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Eleanor Kas of Mill
Valley bought her 2005 Toyota Prius this month largely for
political reasons. The Prius and Honda's hybrid Civic and
Insight could use car-pool lanes without passengers if a new
state law goes into effect.
Sacramento Bee/John Decker
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New year, new laws: Hybrids stall on way to car-pool lane
By Margaret Talev -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PST
Thursday, December 30, 2004
One in a series of reports on new
state laws scheduled to take effect Saturday.
Some people buy hybrid cars to reduce America's dependence on foreign
oil or lessen pollution. Some just want to save money on gasoline.
For Ken Kaufman, a 58-year-old college administrator who lives about 40
miles east of Los Angeles, the strategy was even more pragmatic: He wanted
to be able to drive passenger-free in the car-pool lanes.
He knew Ca had a new law on the books, set to take effect
Saturday, allowing owners of the cleanest, most-fuel-efficient class of
hybrids to do just that until 2008. But when Kaufman drove his Toyota
Prius home from the dealership last month and went on the state Department
of Motor Vehicles' Web site to apply for a hybrid car-pool lane permit, he
hit an unexpected roadblock.
The permitting process was still pending a waiver from the federal
government. And getting congressional approval for that waiver had turned
out to be a much more convoluted proposition for Ca than the
environmental organizations and a bipartisan group of elected officials
behind the legislation, including Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger,
thought it would be.
"I didn't anticipate the political opposition potentially of the
automobile manufacturers," said the author of the legislation,
Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, who also wrote a controversial
law automakers are now suing to block, requiring them to reduce emissions
in all cars.
The upshot of all this is that Ca's hybrid car-pool lane law
isn't going into effect Saturday.
It may be months before the waiver comes, and if the debate in
Washington goes on long enough, it may not go into effect at all by the
time Ca's pilot project is set to expire.
The federal government says states need a waiver to tinker with
car-pool lanes because the lanes are funded by the federal portion of the
gas tax. A waiver was tucked into the omnibus transportation bill before
Congress. But with a war on and election year wrangling, the package
stalled. In the meantime, Ford and other American carmakers whose hybrid
models don't meet the Ca law's 45 miles per gallon and near-zero
emission standards began pushing to block or weaken the standards.
Ca isn't prepared to just roll the dice and let its hybrid
program go forward without a waiver, as at least one state, Virginia, is
doing. If it did, the federal government could retaliate by withholding
billions of dollars in transportation funding. State officials say
Ca has about 40 percent of the nation's high-occupancy vehicle, or
HOV, lanes.
Right now, the only cars that meet the standards in the Ca law
are the Prius and Honda's hybrid Civic and Insight.
Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican, introduced legislation allowing
less fuel-efficient hybrids, including sport-utility vehicles, to use
car-pool lanes nationwide. Talent argues that Congress should offer an
incentive that encourages consumers who are going to buy SUVs to buy the
hybrid variety.
But some environmentalists see that legislation as a poison pill
because it would flood car-pool lanes with vehicles that, even though they
use hybrid technology, might get lower mileage than traditional compact
cars.
Recently, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, has introduced separate
legislation to get Ca its waiver, but he's unlikely to get far in
a Republican-controlled Congress unless members of Ca's GOP
delegation join his effort.
"I think we need the governor to pick up the phone," Pavley said. "I
think the governor would be the key person."
If Schwarzenegger plans to do the heavy lifting, his staff isn't ready
to go public about it. The administration declined to respond to repeated
requests about the governor's intentions.
In the meantime, the number of Ca drivers who might already
qualify for the special permits, an estimated 20,000 that was expected to
swell to 75,000 in the next three years, will just have to wait.
Among car dealers, confusion abounds. David Coombs, assistant sales
manager at Mel Rapton Honda in Sacramento, said in an interview only days
ago that he didn't know the law's implementation was being stalled.
"I thought it was going to take effect in January - I hadn't heard
anything to the contrary," he said.
"We use that pitch a lot, that you'll be able to use it in car-pool
lanes," he said of sales of the Civic hybrid. "It's a selling point."
Eleanor Kas, a senior vice president at World Savings Bank in Oakland,
said she traded in her BMW convertible for a Prius this month largely for
political reasons, because she opposes the war in Iraq and felt that in a
small way her purchase could reduce dependence on oil from the Middle
East.
"But then when I went to the dealer to buy the car, he said he thought
Priuses could go in the car-pool lanes," Kas said of her salesman. "So the
dealer didn't know." She made inquiries with the DMV and the Ca
Highway Patrol. "Nobody seemed to know."
The limbo has left many hybrid owners frustrated.
"It's delay after delay, and it's unfortunate because it would make the
few of us who have hybrids very happy and it would make a very nice
incentive" for would-be buyers, said Mary Fassler, who lives in Elk Grove.
But few are more irked than Kaufman. "It's a nice car," he said of his
new ride. "But I would never have bought it had I not thought I could use
the diamond lanes."
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New year, new laws 
Sacbee: / Politics
