Dunn to OCTA: “If only all the stupid people just realized how GREAT you are, then they would trust you in all things!”
The second public speaker at Monday’s OCTA highway committee meeting (after Fountain Valley Mayor John Collins’ furious, righteous scolding of OCTA staff for dismissing the official opposition of the six Western cities, which in turn followed OCTA CEO Will Kempton’s lengthy, tendentious presentation extolling the toll lanes option and dismissing the far better Alternative Two) was the fatuous Lucy Dunn of the Orange County Business Council (OCBC.)
Like all the pro-toll-lane speakers – and quite a few popped their heads up at that meeting – she began by lavishing praise on the OCTA in general. It developed into a sort of ceremony whereby you knew where the speaker would end up on the issue. The fame and glory of OCTA spreads across the globe! Transportation agencies everywhere model themselves on OCTA, and gawk in awe at its innovation, competence, and professionalism! There are Third World Countries that wish they were the OCTA! Oh, and Toll Lanes are the wave of the future – please vote for Alternative Three.
But Lucy’s main theme, which was echoed by Toll Trolls on both sides of the dais, was that the public just needed “more education.” If only we all understood that “freeways are not really free,” we would be happy to give up some of our lanes for the larger purpose of OCTA revenue, and maybe even pay those tolls ourselves now and then! Lucy even, generously, offered the services of the OCBC themselves, in the cause of helping “educate” the public on the wonderfulness of toll lanes. Just THINK of all the education OCTA and OCBC could be capable of, once they finally put their heads together!
The Committee Settles Unanimously, Uncomfortably, on Alternative 1
Mayor Quimby already gave you a brief report on this meeting, scooping The Register as usual. As he mentioned, the committee’s non-binding recommendation was for the least expensive, least controversial, Alternative 1 (adding one lane in each direction for $1.3 billion.) It’s also the option that does the least to relieve the traffic in the area; and certain members seemed to think of it as a temporary step toward their coveted toll lanes while others thought of it as a temporary step to the preferable Alternative 2.
This committee of 8 consisted of known Toll Lovers Don Hansen and Paul Glaab, known toll opponents Shawn Nelson and Lorri Galloway (who was out of town), and former ciphers Larry Crandall, Pat Bates, Carolyn Cavecche and Peter Herzog who turned out to oppose Alternative 3 for all the right reasons.
The motion to recommend Alternative 1 was Shawn Nelson‘s, seconded surprisingly by Paul Glaab, who, like Don Hansen, wistfully observed that “the votes are not there” for toll lanes now. Do they expect toll votes to be there at the full meeting this coming Monday? There will be at least three more Toll Lovers there, but I’m thinking Alt 3 is PROBABLY dead; the basic arguments against it (which this blog has been making from the beginning) are too powerful and simple.
As the first Board member to make a statement, Supervisor Pat Bates knocked it out of the park with her observation, echoed later by most of the others, that Toll Lanes would be a betrayal of Measure M2 since they were never mentioned in it, and they would subvert the voters’ trust in OCTA. This sentiment was seconded by Supervisor Nelson when he made his motion. Shawn also brought up the fact that we will soon find out whether federal or state law will force us to turn our 2+ carpool lanes into 3+ carpool lanes, although it’s unclear what bearing that has on which of the three alternatives we should choose.
Orange Mayor and new OC Tax chair Carolyn Cavecche, an opponent of Alternative 3 but not of Toll Lanes in principle, lamented the public relations disaster of the past few months. She explained that the plan to widen the 405 was originally entirely separate from and independent of the idea of creating toll lanes, but that when they morphed together into Alternative 3 they looked a lot like trying to pull a fast one. That made sense.
A couple of things that really struck me, in Kempton’s presentation:
1. We’ve been hearing for months that we have $1.3 billion of our already-paid sales tax money to play with if we don’t add toll revenue, and that Alternative 2, which the people overwhelmingly want, will cost $1.4 billion, and there is just no way we can find that extra $100 million difference.
