Q. You recently talked about Clean Air Vehicle stickers that have not expired. I have a 2019 Kia, all electric. Do you mean to tell me that my stickers expire at some point? And then I can’t drive in the lane by myself?
– Steve Legare, Manhattan Beach
A. Yes.
Like a loaf of bread, they all have expiration dates.
Currently, only burgundy, lime green, yellow and blue stickers allow the driver to take a carpool lane without a passenger. The first three colors expire on Sept. 30, 2025; those with blue stickers only have the rest of this year.
To help the environment, the state offered stickers in waves to owners of qualifying new versions of zero- or low-emission vehicles to get those cars and trucks on the roadway instead of gas-fueled models. After awhile, perhaps a couple of years, the state yanks back the carrot for a wave of vehicles. The next wave gets a different color or style of sticker, so officers can tell them apart.
This all started back in 1999, via the California Legislature.
“The current program will end on Sept. 30, 2025, unless new legislation is passed,” said John Swanton, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which keeps the official list of the qualifying vehicles.
Letting non-carpoolers into carpool lanes has always been a bit of a balancing act – the feds get grouchy when there are so many cars and trucks in those lanes as to clog ’em and slow ’em down.
“It’s an incentive that has a finite amount of availability,” Swanton explained. “Several times over the past two decades that this program has existed, the growing numbers of new vehicle sales have required the Legislature to modify the program to make sure that it continued to drive new vehicle sales, but did not overwhelm the HOV lanes.”
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