Panel OKs Stringent Ride-Sharing Program : Orange County Can Claim Exemption--If It Can Come Up With a Plan as Tough as Air Board’s

The most comprehensive ride-sharing program ever proposed for Southern California, affecting 8,000 businesses and 1.5 million commuters, was unanimously approved Friday by the South Coast Air Quality Management District board.

Morning commute traffic could be cut by up to 25% in the four-county South Coast Air Basin under terms of the regulation, which is the first in a series of new clean-air strategies to roll back air pollution in the nation’s smoggiest urban area.

But Orange County won the right to be exempted from the program if businesses and local agencies adopt substitute plans that are deemed as tough as those approved by the AQMD on Friday.

A possible alternative plan known as the Traffic Reduction Incentives Program, drafted by the Orange County Transportation Commission, calls for voluntary participation based on peer pressure within the business community. Staggered work hours and incentives are its key components, OCTC officials said.

Got What They Wanted

“We wanted to make sure that we can come in for an exemption, and the local governments and employers here who participate (in the substitute program) would be able to fall into our program,” said Lisa Mills, the OCTC’s manager of planning and programming, who argued successfully at the AQMD meeting for allowing local agencies having the ability to substitute programs.

“And that’s what we got.”

Orange County cities are not expected to get a chance to inspect elements of the proposal, which the OCTC has been working on for a year, until January, Mills said.

Local agencies have until July 1, 1988, to either adopt their own ordinances--most likely the OCTC program--or accept the AQMD’s ride-sharing program.

“Our proposal is to get all the cities to adopt (the Traffic Reduction Incentive Program) by June of 1988,” Mills said.

Emissions of carbon monoxide and the two main ingredients of photochemical smog--nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons--would see modest reductions. Still, those reductions were viewed Friday by state and federal regulators as essential if progress is to be made in cleaning up the air.

The vote, after a day of testimony, was in marked contrast to the board’s defeat of a less-stringent ride-sharing program two years ago and signaled what many said is the beginning of major changes in how automobile-conscious Southern Californians get to work.

“I think this is going to signal the beginning in a change in life styles,” AQMD board member Marvin Braude, a Los Angeles city councilman, said after the vote.

AQMD Board Chairman Norton Younglove, a Riverside County supervisor, said: “To me, we’re taking a first, and very important major step, in more directly involving people in an individual way in solutions to clean up our air.”

Braude said he would move to scrap Los Angeles’ recently approved city ride-sharing program “as soon as practical (because the AQMD plan is) far more stringent.”

Businesses with 100 or more employees will be required to offer incentives to employees to share rides or use public transit to meet the district’s goal of increasing the average ridership in vehicles to 1.5 people from the current 1.13 people--an achievement that would result in 740,000 fewer daily vehicle trips between home and office.

Failure to prepare and implement ride-sharing plans will carry a fine of at least $1,000 a day. The AQMD staff is reviewing state law to determine whether fines could go as high as $25,000 a day. However, companies that make a “good faith” effort to comply with the regulation but fail to meet the district’s ridership goals would not be penalized.

Businesses would be required to review and update their plans annually. The district plans to hire six to nine more workers to put the ride-sharing program into effect.

Clean-Air Advocates

Friday’s vote ended a long drive by clean-air advocates to win approval of a ride-sharing program.

As recently as this week, AQMD board member Larry L. Berg said, several companies told him that they did not believe that the district would impose such a regulation.

“I hope the message that comes through today is these are tough decisions. They’re costly and we’ve got to do it,” Berg said.

But Berg predicted problems in implementing the plan, and board member Thomas Heinsheimer said that talk of changes in life style “really depends on how seriously the new board takes the regulation.”

One board member who voted against ride-sharing in 1985 on Friday hailed the new regulation. “This is significant. It’s going to make a difference,” Orange County Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder said.

Asked what caused her to change her mind, she said simply: “I’ve never been for government control. . . . But there’s a time to follow and a time to lead.”

‘Political Resistance’

Sabrina Schiller, one of the most outspoken clean-air advocates on the board, said: “The political resistance on our board was broken down. The fact that the public spoke out is what broke down the political resistance.”

The new regulation drew widespread support from environmentalists, major business interests, and regional, state and federal government agencies. No one during the daylong hearing opposed the plan, although many called for changes in how it is implemented and some, such as the Hospital Council of Southern California as well as schools and universities, asked to be exempted because they said they either could not afford to offer ride-sharing incentives to their employees or called the plan impractical.

John Wise, deputy regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, told the board that traffic remained the largest single remaining unregulated pollution source in the South Coast Air Basin.

‘Major First Step’

“The (regulation) represents a major first step by the district to prove that overuse of motor vehicles in the South Coast can, and will, be reduced on a continuous basis throughout the air basin,” Wise said.

But Michael Scheible, assistant executive officer of the state Air Resources Board, said that even stronger ride-sharing measures would be needed to meet the district’s goal of an average 1.5 riders per vehicle during the four-hour morning commute period.

In the last 17 years, he said, there has been an 80% jump in vehicle travel. Another 60% increase is anticipated from now to the year 2010.

“We can increase the capacity of our roadways some, but we cannot build our way out of the problem,” Scheible said.

Mark Abramowitz of the Coalition for Clean Air generally applauded the new regulation but said he believed that the average ridership-per-vehicle goals could be higher.

Increase Ridership

The new regulation does not tell companies how to increase ridership in individual vehicles to help meet the district’s goal of 740,000 fewer daily trips between home and work.

But several suggestions are offered, from company-subsidized parking for van pools to showers for workers who ride bikes to work. Other trip-reduction strategies call for a four-day, 40-hour workweek and “telecommuting,” in which the employee works at home on a computer linked to the office.

The board made one change to the original ride-sharing proposal Friday. It directed the staff to implement the program over three years, instead of the two years proposed by the AQMD staff.

Staggered Notification

Now, all employers with 500 or more workers will be notified by July 1, 1988, to prepare ride-sharing and trip-reduction plans. Employers with 200 or more workers would be asked to prepare their plans beginning Jan. 1, 1989. Businesses with 100 or more workers would not be notified until Jan. 1, 1990.

After they are notified, companies would have 90 days to submit plans and review and update them annually. The district then has 60 days to approve or reject the plan.

In Orange County, if the Traffic Reduction Incentive Program is approved as a viable alternative to the AQMD’s program, Mills said, businesses will have to adopt one or the other.

“For instance, if Fullerton, which is one of the pilot programs (Cypress, Costa Mesa and the county are the others), adopts the program, and all but one employer decides to adopt it, then that one would be subject to the AQMD ordinance,” Mills said.

There is widespread debate over how each local jurisdiction can best reduce traffic congestion and achieve better air quality.

“In Orange County our primary goal was to reduce traffic congestion. And to do that you have to look at both solutions, you have to compromise a little,” Mills said. “And we’re pretty positive that will happen.”

During the last year, the district has come under sustained criticism from the EPA and environmentalists for failing to fully implement its own plans for cleaning the air. At the same time, the South Coast Air Basin--which includes Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties--is the smoggiest in the nation. It exceeds federal Clean Air Act standards for both carbon monoxide and ozone.