It’s No Time for S.D. to Be Smug About Smog

Last year, when the state Air Resources Board approved a vigorous 20-year, smog-control plan for the Los Angeles Basin--the toughest yet enacted anywhere--it was indirectly helping to clean up San Diego County’s air, because most of our dirtiest air is blown in from Los Angeles.

But that’s not a reason for San Diego to be smug about its own smog. Pollution authorities here say that the gains made against air pollution in the last five years are being offset by increased pollution from the region’s growing number of cars and the longer distances people are traveling.

Like Los Angeles, San Diego County will be required to come up with a comprehensive air-quality plan by 1991. That plan, in conjunction with state emission-control requirements, must reduce air pollution by 5% a year.

Overall, San Diego won’t need measures as drastic as Los Angeles, which has the nation’s dirtiest air. But San Diegans will have to make changes, especially in their automobile use because auto exhaust is a major contributor to smog.

A transportation-management plan will be part of the air pollution plan and as anyone who commutes along California 78 or Interstate 15 can attest, such a plan is needed to help relieve traffic congestion as well as air pollution.

The San Diego Assn. of Governments has come up with a transportation-management plan intended to reduce congestion in the county. It’s not part of the air pollution plan, but could well be incorporated into it.

It calls for companies with more than 50 workers to establish incentives and programs to encourage workers to stop driving alone to work. The list of possible incentives include such things as four-day work weeks; staggered hours; a guaranteed ride home for employees who rideshare; subsidized public-transportation passes, subsidizing or providing vans for car-pooling; showers and lockers for bicyclers; telecommuting; on-site services such as child care, banking and restaurants, and preferential parking for car pools.

For the plan to work, each of the county’s 18 city councils and the Board of Supervisors must adopt the plan and enforce it. Uniformity is a key to success because many employers have workers in more than one city.

Success also depends on how innovative the employers get with their incentive programs. While it is mandatory that employers prepare and implement a plan, employees are not required to use the incentives. It will take more than bus passes to lure most San Diegans out of their cars.

Realistically, however, if a voluntary program fails to change commuting habits, then mandatory restrictions are sure to follow. San Diego cannot afford to build enough roads to keep up with traffic and growth, and our health demands that we clean up the air.

The Sandag plan is a good start. Too little is known from experience elsewhere to know how effective it will be. But what is known is that voluntary plans have had little success. So for this plan to achieve reasonable traffic and air pollution reductions, it will take innovative incentives, and a willingness to change long-established habits.