Last year, when the Illinois State Chamber of Commerce held workshops on commuting options throughout the Chicago area, only about 50 people showed up.
But that was before the Clean Air Act of 1990 took effect.
At a March workshop, Gerald Rawlings, director of operations analysis for the Chicago Area Transportation Study, or CATS, counted an audience of 100 who had come to learn how to promote mass transit, ride-sharing and van pools.
Come 1996, federal law will require 5,400 companies in northeastern Illinois-those that have more than 100 employees-to reduce the number of single-occupancy vehicles in their parking lots by 25 percent, and they have until next year to devise a comprehensive plan on how they intend to do it.
“Some companies want to get on with it right now,” says Rawlings, who estimates that the Clean Air Act will mean a dent of about 100,000 cars per day in local rush-hour traffic. “Others haven’t had the time or psychic energy to explore the options.”
“Whether or not employers realize it, they’re going to be in the transportation business pretty soon,” says Dan Reichard, president of the Association for Commuter Transportation, a national organization that aims to reduce the number of people commuting alone.
And whether or not some 2 million Chicago area commuters realize it, the Clean Air Act has the potential to affect how, when and with whom they travel to work.
In this era of corporate cuts, experts say it’s anyone’s guess as to how the Clean Air Act will affect strained relations between employers and employees, but they agree there’s potential for conflict and confusion.
For example, how would you feel if your company levied a parking fee to discourage you from driving or if a prospective employer asked in a job interview how you intend to get to work?
“It’s going to take a supportive corporate philosophy, with resources behind it, to get people to use mass transit,” says Bill Baltutis, executive director of the Transportation Management Association of Lake Cook. “You can’t just say `take transit’ and hope employees will. Businesses have to provide incentives, and agencies have to provide services. It’s going to be difficult, though not impossible, because we’re pretty much wedded to our cars.”
Indeed, despite new schedules, exhaustive marketing campaigns, discounted fares, restructured routes, spruced-up stations and new fleets, public transit systems nationwide haven’t seen dramatic ridership increases in the last decade.
In fact, in the last three years, the Chicago Transit Authority has seen ridership drop by 57.1 million rides a year on its bus and train lines. In 1992, 491.3 million rides were taken, down from 568.4 million in 1990.
Today, some 80 million Americans still drive to the office, and only 6 million hop a bus or train.
“People are going to have trouble giving up their cars-it’s the culture in this country,” says Vincent Petrini, communications director of the Regional Transportation Authority in Chicago. “But once they try public transportation, they may not want to go back to spending hours smelling someone’s exhaust pipe.”
In Chicago and beyond, mass transit systems are gearing up to satisfy what officials project to be a growing demand for services, particularly in the suburbs, which have lagged cities in making trains and buses a viable alternative to the auto.
To do so, officials at mass transit systems in cities as different as Phoenix, New York and Denver say innovation is the key to attracting passengers.
At PACE, the RTA’s suburban bus system that transports 700 folks per day in 78 vans as part of its van-pool program, spokeswoman Mindy Laflamme says the number of companies inquiring about the van pools has risen in recent weeks.
“We’re looking at possibly a 25 percent increase in ridership because of the Clean Air Act,” she says.
“With more people living and working in the suburbs, we have to find ways to accommodate them through alternatives to the car,” adds Marla Karlin, spokeswoman for Metra, the RTA’s commuter rail line that transports approximately 135,000 commuters systemwide on an average weekday. She noted that insufficient parking at stations may be another reason folks forgo trains.
To that end, PACE is providing shuttle buses between stations on the Milwaukee West line, which operates between Chicago and Elgin, and companies in the Wood Dale area, with those companies picking up the tab for the service.
Metra also has applied for federal funding of the Wisconsin Central. The first new passenger rail line in the Chicago area in nearly 70 years, it would operate over the freight tracks from Antioch to Franklin Park beginning in 1995.
In Chicago, to make the system more user-friendly, the CTA is color-coding all of the rail lines, says spokesman Jeff Stern. The Midway rapid transit line, which will serve Chicago’s Southwest Side, is expected to open this summer.
Some cities have vigorously promoted public transit and multipassenger vehicles. But their efforts have met with varied rates of success.
In the last six months, the City of Phoenix Transit Department has equipped its buses with bicycle racks to appeal to cycling enthusiasts and simplified its route structure to attract drivers.
