authors admit it
may cause significant HOV lane breakdowns throughout the state.
A bill sailing through the Legislature to allow hybrid cars into High Occupancy Vehicle lanes would dash Californians best hopes for congestion relief, say two public-interest groups from opposite sides of the political spectrum. Even the bill’s authors admit it may cause significant HOV lane breakdowns throughout the state.
All this, for a bill that will not achieve its goal of boosting demand for hybrids, since the permits have to be limited to 75,000 vehicles, not much different than what is expected to be sold in any case. The bill’s final hurdle is coming up today.
Letting 75,000 hybrids use HOV lanes would quickly fill up those lanes, discouraging people from using carpools, vanpools and express buses. Congested HOV lanes would also dash hopes for “managing traffic on these lanes using electronic value pricing, which allows solo drivers to use the lanes for a variable fee, escaping congestion when they most need to.
Joining forces in opposing AB 2628 are the progressive Transportation & Land Use Coalition (TALC), a collaboration of more than 90 environmental and social justice groups in the Bay Area, and the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation, generally considered on the right. The bill undercutd plans to unveil regionwide express bus service in the Bay Area by 2006. The Bay Area just voted for higher tolls to pay for a fast, reliable regional express bus system. If this bill passes these buses could be going 5 mph and we will waste $400 million.
Plans to convert HOV lanes to managed HOT lanes like those in Orange County (SR 91) and San Diego (I-15) would be undercut if the HOV lanes are filled up with hybrids. HOT lanes offer the potential to generate millions in toll revenue to improve our transportation system. It’s crazy to give away this valuable space to people who’d be buying hybrids anyway. San Diego is planning an extensive system of managed lanes, with toll revenues planned to support bus rapid transit. Studies of other HOT lanes projects are under way in Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
The bill would authorize up to 75,000 permits for hybrid access, at a time when auto companies plan to introduce 28 hybrid models over the next four years. The Air Resources Board estimates that 55,000 such vehicles will be on California highways by 2007, with or without the HOV incentive.
There are a number of other problems with the idea.
Unnecessary: Hybrids are already selling like hotcakes, with eight month waiting lists and in some cases at premium prices. There is a federal tax break for buying hybrids, and auto companies are enthusiastically introducing 26 new models over the next three years. Further incentives would simply reward people who already own or plan to buy a hybrid car.
Unfair: According to the Air Resources Board, 19 vehicles qualify as Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicles, 90 percent cleaner than the average new 2004 car. Yet none of these super-clean cars would be able to use HOV lanes, only the favored hybrids.
Unenforceable: Eligible vehicles would be identified by a small decal. But that’s an open invitation to cheating. Today’s Toyota Prius looks distinctly different from non-hybrid cars, but nearly all the 28 new hybrid cars and SUVs being introduced over the next four years will be identical to cars with conventional gasoline engines. Hybrid is rapidly becoming just an engine option, not a different body style. This presents the Highway Patrol with an enormous enforcement problem, as people with look-alike cars will be strongly tempted to cheatand a small decal is hard to spot at freeway speeds.
But by far the worst aspect of AB 2628 is its destruction of California’s HOV system, the largest in the country. With additions planned over the next 20 years, especially with enhanced funding from tolls, these largely unlinked lanes could be knit together into seamless networks of high-speed express lanes, giving drivers a real congestion-relief alternative and providing the equivalent of exclusive busways for regional express bus service. But opening up the HOV lanes to a flood of politically popular new vehicles will destroy this bright prospect, say Cohen and Poole.
While Caltrans is theoretically allowed to “remove” individual HOV lanes from the hybrid mandate if they are extremely congested, they have made it clear that they have no intention of doing so. The bill’s authors concede that it might have disastrous impacts on California’s transportation system.
One provision of the bill says that after issuing at least 50,000 of the permits if Caltrans find that “significant high occupancy vehicle lane breakdown has occurred throughout the state, the department shall stop issuing those decals. To determine “significant break down they will consider factors such as whether the HOV lanes are going slower than the average speed of the adjacent mixed-flow lanes. Even then, they could continue issuing permits.
This provision of significant breakdown clearly demonstrates just how dangerous this bill is. They are accepting the fact that they may take away people’s only chance to get out of traffic, all this for what is essentially an empty, symbolic gesture to sell a few more hybrids. This bill defines the adage good politics, bad policy. This bill has tremendous political momentum with Gov. Schwarzenegger, Treasurer Angelides and the Natural Resources Defense Council backing it.
The best result would be for the Legislature to simply let this measure die. But failing that, amend the bill to require Caltrans to remove HOV lanes that become clogged.
Stuart Cohen is the excutive director at the Transportation and Land Use Coalition based in Oakland. Readers interested in writing a guest column should contact editor Walt Glines at [email protected] or 408-779-4106.
