July 20, 2004
Hybrid Cars Get a Big Push; Not So Fast, Others Say.  Officials want to give incentives to owners of fuel-efficient vehicles. But transit experts decry a bill that would let solo drivers use HOV lanes.
By Jordan Rau, Times Staff Writer
SACRAMENTO - With gas prices so high as to cause vertigo, California's elected officials are racing to shower fuel-efficient hybrid car owners with the kinds of exclusive road privileges all drivers covet. Los Angeles is considering granting free parking this fall to the vehicles, which run on both gas and electricity. In Sacramento, lawmakers are on the verge of approving a measure that would allow solo hybrid drivers to use carpool lanes. Yet even as automakers lobby furiously to include their hybrids, transportation experts are alarmed at any new additions to California's high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Already, 23 of the state's 56 carpool lanes are at or near capacity, including sections of the Foothill, Century and San Diego freeways in Southern California.

...."The lanes that we have in the state are a precious resource for travel," said Martin Wachs, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Berkeley, who owns a Toyota Prius hybrid. "I can think of no rational reason why we should give away capacity to vehicles that will contribute as much to congestion, just because they're clean fuel." Experts who have studied traffic flow say that just a few dozen extra vehicles in a carpool lane in an hour can cause a noticeable slowdown. There were 23,983 hybrids registered in California as of May, and state officials anticipate the number to increase more than fourfold over the next three years.

....The bill would attempt to prevent congestion by limiting the number of hybrid cars with the special privileges to 75,000. Each car would get a distinctive decal so police could know they were permitted in the lanes. They would be in addition to the approximately 6,000 all-electric cars authorized for solo drivers. The bill also would require the California Department of Transportation to ban hybrids from congested carpool lanes and to stop issuing permits above the number 50,000 if congestion problems were to arise. Caltrans supports the legislation, but a spokesman says the department's "broad, general" analysis cannot say definitively what its impact would be. The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority agreed to support the measure only after the bill was altered to give the MTA a role in declaring particularly congested lanes off-limits to hybrids, said the authority's lobbyist, Michael Turner.

....Michele St. Martin, a Cal-EPA spokeswoman, said the visibility of the hybrids in the carpool lanes and the publicity from the bill would provide significant motivation for more drivers to buy hybrids. She disputed that the current stream of hybrid buyers would snap up all the carpool lane permits. Sam Butto, a spokesman for Toyota Motor Sales USA, said that in Virginia, which allows hybrids in carpool lanes, the Prius has been particularly popular. More of the cars are sold there than in any other state except California.

....Though hybrids have been available for several years, the biggest push for special privileges for their owners has occurred recently. On Friday, Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn and City Councilman Eric Garcetti proposed exempting hybrid owners from having to feed parking meters. If approved by the City Council, the measure would take effect in September. In Sacramento, the state bill, AB 2628, easily passed the Assembly and has already won the endorsement of a Senate panel. Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Treasurer Phil Angelides, a Democrat who often spars with the governor, are co-sponsoring it, and Hahn supports it. The full Senate is expected to vote on it next month....