OCTD Hopes It Can Set Example for Commuters

Pressed to meet stiff new clean-air regulations, the agency responsible for promoting car-pooling, bus ridership and use of home computers to reduce traffic congestion adopted a plan Monday to get its own employees to do those things.

Approved by Orange County Transit District board members meeting in Garden Grove, the plan gives OCTD employees two extra paid vacation days per year for car-pooling at least 60% of the time, and four extra paid vacation days plus a chance to participate in special prize drawings for those who ride the bus to work.

The plan, expected to cost the agency about $28,000 a year, includes a six-month experiment to evaluate the feasibility of having “select” OCTD employees “telecommuting on a regular basis.” Telecommuting is use of home computers and fax machines to avoid travel to and from work sites equipped to handle such data transmissions.

The plan must still be approved by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD), which last year adopted new rules requiring employers of 100 or more to achieve an average occupancy rate of 1.5 people per vehicle for employees commuting to and from work.

Currently, the occupancy rate for OCTD’s 1,478 employees is 1.1 people per vehicle.

As part of OCTD’s plan, additional vehicles will be purchased as staff cars so that employees will not need their cars at work in order to run errands during the day. However, OCTD officials said, they will attempt to prevent abuses such as employees’ taking trips to get “haircuts” or conducting other personal chores.

Failure to submit a plan by the end of June would subject OCTD and its officials to fines of up to $25,000 per day or a year in jail for each day the AQMD rule is violated.

OCTD employees have been anxious about the plan, fearing that they would be setting a poor example for the rest of the county if the AQMD rejects the bus agency’s efforts as being too weak.

During Monday’s OCTD board meeting, officials noted that recent critics of the agency’s proposed system of employee incentives have seen their own ride-sharing plans rejected as inadequate by the AQMD.

However, the plan approved by OCTD Monday does not contain a previous provision that had been proposed by the agency’s staff but which was found to be too controversial--a monthly salary bonus for car-pooling.

OCTD officials said they will renew the bonus concept if the plan approved Monday does not succeed.