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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : COPING WITH COMMUTING : THE RISING COST OF DRIVING SOLO

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<i> Times Staff Writer </i>

Free or subsidized parking--a perk so common at work that most employees consider it a kind of corporate divine right, like access to the copier or the supply of ballpoints--is about to go the way of the free lunch.

Businesses in the Los Angeles area with more than 100 employees are under orders from regional air quality officials to develop commuter plans that will cut the number of cars on freeways over the next two years. And the way city planners see it, a good way to keep people from driving to work alone is to make them pay market rates to park there.

Although the going rate for a month of parking in Westwood, for instance, is more than $100, staff and faculty at UCLA for years have been paying $22 a month to park on campus. The rate will shoot up about 36% to $30 in July, a figure that university officials say will eliminate their subsidy.

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“It is the single most effective thing we can do,” said Prof. Martin Wachs, head of the university’s Department of Urban Planning. “When you have to pay for parking out of your own pocket, you’re much more likely to find other ways to get to work.”

The drive to get fewer people to ride to work alone is coming from the federal government, which has told the South Coast Air Quality Management District to do more to clean up the air in the Los Angeles Basin, the nation’s smoggiest region.

The AQMD’s answer, adopted in December, 1987, is known as Regulation XV, or the Commuter Program. Its goal is to increase the average number of people in vehicles on the roads of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties to 1.5 people from the current 1.13 people--an accomplishment that would result in 740,000 fewer vehicle trips a day between home and office. There are now about 7 million trips a day in the four-county area.

194 Plans Approved

Since last July, the AQMD has notified more than 1,400 of the 8,000 companies and institutions that will be affected by the new rules; by the beginning of April, it had approved 194 plans.

If nothing else, the district’s efforts have given birth to a new bureaucrat: the employee transportation coordinator. By law, every business with more than 100 employees must have one to develop ways to aggressively market ride-sharing programs to workers and management.

The programs that the AQMD has approved so far are inventive but most use an old persuader: money.

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At UCLA, the staff at the Office of Commuter Assistance-Ridesharing has grown to 26 people today from one person in 1984, according to operations manager Jennifer Stusse. To encourage van-pooling and car-pooling among the school’s staff and faculty, she said, the school is offering to let car-pool vehicles park at the old $22 monthly rates. Plus, certified car poolers can park for $1 less than the posted rates if they have to miss the car pool and drive alone one or two days a week.

Among other programs, the university has also chartered a bus to run three times a day from Sherman Oaks to the campus and back; the cost is a heavily subsidized $3 round trip, or $55 a month.

The Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, like many large service employers, already surpasses the AQMD ride-sharing goal because 30% of its workers on the housekeeping or restaurant staffs take public transit to work. The problem is its clerical and management employees, the majority of whom drive alone.

To cut the number of solo drivers by 20%, Anne Hanson, director of human resources, said the hotel will offer lower parking rates and better spaces for car poolers, raffling off bus passes and installing a rack for bicycles. She despairs, though, of encouraging managers to join the program. “Ten dollars a month won’t help much for the inconvenience it might cost them,” she said.

Not all Southern California managers are dragging their feet, however. Mac Barnes, a vice president at First Interstate Bank, actually bought a bus 11 years ago to ferry up to 48 people a day to work in downtown Los Angeles from Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

Barnes picks up his first passenger in Redlands at 5 a.m. and the last in Ontario about 40 minutes later. At 6 a.m., he says, there is already stop-and-go traffic on the Pomona Freeway--a fact that he dutifully reports to KNX radio traffic reporter Bill Keene as the “Eastside spy.” He drops people off at six spots downtown by 6:45 a.m., then turns around at 4:30 in the afternoon and takes them home.

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The Greyhound-style bus cost him $62,000; he charges people $120 a month and claims to barely break even after taxes and depreciation. Keeping him going, he says, is the conviction that ride-sharing from communities where a decent home costs as little as $100,000 allows people to spend 100 hours a month reading or doing paper work on the bus rather than driving.

Indeed, the California Department of Transportation estimates that worsening freeway congestion during peak commuter hours is costing Los Angeles area workers and businesses $650,000 a day in lost wages and productivity.

Said Barnes: “I wish I had a sign on the back of my bus that read, ‘Like this traffic? If you’re driving by yourself, you’re the cause of it.’ But I don’t know, people would probably slash my tires.”

