Car Czars : A Brave Band of Reformers, Their Mission Is to Get You to Share the Ride to Work
It took Janet Newton of Santa Ana eight months to find a car-pool partner. She called every person on the computerized ride-share match list at McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. in Huntington Beach, where she works.
“Everyone had a legitimate excuse,” she said. “They had to pick up their kids at school, or took an evening class, or had aerobics after work, or put in lots of overtime.”
The realization that people had valid reasons for their drive-alone pattern was a valuable lesson for Newton because her job is to change that pattern.
Cutting-Edge Job
A year ago she came to McDonnell Douglas as the company’s Commuter Services Administrator, a bland-sounding title for a job unknown 20 years ago and now considered cutting edge. In her new position, Newton’s success will be measured by the number of McDonnell Douglas’ 8,400 Huntington Beach employees she can persuade to commute by car pool, van pool, bus, bicycle, walking or jogging--anything but driving alone in their cars.
“I know all the driver concerns, and you have to answer every negative with something positive,” Newton said. “It’s a tough job, it’s very hard. But it’s not going to go away: It’s a career of the future.”
The notion that prying Southern Californians out of their automobiles is a job with a bright future might be laughable, except for one phenomenon: Regulation XV--also known as the “Commuter Program.”
Adopted in December, 1987, by the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the regulation is aimed at fighting air pollution by reducing Southern California commuter traffic, now estimated at nearly 7 million car trips daily. Its seemingly modest goal is to raise the number of human bodies in the average automobile from the present 1.13 to 1.5.
The unique aspect of the regulation--which has the enforcing clout of heavy penalties for noncompliance--is that it hands the responsibility for achieving this turnaround to businesses.
Thus, by January, every Southern California company with 100 or more employees at one site must submit to the AQMD a ride-sharing program--complete with incentives the company hopes will actually get employees to consider leaving their cars at home. The regulation also specifies that every qualified firm must have a staff Employee Transportation Coordinator--or ETC--to carry out the program.
Since an estimated 8,500 businesses will be affected, in effect, Regulation XV has created 8,500 new full- or part-time positions in transportation management.
“Basically,” transportation consultant Harold Katz says, “Regulation XV has created a whole new profession almost overnight.”
By whatever name--Commuter Services Administrator, Transportation Demand Manager, Commuter Coordinator, or any of a number of variations--businesses are scurrying to find qualified candidates with the special talents to win converts to ride-sharing.
Not so incidentally, the men and women who had been struggling for years to launch company car-pool and van-pool programs, suddenly are being invested with new clout.
Says Lee Goldenberg, now manager of commuter services offices for the Department of Water and Power (which AQMD has cited as offering a model ride-share program): “I’ve been in this work for almost nine years, and I can guarantee you that ride-sharing has not been a popular topic with businesses. But now I can’t go to a meeting without getting a job offer.”
And newcomers, who sometimes hadn’t even heard the phrase ETC before they became one, are finding themselves in a brand new world.
‘Started Reading’
At Litton Industries in Woodland Hills, Lorena Parker moved from the human resources department 15 months ago to her new post of Employee Transportation Coordinator.
“I walked into an empty office and there was a little stack of information on the desk,” she said. “I started reading about Regulation XV.”
Since then she has surveyed employees, isolated target groups, sponsored a transportation fair with free food and shuttle service, and spent a lot of time talking to employees about what they do and don’t want.
“You wouldn’t make it in this type of job if you weren’t interested in people,” she said. “It takes a lot of personal effort, and it can get very frustrating. The AQMD puts all the pressure on the employer but nothing on the employee.”
In other words, ride-sharing has to be sold, and marketing is a word that sprinkles any conversation on the subject.
With no lesson plan to follow, resourcefulness is a driving force. At downtown Arco, Bob Johnston administers a comprehensive program that includes 55 vans and boasts an enviable 1.96 average vehicle ridership.
“You don’t pick up a book and say here’s the answer,” Johnston said. “Whatever you can come up with, whatever you can sell your manager, whatever works, that will do it. We need new blood, and new ideas continually moving.”
Brainstorming and networking, the transportation coordinators are coming up with a full range of promotional techniques. Some samples, from various companies:
Badges that entitle car-poolers to a special “car-pool” lane at the company cafeteria, new walking shoes for people who move closer to work, preferential parking spaces for car-poolers, showers and lockers for bicycle riders, on-site bus pass sales, display racks of bus schedules, mailing bus passes to employees’ homes so they won’t have to stand in line, scheduling formation meetings for van pools on company time, lapel pins, rental libraries for audio tapes, ride-share contests with substantial prizes such as video Camcorders and large television sets, recognition lunches.
A Major Breakthrough
And ride-share coordinators throughout the area think they have made a major breakthrough with the Guaranteed Ride Home program. It works in various ways, but essentially provides that in any family or personal emergency, the car pooler or van pooler will be given a car to drive home.
