Business Looks for Ways to Ease Crush of County’s Traffic

Facing clogged freeways, air pollution and a government mandate to get more employees into car pools, nearly 500 Orange County business executives met Tuesday in Anaheim to share ideas on reducing traffic.

The meeting at the Anaheim Hilton and Towers highlights local businesses’ increasing concern over traffic problems, which were estimated to have cost businesses and commuters in Southern California $5.8 billion last year.

But baseball commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth, a speaker at the meeting, said organizers were probably “preaching to the choir” and needed to reach more county businesses.

Ueberroth urged the group to spend 1988 planning 100 improvements to the traffic system that could be implemented next year during Orange County’s centennial.

Top executives should also invite neighborhood groups and slow-growth advocates to join them in the planning, said Ueberroth, who maintains a home in Laguna Beach and who was in charge of planning the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

About 300 of the county’s largest businesses were invited to the meeting, said Roger Tompkins, a State Farm Insurance Cos. regional vice president and chairman of the Orange County Transportation Coalition.

Representatives of about 200 businesses attended, accounting for an estimated 70,000 employees, Tompkins said.

The meeting was designed to get commitments for traffic reduction programs and to garner publicity for the campaign.

Executives said they are worried about obtaining sufficient employees for local plants and offices as workers flee the county’s high-price housing, then clog the freeways each day coming back to their jobs.

An Economic Issue

Employee tardiness, stress and absenteeism caused by snarled roads and freeways also make traffic an economic issue for local executives, they said.

The $5.8-billion cost of commuting last year doesn’t include lost productivity from absent or stressed-out employees, and the figure “pales in significance to the real costs (in productivity) facing everyone in this room,” Brea real estate consultant Alfred Gobar told the group.

So starting van and car pools and offering incentives to employees who join the pools make economic sense, said C. Blaine Shull, a senior vice president with Hughes Aircraft Co. who said such programs are “clearly self-serving.”

Hughes began its extensive traffic management program during the gas shortages of the 1970s, Shull said, when it worried about employees not being able to get enough gas to get to the plant. But traffic congestion is now the compelling reason to keep the program running, Shull said.

Frustration with traffic has also fueled a drive to put a slow-growth initiative on the June ballot, which polls show has overwhelming voter support.

Big Supporters

So the county’s developers have also become big supporters of reducing traffic through employer programs as a way to defuse anti-growth sentiment.

Participating in Tuesday’s meeting were both the local chapters of the Building Industry Assn. and the Commercial Industrial Development Assn.

Still, businesses have a long way to go to get the average number of persons per car on the freeways at rush hour from 1.2 up to 1.4, which traffic experts say would alleviate much of the rush-hour crush.

Only 400 of the county’s 65,000 companies, both large and small, are now tied into the Orange County Transportation District’s commuter network, which matches car poolers by computer.

That may change as a result of the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s order in December for Southern California businesses with 100 or more employees to come up with incentive plans designed to get more workers into car pools and other types of traffic reduction programs.

The first plans, from companies with more than 500 employees, are due July 1 or the companies will face fines of at least $1,000 a day.

Could Be Exempted

A lot of the recent enthusiasm of businesses for traffic management programs may be due to the fact that they might be exempted from the Air Quality Management District’s more stringent program if the district approves theirs.

Gordon Tippell, a home builder and president of the Building Industry Assn. of Orange County, also urged businesses to get involved in lobbying for new methods of funding highway construction now that state and federal highway funds are diminishing.

After toll roads, which have already been approved for Orange County, the most favored form of funding is a half-cent increase on the state sales tax of 6%, according to a survey form completed by about 175 executives at the meeting. Counties can impose the additional half cent for transportation programs with the approval of voters, who have already rejected a similar such increase in Orange County.

Toll roads got 101 votes; the sales tax increase got 93.

But there was no attempt to forge any kind of political program Tuesday.

“It’s true there were a lot of us who were not doing all we know how to do” in reducing traffic, said Tompkins, one of the event’s organizers. “Now we just hope everybody will go home and start a program.”