In a state where highway congestion has increased by 70 percent in the last 14 years, the last thing that California needs is more vehicles clogging its freeways.

AB 2628 is a bill that allows drivers of hybrid cars to drive in California highway carpool lanes with only the driver in the car.

In the attempt to improve air quality, AB 2628 acts as an incentive to try and entice Californians to go hybrid; instead, it is a rash decision that will backfire.

Though it aims at improving air quality, the bill serves as no help in regard to traffic congestion, one of California’s important issues.

Cities Los Angeles, Riverside and San Francisco top the list of the United States’ most traffic-congested cities. The bill allows 75,000 hybrid vehicles in California to occupy the carpool lane with the driver alone.

While 75,000 more cars may not seem like a lot, these extra cars will do nothing to alleviate California’s already-jammed highways; in fact, they will only worsen the traffic dilemma.

By allowing more vehicles to enter the carpool lane, passage of the bill would cause even more traffic jams, meaning more commute time for drivers. Already, California drivers report being in more than 300,000 hours each day stuck in traffic. It is an unnecessary amount of time spent stuck in traffic.

AB 2628 is unnecessary because it defeats the purpose of a carpool lane. Reserved for vehicles with two or more occupants, the carpool lane is meant to reduce car emissions as well as traffic congestion, the idea being that more people would occupy fewer cars and fewer cars will inhabit fewer lanes.

Hybrids are beneficial in reducing air pollution with their low-emission electric motors, but there is no point in using the carpool lane if it is just as jammed as the rest of the freeway.

More vehicles on the freeway results in more traffic congestion and more car exhaust emitted from non-hybrid vehicles. A situation such as this reduces the significance of a cleaner air quality concept.

Opening carpool lanes is an advantage to hybrid car drivers, but allowing single-driver vehicles to occupy the carpool lanes is unfair to those who actually meet the passenger requirement to travel in this lane.

Instead, it only results in resentment and loathing from real carpool drivers and non-hybrid car drivers, something unnecessary as well as a bit frightening to think about when studies have shown that road rage is directly correlated to higher traffic congestion.

In fact, similar situations have often resulted in more problems, such as in 1999, when a measure was taken to reduce San Bernardino’s carpool occupancy requirements from three to two people. Before the measure took effect, buses were the only vehicles using the lane.

When the two-person rule was implemented, more drivers started using the lanes, which slowed down highway efficiency and caused traffic jams.

As a result of this traffic, bus patrons stopped taking the buses and started driving their own vehicles, which created even more traffic. Hybrid car owners already receive tax deductions for purchasing their vehicles; this year, they receive $1,500. In L.A., drivers of hybrid cars, as well as other non-gasoline powered cars, may park at any Los Angeles city meter for free. In the Bay Area, hybrid-vehicle drivers are exempt from paying bridge tolls.

Drivers still have a chance to protest AB 2628. With enough support, AB 2628 will be terminated.