“You’re not stuck at work, which is a major argument against car-pooling,” said Johnston. “It gives people a warm, fuzzy feeling.”
As Michael Soper, the first full-time transportation coordinator at Canoga Park’s Rocketdyne, where 8,603 workers design and manufacture shuttle engines, put it:
“Promoting ride-sharing is overcoming peoples’ objections.”
But Soper, Parker and other newcomers, who are starting from scratch in their futuristic careers, have also discovered that they have a lot of support.
‘A Little Community’
“The ride-share coordinators are almost like a little community,” says Parker, who works with other coordinators in the heavily commercialized Warner Center area.
At McDonnell Douglas, Janet Newton who has a background in commuter coordinating, describes ride-share coordinators as “a neat networking group.” Because she has experience, and her Regulation XV plan was accepted by AQMD (which bounces back plans that don’t offer sufficient incentives), she gets frequent calls for advice.
“We don’t keep secrets,” she said. “Why re-invent the wheel?”
In addition to informal networks, the ETCs have their own organization, the Assn. for Commuter Transportation whose membership has jumped from 100 to 330 in the past year. Says chapter president Eric Schreffler: “We see our job as providing specific workshops, activities, networking, and support network for these coordinators. Some of them have become the resident expert in a hurry, and that can be tremendously stressful.”
Training Required
Official training is helpful but minimal. The AQMD requires a three-day training course, available at several locations. And for serious transportation students, UCLA Extension’s Public Policy program offers the nation’s only certification course in Transportation Demand Management.
Essentially, though, it is through networking that ETCs learn their new trade: speaking the language of HOVs (high-occupancy vehicles) and AVRs (average vehicle ridership), organizing a van pool then learning how to do conflict resolution in order to keep the fleet going (“you almost have to be a surrogate therapist,” said one), learning to balance optimism with patience.
While practicing patience, the new transportation coordinators search diligently for the keys to changing behavior patterns. Often success is counted in little victories.
Michael Soper, who has increased van pools from five to 18 at Rocketdyne, is also proud of other strides.
Slow Progress With Passes
“Last month we started selling bus passes and sold zero passes. The second month I came up with a brochure, handed them out to 3,000 employees and we sold 18 passes. This month, I will have RTD offer a question-answer day, and hope we’ll sell more.”
But marketing techniques only work if, as Janet Newton observed, every employee negative can be answered with a positive.
“For instance, the myth of car-pooling is that people have to do it every day, and you are locked into some long-term commitment.”
That’s not the case, she said. Car-pooling twice a week can be looked on with great favor in the ETC office.
People who commute long distances in comfortable cars aren’t going to trade them for uncomfortable vans, says Lee Goldenberg of DWP, which has 51 van pools on the road and 30 more on the way.
Went for Luxury Vans
“We look at cars as extensions of peoples’ personalities, so we give them luxury vans,” he said, “with 12 seats instead of 15 for lots of leg room, seats that recline with their own reading lights, personalized air conditioning and heating outlets.”
The key is positive thinking. “We want to offer carrots (incentives) that are meaningful,” says Ann Cousins at Hughes Aircraft Co. Her official title is manager support services, corporate administration for Hughes, but she’s also been called the “czar of commuter services,” said Cousins, who has spent the last three months working on Regulation XV plans for the company.
Hughes Aircraft Co., like several giant Southern California employers, started its first car-pool program in the late ‘70s because of the oil embargo. Now, with 52,000 employees covered, Hughes has 302 van pools on the road (for 2,400 commuters), 5,600 commuters car-pooling, about 400 people riding a bus, about 300 who ride a bike and about 325 who walk to work.
“That’s a pretty fair achievement, but it has taken us 10 years to reach it,” she said.
A Revolutionary Rule
“But Regulation XV is revolutionary: It sets a goal, but it tells us you don’t have another 10 years to achieve the effort.” (The regulation is being phased in through January. Each company receives AQMD notification that it has 90 days to submit a plan).
Although every ride-share coordinator has come up against the hard-line driver who thinks his or her constitutional rights are being threatened by even the prospect of sharing, there are increasing numbers of others who look at gridlock and decide to give it a try, said Cousins. She thinks critical mass is achievable.
“Some die-hards we will never get,” she acknowledged, “but in this day and age, with the surge of interest in health, breathing clean air, not being stressed out by the commute, if we can educate people on what the problems are and how it will help their quality of life, we think we can make a lot of progress.”
And, despite the fact that ETCs are sometimes called masochists, one element of the new career that all ETCs mention is that their work is environmentally sound.
When Lee Goldenberg returns to his downtown office from a meeting in the Valley and passes the DWP Palmdale vans heading toward home, it’s a “good feeling,” he said.
“You know you’re taking 600 vehicles off the freeways, you’re conserving fuel, you’re saving thousands of dollars per employee and keeping tons of pollutants out of the air.
“You just feel like you’re doing everything right.”
