Originally Posted by
bzcat
What they should do is combine the bus lane implantation with congestion surcharge to further discourage empty cars circling the roadway. License plate scanners are cheap... install them at all the entry point and if a car is caught entering the loop more than twice in a given amount of time, they get a bill in the mail like the HOV toll lanes work.
The infrastructure is already there. The shuttle services (Supershuttle, Primetime) pay per lap via transponders, and there are probably charges for other commercial vehicles as well, so there are probably already license plate readers so you can't dodge by not having a transponder. I know that there are transponder readers because my expresslanes transponder beeps when I enter the loop (at least it did til the battery died, though the RF response for tolls doesn't seem to depend on the battery).
There could also be a charge for driving a personal vehicle in the loop at all, but that would probably cause too much pushback, at least for now. Maybe in 10 years when it's always faster to walk from the Sepulveda exit on the 105 than to drive. It's that bad at the holidays already.