CA Green HOV sticker toll in Bay Area, carpool lane access in LA area

Maybe Gary from Mercury News Roadshow can find the real answer about the Green Stickers! I think he has contacts to find out the answer correctly.

 

And he is a Prius (albeit not a PiP) owner, for which he often takes flack from some readers. For the sake of readers outside of the SF Bay Area, this is a reference to Gary Richards, aka "Mr. Roadshow", who has a traffic column in the San Jose Mercury News ( a "newspaper", one of those prehistoric things with ink on dead trees) and has all sorts of internal contacts with the DMV and Highway Patrol and other traffic-related organizations.

 

Bringing up a dead topic. I saw a white green sticker PIP pulled over at the farthest Bay Bridge, isolated, carpool toll. He was a single driver. Obviously, the CHP is enforcing now.

 

On the Bay Area Transit Authority website,


It states:

"So long as it is permitted by law, hybrid vehicles displaying an eligible sticker issued by the California Department of Motor Vehicles may use the carpool lanes on the bridges during designated carpool hours at the reduced rate for carpools."

On Golden Gate Bridge website


It states:

"The new 2012 DMV-issued GREEN decal DOES NOT qualify the vehicle for the discounted carpool toll rate. ONLY vehicles with the WHITE DMV decal qualify for the Golden Gate Bridge discounted carpool toll during carpool hours. You must have a FasTrak Account and use the dedicated carpool toll lane #2."

I'll have to edit this when I get more posts to put in links.

 

Sometimes cars using the far right carpool lane have entered by transitioning through the bus only lane. It's easy to do and I've been tempted may times, but have seen CHP stop cars in the carpool lane with 3 aboard after they "mistakenly" used the short bus only entryway.

Perhaps that's what happened, because I use the left hand carpool lane and haven't seen such enforcement.

 

Green stickers are allowed to use the carpool lanes on bridges.

 

Post #14 by fortysomethingeek in this thread has the clearest information on the green sticker rules with regard to Bay Area Bridges.

Although your text from FasTrak should be authoritative, the law does specify ILEV only for toll reduction.

• Any single-occupancy inherently-low-emission vehicle (ILEV) with DMV-issued decals

 

Green stickers are allowed to use the carpool lanes on STATE OWNED bridges, which does NOT include the Golden Gate bridge. Green stickers are not valid on the Golden Gate bridge (similar to the 91 Fastrak in SoCal).
Source: Vehicle Specific Information

 

Agreed.

 

I don't know exactly how the laws are written now, but a one point over the last couple of years, there was the oddity that the green decals were valid in the diamond lane on the approach to the state-owned bridges, but not at the bridge carpool toll booth/lane. And a carpool would be two in the diamond lands on the approach, but three at the toll both. The distinction being which authority owned the roads on the approach vs who owned the bridges themselves.