One of Barnes’ passengers is Robert D. Johnston, a San Bernardino resident who heads one of Southern California’s most advanced ride-sharing programs at Atlantic Richfield Co.

Johnston started Arco’s program in 1973 by leasing six buses from the Southern California Rapid Transit District to haul workers from the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys to its headquarters in a skyscraper downtown. That quickly proved too expensive; the backbone of Arco’s commuter program today is a fleet of 55 vans that it leases to workers.

If you want a van, you present Johnston’s office with a list of seven passengers. The designated driver and a backup must pass a physical examination. Arco then leases you the van at a cost averaging $60 a month per passenger--and picks up the insurance.

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In contrast, a monthly RTD pass to Arco’s headquarters from Arcadia would cost about $78 a month. And monthly parking can cost a solo driver up to $196 a month.

Johnston finds no irony in the fact that an oil company is encouraging people not to drive. “Our profit is not made on Southern California motorists,” he said. “There is a need here not only to be a good company but to be a good corporate citizen.”

Currently, there are an average of 1.98 people in every vehicle that arrives at Arco’s door for work every morning -- miles ahead of the Southland average of 1.13. To meet his goal of 2.0 this year, Johnston has joined many regional air quality officials in calling for changes in the state and federal tax policy.

The U.S. government indirectly opposes clean air improvements, say air quality officials, by taxing employers’ allowances for vans and transit passes worth more than $15 per month as a fringe benefit, like health insurance. The same law, however, specifies that free parking is not a taxable fringe benefit. Said Tad Widby, president of the nonprofit ride-sharing cooperative Commuter Computer: “Our tax code says, ‘We think you should drive alone and park at work.’ ”

In a recent survey of its 1,500 corporate clients, Commuter Computer discovered that the average employer spends $287 per year on subsidizing employee parking but only $5 per employee on promotion of ride-sharing. “Commuters do what we pay them to do,” said Widby. “It is no wonder that we see 75% to 80% of commuters driving alone.”

Legislation recently introduced in Congress by Sen. Alphonse D’Amato (R-N.Y.) would have exempted the first $38 worth of employer-provided transit passes and van pool benefits per month from taxation. It lost by a slim margin, primarily due to opposition to a provision that lost taxes would be made up by doubling the tax on gas-guzzling cars.

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California, on the other hand, last year adopted a tax-code change to allow employees to receive car-pool cash incentives and subsidized monthly bus passes tax-free. And employers are able to deduct their ride-sharing expenses. A new Assembly bill would go a step further by allowing commuters to deduct 40% of the cost of a transit pass or 20% of the cost of van-pooling from their state income taxes.

Still, the commitment of the shock troops at large organizations is a key. Rebecca R. Morales, manager of employee transportation at Caltech in Pasadena, said she has set up an air quality and ride-sharing fair at which vendors of walking shoes, among other exhibitors, will hawk their wares to rocket scientists.

“We probably would not have done it to this extent if it weren’t for the new AQMD rules,” she said.

To confront commuters’ concerns that their car offers a lifeline back to their families, the university will pay a fellow employee to give a ride-sharer a lift home in an emergency. Incentives like that have persuaded even Morales, a mother of two who has until now been a commuting holdout.

“I guess it’s time I get on the wagon,” Morales said with a sigh. She plans to start car pooling from Whittier by the end of the month.

RIDE-SHARING TIPS

- Make sure your auto insurance covers everyone in the car.

- Be on time. Agree with fellow car poolers on an alternate plan in the event that the driver is tied up at the office.

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- Elect a person to be the command post for early morning phone calls regading absences or delays. Also appoint a treasurer if ride-sharers are contributing toward gas.

- Take a vote about the kind of music you want to play, if any.

- Have enough gas in your car for the round trip.

- Resist making detours for personal errands.

- Don’t join a car pool with people you can sense you are not going to get along with.

- Refrain from smoking unless you are all smokers or you all agree smoking is OK.

- Be sure your car is clean the day you are driving. Your kids’ crayons rolling around on the back seat might annoy someone dressed in a business suit.

- Don’t feel obligated to talk all the time.

- Be vigilant at the wheel: Don’t drink before driving home, don’t speed and don’t drive overly aggressively.

- Agree on rules of the road from the start. Most pools take four weeks to begin to run smoothly.

Source: Commuter Computer

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