Vanpools Providing Relief From Sore Rides

After stewing just one week in rush-hour traffic, Eric DeWaele was ready to quit his new job.

The Palmdale resident was spending two hours every morning and another two hours every night staring at the procession of brake lights in his crawl to and from his job in Woodland Hills’ Warner Center.

“It was mental abuse,” said DeWaele, 25, a customer service representative at a mortgage lending company. “I couldn’t take it anymore.”

He shared his commuting woes with his company’s human resources department, which referred him to Warner Center TMO. The nonprofit transportation management organization hooked him up with a vanpool.

Now an ardent vanpooler, DeWaele said he’s been able to cut his commute time in half -- and catch up on sleep while someone else drives -- because of the commuter-assistance group. He shares a van with employees from other companies, an arrangement that he said would have been difficult for individuals to coordinate on their own.

For more than a decade, transportation management organizations have been helping weary commuters like DeWaele find alternatives to driving solo.

These organizations, by conducting outreach at employment sites, facilitating carpools and vanpools, encouraging transit use and providing support services such as guaranteeing stranded workers a free ride home, also help companies comply with clean-air mandates.

“They fill this great void between government agencies and the public and the employers,” said James Corless, California director of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a nonprofit group that promotes transportation alternatives.

Across the nation, there are about 140 transportation management associations, said Sara Hendricks, editor of the TMA Handbook, a manual published by the National Center for Transit Research.

Such groups sprouted all over Southern California after the South Coast Air Quality Management District adopted a rule in 1987 requiring organizations with 100 or more employees to implement a ride-share plan.

“It was not the most popular regulation with businesses,” said Sam Atwood, spokesman for the air-quality management district. “They objected to the cost and loathed being in a role to influence employee behavior.”

Rather than setting up programs in-house, employers paid to join transportation management associations.

In 1995, the air-quality management district adopted a more flexible rule that gave employers the discretion to opt out of the groups. The state Legislature passed a law the following year exempting organizations with fewer than 250 employees from complying altogether.

As a result, membership in the groups tumbled. Some of them folded.

“It has been tough,” said John Miranda, a board member of the Pasadena Transportation Management Assn., a nonprofit that dissolved into an unincorporated, all-volunteer group after losing employer support. “Once they cut loose the folks with less than 250 [employees], that diminished the membership.”

Some groups survived, often because of strong backing by local government. Membership in the Burbank TMO, for example, is compelled by a city ordinance requiring employers with 25 or more employees in its Media District or downtown redevelopment area to reduce employee trips by 2% a year.

“We could not do what we’re doing without the partnership of the city,” said J.J. Weston, executive director of the Burbank organization.

Experts say there haven’t been any wide-ranging studies on the effectiveness of such groups. But Warner Center TMO -- which serves more than 30,000 employees and is considered one of the most successful in the country -- may be an example of the possibilities.

At Warner Center, 68% of employees drive alone, compared with the 85% who did before the TMO began in 1989, according to Chris Park, the group’s executive director. While 10% carpooled before, 23% now catch rides with others. Bus ridership has jumped more than twelvefold, from 0.4% to 5% of the workforce.

“It’s just amazing -- it really is a model for the rest of the nation,” said Stuart Anderson, a consultant and former chairman of the Assn. for Commuter Transportation’s TMA Council.

Warner Center’s success, observers said, comes from its strong organization as well as a solid base of financial support.

The group maintains a database to help those interested in sharing rides find others with similar schedules. Rather than just selling transit passes, it also lobbies transit agencies to create new commuter-oriented bus lines. Buttressing the efforts is the Warner Center Specific Plan, which requires large property owners to be members.

Although some employers in the past chafed at joining the organizations, others say the groups boost quality of life and worker morale.

“It helps us attract and retain quality employees,” said Brad Kieffer, spokesman for Health Net, an insurance company with 2,000 employees in Woodland Hills and Chatsworth.

DeWaele, the customer service representative, believes more employers should support such programs because they raise productivity. His colleagues who share rides seem well-rested and energized when they start the workday, while many of those who commute solo seem grumpy and tired, he said.

“They complain about the traffic, how bad it was,” DeWaele said. “I tell them I don’t know about the traffic. I was sleeping.”