When I drive for many hours, my mind finds lots of things to think and overthink on. One of those things is the fairness of designations of the left lane on our freeways.

I drove up to Redding, California, twice this month because I have a grandson at Simpson University (Go Redhawks!) up there.

Along the way I went through some areas where the left lane was designated as either a diamond lane or a FasTrak Express Lane.

I had someone in the car with me this trip, so I could drive in the diamond lane. I noticed that about half of the cars in the diamond lane had only one person (the driver). The other lanes were packed.

That got me to thinking.

Every one of us taxpayers pays for freeway widening projects, and we put up with the inconvenience of the project for years, as we have been doing locally with the widening of the 101 freeway between Santa Barbara and Ventura.

Then, when a project is nearing completion, diamonds are painted or express lanes are marked, limiting who can use the lane during the period of the day when most of us need to use it.

Many of us do not have the option of carpooling because of our professional schedules or routes, so we cannot use the diamond lane.

We helped pay for it and we grumbled during the overly-long construction project, but we are not allowed to use it when we most need it in the morning and late afternoon/evening.

When traveling through bigger cities, I saw that express lanes requiring FasTrak stickers are increasingly common. I had to stay out of those, even though I had multiple people in my vehicle, even though I helped pay for them.

Express lanes anger me because we all pay for them to be built and we wait through the construction period. But to use those lanes that we paid for, we have to additionally pay for a Fast Trac pass, plus pay tolls based upon how far we drive in the lane.

That seems like triple taxation to me. We pay for the construction, we pay for a FasTrak pass, and we pay a usage tax (toll). I felt that we are unduly overtaxed.

Then to add fuel to my mental fire, on the 680 near the Carquinez Straits, all lanes suddenly became express lanes, and there was no way to take the bridge over the Straits without getting a bill in the mail. Nor was there a way to turn around.

I felt wronged as well as overtaxed.