Warner Center Success : Workers Steer Toward Ride-Sharing Option

Century City. 5:16 p.m. The van pool to Rancho Cucamonga was late. “We’ve never left anyone behind,” driver Lynda Moore said.

Five minutes later the straggler appeared, and Moore pulled out into traffic, bound for the San Gabriel Valley homes of the 11 people in the van.

It was another successful run in a city-backed pilot program designed to demonstrate to both businesses and their employees the advantages of van pooling--and, at the same time, reduce some of the congestion on the country’s busiest highways.

A similar pilot program began April 19 at Warner Center in Woodland Hills.

Quicker Start at Warner Center

The Century City ride-sharing program began more than a year ago with a slow start, finding it hard to attract riders. But it now has eight vans and about 100 riders shuttling to destinations as far away as Chatsworth and Huntington Beach.

The Warner Center program has had a quicker start than the one over the mountains, its organizers say. The program, established by the Warner Center Assn. and Commuter Computer, a nonprofit group that promotes ride-sharing, is supported by $69,000 in city funds.

The Warner Center ride-sharing program already has six leased vans that can each carry up to 15 passengers, Anne Cooley, Warner Center’s full-time ride-sharing coordinator, said. A seventh van is scheduled to hit the highways Oct. 14, and organizers hope to have nine rolling by April.

“It’s been very popular, much to our surprise,” Cooley said Friday. “We thought we’d have to beat people over their heads to join.”

Stressful Drive Avoided

As in the Century City program, the attraction for Warner Center riders is avoiding a stressful drive through morning and afternoon traffic--and saving money.

Most of the Warner Center van commuters live in Palmdale, Lancaster, Simi Valley and the Saugus area. Additional van pools are planned for Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Ventura.

A typical driver from Palmdale can spend $100 to $150 a month for gas, and the van program charges $71, Cooley said. The monthly rates for Simi Valley are $48 and $51 for Saugus.

The drivers, who are themselves employees at Warner Center, are not charged and have free use of the van on evenings and weekends.

The riders at the office and light-industry complex tend not to be executives, since executives often have irregular hours, Cooley said. Most of the riders earn $20,000 to $25,000 a year, she said.

The participants are people who enjoy visiting with their fellow van commuters, Cooley said. “The people who aren’t sociable don’t stay in it,” she said.

Cooley attributes much of the plan’s success to the Voit Cos., which developed Warner Center, home to about 390 companies and 35,000 workers.

“We tried to elevate the importance of ride-sharing among companies here,” said Norman H. Emerson, director of public affairs for Voit. “We want people to be able to get to Warner Center.

“The whole strategy, we think, is that, for ride-sharing to really happen, a commitment has to come from the top,” Emerson said. “The major employers are the ones that make the difference in ride-sharing.”

Cooley said several companies encourage their workers to take the van pool by offering preferential parking for the vans and making hours flexible for commuters to accommodate the vans’ schedules.

‘They’re Ready to Work’

“When employees arrive not having driven to work, they’re ready to work. They’re not tired from fighting traffic,” she said.

When city funding ends in April, Warner Center companies may make up the city’s share, Emerson said. The Century City program also is scheduled to lose city funding.

Despite the van pool’s financial advantages and the relaxation that comes from letting someone else drive, the Century City program got off to a slow start last year. Funding ran out this summer, and the program’s part-time coordinator found another job.

The money has since been renewed, with $57,000 coming from the city’s share of county transportation tax funds and about $40,000 in cash and services from local businesses. But organizers say it will take a lot more work to have an effect on the average commuter’s driving habits.

The challenge is especially tough at Century City, home to about 35,000 workers at 2,600 businesses, only 93 of which have more than 50 employees.

Usually Run by Big Companies

Ride-sharing programs generally are run by big companies for their own employees. At El Segundo-based Hughes Aircraft, one of the largest private employers in the state, a staff of just under 20 runs a complex network of private buses and van pools that serve about 30% of its 45,000 employees, said Bruce L. Rogers, commuter-bus project manager for the aerospace giant.

The large number of small businesses in Century City meant it was hard to get news of the program out to the workers, said Bonnie Goodman, the former ride-sharing coordinator for the Westside office complex.

In the first year, 200 to 250 people participated in the Century City program, said Joel A. Baker, executive vice president of the Century City Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the program along with Commuter Computer.

It is hoped that Century City will double the number of vans in coming months, Baker said.

Alice D. Lepis, principal transportation engineer for the City of Los Angeles, said that experience with programs such as those at Century City and Warner Center will help city officials deal with continuing growth.

‘More and More Congested’

New businesses in areas such as downtown and the Los Angeles International Airport area will be required to take steps to reduce their impact on traffic, Lepis said.

“If this traffic is not mitigated, or if people do not elect to use alternate forms of transportation, it will mean more vehicles on the street and it will be more and more congested,” she said.

“If you can replace seven to 10 vehicles with one, it obviously improves conditions for everyone,” said Martin Wachs, professor of urban planning at UCLA . “It conserves energy, it contributes to cleaner air, it’s a relatively low-cost solution to the traffic problem. And it doesn’t require a large capital investment like a subway system. It makes sense from every criterion that I can imagine.”