But one of Kempton’s slides, which he didn’t elaborate on, showed that there are two ways to go about implementing Alternative 2 – the “Design-Bid-Build” option which would cost $1.4 billion, or the “Design-Build” option which would cost only $1.33 billion. I’d like to hear a fuller explanation of what the “Design-Build” option is, but it looks like it would bring the $100 million shortfall down to a much more manageable $30 million. These are the kinds of things that, in their eagerness to steer the Board and the public to Toll Lanes, Kempton and his loyal staff just brush right by and hope remain unnoticed.
and 2. It gets ridiculous the way Kempton exaggerates the virtues and minimizes the faults of Alternative 3, while doing the reverse with Alternative 2. The most infamous example was the “cherrypicking from two different sets of books” that Mayor Quimby documented here back in July. But another example really stood out Monday, when it came to dealing with Seal Beach residents’ resistance to moving/rebuilding their beloved Almond Avenue Sound Wall. According to Kempton on Monday, there are clever ways that the wall problem could be worked around if we build the Alternative 3 Toll Lanes, but if we go with Alternative 2, Seal Beachers are screwed, the Wall will have to go.
Excuse me, that just doesn’t make sense. Why would Alternative 2 be any wider than Alternative 3, up in Seal Beach? (Both adding two lanes in both directions, but Alt 3 creating toll lanes.)
Really, I don’t know if there’s a sensible answer to that, beyond just the fact that OCTA has put all the expertise and ingenuity of their engineering staff into making endless variations of Alternative 3 to make it palatable to the public, while putting NONE of that expertise and ingenuity into making Alternative 2 work. This provokes us to proudly present:
The Orange Juice Option: a “ROBUST Alternative One!”
Combining the ideas of famed traffic engineers myself, Mayor Quimby, Diana Lee Carey, and Supervisor Moorlach, we believe we’ve found a hybrid of alternatives 1 and 2, one that we can afford with our $1.3 billion budget, one that will improve traffic flow nearly as well as the original Alternative 2, while addressing all the biggest concerns of the cities – leaving Costa Mesa’s troubled Fairview Bridge alone, leaving Seal Beach’s Almond Avenue Wall in place, and avoiding the “Seal Beach Snafu” which was written about elsewhere on this blog (i.e., the mess that would’ve happened at the 605 when Alt 2’s new lanes met up with the existing Long Beach Lanes.)
The ticket is this: Two new lanes in both directions between Harbor and the 22. And then, between the 22 and the 605, two lanes going south but ONLY ONE LANE GOING NORTH. No Snafu, fits within the Walls, saves some construction money. Combined with this “Design-Build option,” it should save enough to fit within our budget. We’ll be developing this idea more in the … ugh … three days before Monday’s meeting, and we’ll be presenting it there, and we’re sure that, once OCTA lets go of its Toll Lane Dream, their staff have the brilliance to make this happen!
I wouldn’t call it the Orange Juice Option.
Instead it’s the Obvious Alternative.
The work that is currently being completed on the West County Connectors project is already making major improvements between the 22 and the 605, including carpool lane to carpool lane interchanges between the 605, 405, and 22 which will eliminate some of the weaving problems that have always existed as cars move between the carpool lanes and the general purpose lanes.
It’s almost as if OCTA, in their petulant demand for tolls, has refused to consider options that make more sense both to maximize capacity per dollar spent.
You know what’s the best thing about that plan? You could let the public vote on it — and it would pass in a landslide.
I can see why you might think that the name “Orange Juice Option” could be provocative, though. (At least it’s a less provocative name than the “UnKempton Option.”)
I have a better idea: let’s call it the “Moorlach-Bates-Nelson-Cavecche-Galloway-Crandall-Herzog-Nguyen-Campbell-Dalton-Hennesey Option” — although if one or two of them want their names removed from such a worthy proposal, that’s on them.
(The “Carey Forward Option” would be an even better name, but we know where the votes are.)
How about an alternative to open the carpool lanes up to all taxpayers? Seems especially obvious when one considers that the number of cars removed from the road seems to be few from my observation (i.e. kids in car seats, mom/dad driving together with the kids going on vacation, kids who obviously are not old enough to drive, those who would carpool together regardless of whether there was a carpool lane or not; they don’t remove a car).
