Surprise! Motorcycles Emit More Pollutants Than Cars
Dear Street Smart:
Where I work, we are trying to meet the AQMD requirement of 1.5 employees per car. We have been told a motorcycle is the same as a car for counting purposes. This seems unfair. Since motorcycles ease traffic, use less gasoline and are less polluting, why do motorcycle riders penalize the company the same as car riders?
Eric DeWilde, Laguna Hills
This seemed odd to me also, so I asked the South Coast Air Quality Management District, the folks who brought us Regulation 15.
First some background: For those who don’t know, Regulation 15 is the sweeping anti-pollution policy designed to help clean up Southern California’s nasty air pollution by early next century. One of the major targets is the automobile, with a prime tactic being the effort to get more people to ride to work together, thus reducing the number of vehicles on the road and smog emitted.
A motorcycle would seem, as you say, to deserve more lax treatment. Surprise, surprise. According to authorities at the AQMD, motorcycles actually pollute more than cars.
Claudia Keith, a spokeswoman for the agency, said studies have demonstrated that per-mile emission of all the noxious stuff that goes into making smog is actually higher for a motorcycle. While the average passenger car emits .41 grams of pollutants per mile, motorcycles typically yield .62 grams for bikes under 700 cubic centimeters and .87 grams for bigger cycles.
The reason, Keith said, is that motorcycles are not outfitted with the sort of catalytic converters that clean up the stuff spewing from a car’s tailpipe.
So unless you can get a fellow employee to share the seat, that beloved bike is going to be something of a detriment to the company’s Regulation 15 efforts, as unfair as that seems.
Dear Street Smart:
Due to the rapid buildup in the Aliso Viejo area in unincorporated Orange County off El Toro Road, there is a very serious traffic problem during rush hours on Laguna Canyon Road north of El Toro Road.
During the morning commute hours, the buildup is due to two lanes of traffic going north converging into one lane approximately half a mile north of the intersection of Laguna Canyon and El Toro roads. During the evening commute hours, the buildup in the southbound lanes is due to the very short lead into the left turn lane from Laguna Canyon Road to El Toro Road.
Has anyone thought about using traffic-control cones to enable two lanes of traffic to head north during the morning commute hours? This, in effect, would take one of the southbound lanes and make it a northbound lane during those hours. The reverse in the evening would be more difficult because of the need to have a longer lead lane to enable the left turn onto El Toro Road.
I am far from a traffic-control expert, but something must be done.
Gilbert N. Kruger, South Laguna
Psssst. Don’t tell anyone, Gilbert, but I’m not a traffic expert either.
Those who are don’t particularly take a fancy to the idea of reversible lanes, although it sounded to me like it had merit.
There are two main reasons why, experts maintain, it wouldn’t work: For starters, that stretch of Laguna Canyon Road is notorious for the terrible traffic accidents that have occurred. Putting in reversible lanes could only exacerbate that problem, the experts say. In addition, there would be little to gain for northbound morning traffic other than moving the congestion problem farther upstream. Laguna Canyon Road funnels down to just a pair of lanes as it enters Irvine.
But, who knows, things could still get better. The county’s traffic division has plans to widen Laguna Canyon Road to six lanes, making it an efficient super-street. But that may not happen any time soon. Laguna Beach officials aren’t exactly doing cartwheels over the idea of widening the road because it would be a red carpet for the thundering hordes of tourists and beach-goers who descend on the community every summer.
The road’s fate could lie in the outcome of ongoing negotiations over the sale of the pristine Laguna Laurel area nearby. The county has offered Laguna Beach $10 million to buy the land from the Irvine Co. and preserve it as open space but has imposed certain conditions that must be met before the money will be forked over, including a stipulation that Laguna Canyon Road be widened.
Even if the Laguna Laurel sale falls through and the road isn’t widened, other events might conspire to help matters.
Steve Hogan, transportation program director for the county’s Environmental Management Agency, said the road’s traffic problem is caused largely by motorists detouring through El Toro Road to avoid congestion on Moulton Parkway, another major north-south thoroughfare. Fortunately, plans to widen Moulton Parkway through El Toro Road, the chief choke point along that route, are moving ahead. Within two years, the new section should be open to traffic.
Moreover, the county hopes to begin work in about 18 months to widen and improve the El Toro Y, the confluence of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways that clogs with traffic and prompts many motorists to divert onto Laguna Canyon Road.
Hopefully, those two projects will work to ease the flood of commuters descending on Laguna Canyon Road.
