Question the Metro Expresslane Program in LA County

Los Angeles County’s first toll lane has been open on the 110 Freeway since November 8th, allowing drivers with FasTrak accounts to cruise past traffic in the express lane (https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/home/index.shtml).  After several friends of mine got fined without proper use of Metro Expresslane, I began to examine the design of the program in more details. My conclusion: Metro Expresslane is ridiculous. It just squeezes extra money from taxpayers with public road.

First, it pushes occasional carpoolers away from using carpool lane and makes 110 more jammed in general. In order to get the transponder, you will pay an initial fee of $40.00 and pay $3.00 "maintenance fee" each month thereafter no matter you use it or not. Occasional  carpoolers cannot bother to  buy the transponder, and will use other lanes. This simply worsens 110 traffic jam.

Second, there is no justification for the the $40.00 unfront fee apart from the cost to make the card. If I am frequent carpooler and theoretically pay no toll fee, I don't understand why should I deposit such large amount with CalTrans. There is no clear information whether you can get any money back if you cancel your transponder. Since you are actually depositing money with CalTrans, they should theoretically pay you interest if you use the Metro Expresslane for carpooling only. 

Third, it really hurts travelers to Los Angeles from other states. Los Angeles Airport, as the largest airport in west coast, attracts tens of thousands of travelers and visitors on business purpose everyday. 110 is the only highway connecting LAX and downtown. As a result a lot of travelers and visitors from other cities and states cannot use carpool lanes. Even worse, since Metro Expresslanes is not known to those travelers and visitors, we should expect many travelers and visitors will get fines and penalties. If I were one of them, I must consider LA as the most unfriendly city if I got tickets just off the plane at LAX.

Fourth, the cost to maintain such a system is unclear.  Ther is the initial investment to implement those equipments and hire people to sell transponders. To use the transponder, you need to manually switch to one, two or three person mode. If you forget to do that, sorry, fines. It is also not unclear how to enforece the policy, say if I set the transponder to 2 even if I am driving solo. If they have camera that can tell how many person in each car, why bother to use the tranponder in the first place?

I am strongly suspicious whether the Metro Expresslane in its current state will improve 110 traffic and benefit LA drivers. A more reasonable change to current program will be: only sole drivers who want to use the express lanes need to buy  and display a transponder. All other carpoolers, frequent or occansional do not need to have transponder to use carpool lane just as before. If this change implemented, my first three concerns will be resolved. Otherwise I strongly urge to terminate the Metro Expresslane program in its current state as soon as possible.