The studies I’ve seen indicate that opening up the car pool lane to all users provides the actual maximum throughput, but Federal guidelines prohibit that. Carpools have been notably unsuccessful in the formation of new carpools.
It’s likely that federal rules will soon require carpool lanes will convert to three per vehicle, plus free usage for zero emission vehicles.
The same people who are opposed to toll lanes because we are being charged for something we already paid for should be against exclusive HOV lanes also IMO. I pay the tax yet unless I have a carpooler with me, including my kids in their carseats, I am unable to use the lane that I pay for…craziness.
If it is a federal gov’t issue, then it should be taken up with the federal gov’t by our elected officials. I suppose the alternative is that we don’t go wtih HOV lanes and then we probably lose some federal transportation money- it is held hostage by a system that seems ineffective. We should be trying to get the maximum number of cars through the system that we all pay for. I am all for trying to save gas, emissions, road rubber, etc… as long as it is done smartly and effectively- I just don’t see that carpool lanes are achieving that goal.
But TJ, you do benefit from the carpool lanes, although the benefit is attenuated. Their purpose is to reduce tailpipe emissions that contribute to surface smog and to atmospheric global warming. The theory is that you benefit, as an Orange Countian and as an Earthling, from there being fewer (at least fewer high-polluting) cars on the road. (One benefit of wider freeways is that while there pay be more cars on the freeway — although gas prices may limit that — they’ll be on there for less time. In particular, they’ll spent less time parked on the asphalt in stop and go (or stop and no go) traffic.
The benefit you get from toll lanes, as a non-user, is that people from Newport Coast can get to downtown LA faster than you can and can now vote against expending public funds for repairing the “free” part of the freeway. That’s not quite as enticing.
GD, if you re-read my prior posts you will see that I do not believe there is any sizeable reduction to the number of cars on the road due to the HOV lanes. Quimby I believe also indicates as much through studies he is familiar with. This belief is due to my observations and experience that so many HOV cars are with occupants who are underaged (seriously…a child in a car seat is OK for carpool), families who would carpool anyways, business people who would carpool regardless of HOV lanes, etc… HOV lanes do not seem to be achieving the goal of reducing the number of cars on the road from my experience.
If you take away your presumption that there are fewer cars on the road due to the HOV lanes, then your premise that there is less pollution seems to evaporate other than maybe due to the incremental number of people who bought a certain auto so they could use HOV and they would not have bought one if that benefit was not there. Do our HOV lanes still allow for the prius for example to use HOV? I thought that expired…
As you say, a car that is not in stop and go traffic will pollute less. I would then surmise that we should want to get all cars moving at a consistent and reasonable speed. It seems that this would be accomplished by opening up the HOV lanes. All cars moving at consistent speeds equals less pollution equals benefits to all.
Your same argument on pollution would actually hold true on the toll lanes (as you know, I am not a fan of toll either)…if cars are using the faster toll lanes, then they are not in stop and go traffic and therefore they would pollute less. That is also a benefit to you and everyone else. Even more, if you have three people, you also get to go in the toll lanes as long as you have enough forethought to get a transponder which I would imagine that those who would “plan to carpool” would have one.
I am sure that there is a fallacy in my rationale, so please feel free to point it out. I just find it strange that those who so oppose Tolls due to lack of allowing those who already pay for the roads to use them seem to be in favor of HOV which is also restricting certain groups from using this publicly paid resource.
I said that that was the theory behind it. That theory can, absolutely, be wrong. (My guess is that while many carpools are illegitimate, some are legitimate, and so the truth will be somewhere in the middle.) Either way, though, it is true that diamond-lane access is a way to favor low-emission or zero-emission vehicles, — and that’s not a stupid policy and is does benefit you.
It may be in between no cars removed and all cars you see in the HOV (I am not going to call them Diamond lane’s as I don’t want to insult you btw) lane removed, but I believe that it will be far closer to no cars than all cars.