“These are good-will moves,” says project manager Michael Nevarez, noting that ridership in 1992 grew 1.2 percent after several years of double-digit increases. “The City of Phoenix is so spread out that the car is still king, but we’ve got new bike paths to encourage people to ride to work, and we’ve got high-occupancy vehicle lanes on the highways to encourage people to car pool.” (High-occupancy vehicle lanes, or HOVs for short, are reserved for multipassenger cars.)
The Chicago area is expected to get its first glimpse of HOV lanes when the Stevenson Expressway undergoes rehabilitation, after completion of reconstruction on the Kennedy Expressway.
“It’s all subject to funding, and the project wouldn’t start until 1995 at the earliest,” says Ed Nash, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation in Chicago. “The HOV lanes would run between the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Cook-Du Page County line, but no decision has been made on the number.”
Subway ridership in New York City climbed 9 percent in the 1980s, after the Metropolitan Transportation Authority poured $16 billion into a renovation project to clean up its fleet and graffiti-covered stations.
But those gains were lost to the recession, according to MTA spokesman John Cunningham. Now, MTA plans to expand rail service to the suburbs in the form of more frequent trains and introduce discounted fare cards for commuters who use two modes of transportation per trip.
The so-called “green consumer” is being courted, too.
“Every April, we put posters on buses and trains that outline how using mass transit helps to reduce pollutants in the air, saves energy and saves money,” Cunningham says.
In Colorado, the Regional Transportation District of Denver has capitalized on the public’s growing environmental awareness and companies’ growing concern about enforcing the Clean Air Act.
Through a 2 1/2-year-old “Eco Pass System” that applies group insurance strategy to public transportation, Denver has increased ridership to 58.4 million boardings in 1992 from 52.4 million in 1989.
Today, 850 businesses in the Denver area offer bus passes as part of their benefits package. Whereas a pass would cost a worker up to $888 per year, the transit system discounts the price for employers to $25 to $180 per employee.
“On an annual basis, we estimate that this system eliminates 1.9 million commuter car trips, 16 million commuter miles driven, 960 thousand gallons of fuel and 640 tons of air pollutants from the air,” says Matt Raymond, product management administrator for the RTD. “On average, the program has increased a company’s public transportation usage by 160 percent.”
But under the Clean Air Act, it will be up to corporations to clean out their parking lots or risk penalties.
While local businesses that fail to submit a detailed proposal are subject to having the Environmental Protection Agency impose one on them, the state faces a penalty, too. Illinois could lose up to $750 million in highway funding from the federal government if companies don’t comply with the act.
But officials at two local companies have found that incentives can lure employees out of their cars.
The key, they say, is to make other forms of transportation affordable, accessible and convenient.
About 2,000 employees of the Sears Merchandise Group arrive at the new Hoffman Estates headquarters via multiple-rider vehicles, which include 44 PACE van pools and 13 buses that employees sign up for, as well as 200-plus employee-generated car pools, said Guy Eberhart, national public affairs manager.
Last year, when the National Safety Council moved from a Michigan Avenue building to the Spring Lake Business Park in west suburban Itasca, workers were given the opportunity to adopt flexible schedules, and PACE extended bus service to the new site from the River Road CTA rapid transit stop and Itasca train station.
“We acknowledged that we couldn’t keep the standard starting and quitting times if we wanted people to use mass transit or car pool,” says safety council spokesman Robert W. O’Brien, noting that 30 percent of the staff commute via multiple-rider vehicles. “We introduced three time options. Companies have to be willing to be creative and flexible. A tremendous education process is going to have to take place in corporate America.”
For the 600 employees of Washington National Insurance, transportation education began when the company announced it would move in early May from Evanston to Lincolnshire.
“We had two goals,” says Richard Braunstein, director of administrative services. “The first was to provide transportation for employees, and the second was to give us a solid foundation for coming into compliance with the Clean Air Act. So far, I don’t feel any resistance.”
Perhaps that’s because Washington National has committed upwards of $250,000 to fund one year of free bus service from the CTA Howard Street station and downtown Evanston to the new facility. The company has increased its monthly transportation subsidy to $21 (from $12.50) for employees who use public transportation or car pool.
(As of Jan. 1, 1993, federal law allows companies to give workers up to $60 a month in tax-free transit benefits, up from $21.)
One PACE van pool serves the staff, and flexible hours continue.
In the event of an emergency, Washington National Insurance guarantees a free ride home.
“We realize that employees from the city will be reluctant to participate in these programs unless they know they can get home to their sick child or away to handle a family crisis,” Braunstein says.
