91 Freeway cameras catch carpool lane cheaters in Corona

By David Downey | Contributing Writer

It’s a temptation some commuters can’t resist.

Tolls on the 91 Express Lanes in Corona approach $25 — one way — during the morning commute from the Inland Empire to coastal job centers.

But the ride is free if a driver has two passengers.

“So there is quite an incentive to get into the HOV 3-plus lane,” said David Knudsen, deputy executive director for the Riverside County Transportation Commission, which operates the lanes.

“And what we have found is that there are a lot of cheaters.”

To catch them, the agency spent $5 million to purchase and install high-tech cameras, Knudsen said.

Since August, these cameras have been peering into cars traveling the exclusive pay-to-use lanes in the middle of the 91 Freeway between the 15 Freeway in Corona and the Orange County line.

The goal is not to raise money, officials say, but rather to nudge cheaters out of the lanes and lower the toll for commuters who play by the rules.

Similar cameras are not used for the 91 toll lanes on the other side of the county line, the Orange County Transportation Authority said.

Knudsen said that, to his knowledge, no other agency is using the advanced technology “this way.”

“This is pretty new,” he said in a recent interview. “We are the first in the nation to deploy this particular system in an express lane.”

Operators of the toll facility in Orange County and another one in San Bernardino County are watching to see if the system proves successful.

“Everybody wants to see how it works,” Knudsen said. “All eyes are on the system.”

Are cameras like ‘Big brother?’

Some drivers, though, don’t like camera eyes being trained on them.

Elliot Koenig, a 41-year-old Corona resident who drives the toll lanes daily to his Orange County recording studio, said the cameras sound like something out of George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, “1984.”

“Big brother’s watching,” he said.

What the cameras do, Knudsen said, is take a “burst” of eight photos as a car passes through a gate where drivers declare they are either paying the full toll, or claiming the free or discounted ride afforded carpools. Drivers claim the discount by moving into a designated HOV or high-occupancy-vehicle lane.

One camera is positioned along the westbound HOV toll lane and another along the eastbound lane, Knudsen said. The cameras capture images horizontally. They see inside cars day and night, he said, and can look through dark window tint.

The instruments are high-resolution digital cameras, not thermal imaging devices, Knudsen said.

During a Thursday, March 12, visit to the commission’s Corona traffic operations center for its 91 and 15 Freeway toll lanes, a woman clicked through black-and-white images of a car the system flagged for a possible violation. The photos were taken from the side of the vehicle, along the driver’s side. Other than the driver, no one appeared to be sitting in the passenger seat or the back seat.

Ariel Alcon, public affairs manager for the agency, said a four-member team checks the photos to make sure there was a violation. Typically, two people are working on the reviews at a given time.

The new Occupancy Detection System, as it is called, alerts the commission whenever a car is suspected of not complying with the passenger requirement.

“Then it goes to a human reviewer,” Knudsen said.

Cameras won’t lead to a ticket

On average, the system flags 35,000 trips a month, Knudsen said. He said about 25,000 are confirmed through the reviews to have wrongly claimed carpool discounts.

In those cases, Fastrak account holders for the cars are charged the full toll, plus a $5 administrative fee.

Drivers don’t receive traffic citations, Knudsen said.

“Only the CHP can give you a ticket,” he said.

If a review does not clearly confirm a suspected violation, he said, the account holder is given the discount.

“We are erring on the side of the driver,” Knudsen said.

All users of the 91 Express Lanes are required to travel with Fastrak transponders.

More than 1 million trips are taken on the toll lanes each month, Knudsen said.

On about 400,000 trips a month, drivers claim the carpool break — “and we estimate that 40% of those transactions are cheaters,” he said.

Drivers are often “very creative,” Knudsen said.

Some put mannequins in cars, he said. Some arrange clothes and hats creatively. Others drive with empty child seats. Still others bring along pets.

But, Knudsen said: “Pets don’t count. You have to have three humans in the vehicle to get the discount.”

As for traffic tickets, the California Highway Patrol has been citing drivers on the 91 Express Lanes in Corona since the lanes opened in 2017, said Officer Javier Navarro, a spokesman for the Riverside area.

The CHP cites drivers for moving violations, including speeding and illegally crossing lane posts or delineators, Navarro said.

Officers issued 30 citations between August and January to motorists who were observed driving through the carpool-discount gate without passengers, he said.

The CHP does not coordinate with the transportation agency’s new cameras, he said.

Toll rates called ‘regressive tax’

Commuters who carpool — or manage to beat the system — can save significant amounts of money, as tolls often top $20.

Alcon, the spokesperson, said a toll-lane ride is always free for westbound carpools, and most of the time for those heading east.

The exception, he said, is the busy 4 p.m.-to-6 p.m. eastbound commute Monday through Friday, when carpools pay half the toll.

Koenig, the recording studio owner, said he always pays full freight.

Still, Koenig doesn’t approve of cameras being used to catch cheaters.

“There’s no chivalry in that,” he said. “Put more cops on the roads and they can catch more people with dummies in the back seat.”

Michele Wentworth, who helps manage the Greater Corona Traffic Alliance social media chat site, said there has been chatter about the cameras but not extensive comments.

“People don’t seem to be too upset on the whole,” she said.

Wentworth said commuters are far more upset about toll rates, which have been an issue from the outset.

“It basically prices people out of being able to use the lanes,” she said. “Their dynamic pricing really is just a regressive tax.”

Cheating makes things worse

Corona Vice Mayor Wes Speake, who served as a transportation commissioner from 2018 through last year and voted for the cameras, said cheating makes matters worse.

“I get that it’s expensive,” Speake said of the toll.

But cheating, he said, is “not fair” and “it artificially inflates the price.”

Alcon said that’s because tolls rise as the number of cars increases and average speeds decline. The price adjusts as often as every five minutes with the goal of providing users a reliably “free flowing” ride, he said.

After several months, many still cheat. But officials say the system is having an impact.

Knudsen said 15% of customers caught wrongly claiming discounts no longer drive the toll lanes.

Another 23% still use the lanes, but have moved over and are paying full price, Knudsen said.

The remaining 62% continue to claim the discount. Many of them may now be traveling legitimately on those lanes, he said, but how many is not known. The agency has no statistics for “repeat cheaters.”

Alcon said Fastrak account transactions are processed in three to five days after trips are taken. The camera-photo reviews are completed within that time, he said.

“We have had very little dispute,” Knudsen said, adding that some customers asked, “How did you know?”

Eric Carpenter, spokesman for the Orange County Transportation Authority, said his agency is watching.

So is the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority, said Tim Watkins, chief of legislative and public affairs.

For now, no plans are in the works to replicate the program in Orange or San Bernardino counties, Watkins and Carpenter said.

The Orange County agency runs toll lanes on the 91 between the Riverside County line and the 55 Freeway. The San Bernardino authority opened 10 miles of toll lanes on the 10 Freeway between the 15 Freeway and Los Angeles County line in August 2024.

Riverside County’s 91 lanes tolls brought in $89 million last fiscal year, which ran through June 30, Knudsen said in an email.

Knudsen wrote that 51% of the money is used to operate and maintain the lanes, and pay off debt used to construct them. The rest, by law, must be spent on 91 Freeway improvement projects.

Through December, during the first five months of operation, the toll-lane cameras boosted collections by $1.3 million, he said.