How is it that HOV lanes have been around much longer than low emission vehicles yet the purpose of them is to encourage their use? I thought that the HOV lanes were to encourage car pooling- which does not seem to have succeeded. I guess if you one goal is not met you keep on trucking and make a new goal. I also doubt that there are a lot of incremental buyers of low/no emission vehicles due to the HOV access (i.e. most buyers would still buy them even w/o HOV access…sure some will but that is likely not the majority). For example, there have only been 1400 of the green stickers even issued through May ’12 with a maximum of just 40K offered. Green stickers are for the Chevy Volt and the Prius Plug-In (not the non-plug in). Buyers of CNG and other pure electrics can also get stickers (the white ones). Again, most of what I see in the HOV is carpoolers with a few cars with stickers. The cars that qualify for the stickers seem to me to be quite expensive also…definitely not for a lot of us budget wise.
If it is such a good policy let it stand on its own…make the HOV lanes purely for the stickered cars and then we will see how much people like the HOV lanes (and likely also see how many more people buy the stickered cars).
Originally, it was about car-pooling; later, the purpose of promoting emission-free vehicles was added.
Stickers plus 3+ seems to be on its way. If that stimulates sales of green and white stickered cars, great.
I was very sad when they stopped allowing on yellow-stickered cars. Then the transmission on my Prius crapped out and I didn’t feel as bad about it.
I’m not insulted at all by being associated with “Diamond lanes.” Any reports that I’ve tried to convince people that my family owns them have been “taken out of context.”
So, carpool = fail, shift the HOV lanes to Low Emission Lanes and hopefully that succeeds. Not sure about that. Seems like Low Emission vehicles are for those who could also probably afford to pay the toll for using the HOV lane.
I know that you are just inherently in favor of them…I get that. However, the rationale that is used to bring down the toll lanes also brings down the HOV lanes EXCEPT that you like HOV.
3+ lanes will increase the number of kids in the car…I could actually see it reducing true “carpooling”. You know how hard it is to coordinate picking up one co-worker to carpool into work, well now coordinate picking up two co-workers. The families leaving for vacation and the dad driving down the freeway with two carseats filled will still benefit…I get it now.
It is amazing how unpopular the Prius has become now that they can’t use yellow stickers in the HOV lane…oh wait, maybe that is not true. All these new cars are tough for those of us who drive our old cars around town to keep up with (yes, probably polluting more- although 25mpg is not bad).
Will Orange County ever have a light rail system?
Goat Hill Junction by OC Model Engineers…close as we get.
*Don’t forget the basic rule of government: Never give them the program that will solve the problem. Make the problem bigger! So, by the time that Alternant 1 is completed, we will be three lanes behind and they lovely folks tauting Alternate 3 or 3A….can simply say: “We told you so!”
Purely an embarrassment to Public Service…these OCTA wonders! Do the Alternate 2 as anyone might suggest and shut up and sit down and do not call Robert Poole at the Reason Foundation for another free lunch opportunity.
Maybe the answer to lack of capacity is rationing?
Since the private auto driver only pays about 7 percent of the cost of the roads and freeways used with the gas taxes, that works out to 2 days of paid use with the other 5 days being welfare.
I will ask the naive question…who pays for the other 93% if not drivers (i.e. taxpayers)?
haha, the bus riders and bike riders of course.
Are they not using the roads for their buses, bike lanes, the trucks that deliver their groceries, the UPS driver for their amazon purchases, etc…? I see what you are saying though. I could probably get behind paying by mile or some other measure as long as the taxes that go to feed the machine go down the same amount…what you would probably find is that someone like myself will actually pay less than someone else. Essentially, it is a shift of tax base to a consumption model (pay for what you use) compared to a shared model (i.e. it is part of the general budget funded by income and sales tax). Reduce my income taxes by the amount that otherwise funds the roads and then have me pay for the usage. Just don’t do both…
Maybe we should do the same thing with public school funding…
good points.
*Why is TJlocalSA always so wordy and non compence mentis?
Another Toll Road proponent paid off by the Reason Foundation…we suppose?
Please look up “Status Quo” and figure out that “any change” is supposed to improve
the current situation…..not make it worse!