Free Parking at Workplace Is on the Way Out in O.C. : Pollution: Officials carefully draft air quality rules, fearing public outrage from 1 million solo commuters.

SANTA ANA —  Before you know it, free parking at work will probably be a thing of the past.

As part of the war on smog, the South Coast Air Quality Management District is requiring cities and counties by year’s end to prohibit most employer-provided free parking, levy parking surcharges on workers who commute solo and offer preferred parking spaces to ride-sharers.

While many people working in downtown Los Angeles already pay upward of $125 per month for parking, the 1 million Orange County commuters who drive themselves to and from work have come to consider parking for free a God-given right. Take away that amenity of suburban living and working and, some people believe, you’ll trigger widespread outrage.

“The phones will be ringing off the hook, for sure,” said Greg Summerell, president of the Communications Workers of America Local 9510 in Santa Ana, which represents more than 3,000 Pacific Bell, General Telephone and AT&T; employees in Orange County. “It’s a sore spot with any employee.”

Summerell, and officials at some companies, expect parking fees to become a contentious bargaining issue come contract time, because a move to eliminate free parking at work will affect workers’ take-home pay.

Caught between the powerful AQMD, which is hellbent on preserving billions of dollars in federal highway and mass-transit aid, and constituents likely to be outraged about having to pay for parking at work, local elected officials are moving slowly and carefully as they draft new rules.

Some people see that slow, deliberate pace as official foot-dragging and predict that the new rules for businesses with 100 or more employees--the first to be targeted by the AQMD--will not be in place by the Dec. 31 target.

But some of the officials themselves say time is needed to develop the rules, because the regulations directed at big businesses are merely the first shoe to drop: Free, unrestricted parking will soon thereafter be barred at smaller businesses, malls and movie theaters too. Even curbside parking along traffic arteries is targeted for elimination, at least during peak periods.

Eventually, the only place where you may be able to park without charge or restriction is in your neighborhood.

Except for the rule affecting large employers, the new parking regulations are supposed to take effect “as and where appropriate,” according to the AQMD plan--although no one is certain what that phrase means.

The AQMD regulations are not aimed at people who already car-pool. The rules, which are undergoing review for possible revisions, are being developed as part of a regional program to have Southern California meet federal clean-air standards by 2010, which must happen if the state is to preserve its federal highway and mass-transit money.

By making it harder and more costly for solo drivers to park, and by levying special fees or surcharges for single drivers to use freeways during peak hours, the AQMD hopes to cut vehicle emissions enough to meet the standards. The issue of exemptions to parking fees for people who work odd hours has not yet been decided.

To date, the most publicized rules from the same AQMD program have involved the ban on starter fluid to light back-yard barbecues and Regulation 15, which requires companies with 100 or more employees to come up with plans to boost average vehicle occupancy for workers commuting to and from work to 1.5 people per vehicle.

That regulation does not tell businesses how to achieve the desired result, nor does it prescribe punishment for firms that fail to reach the goal. But firms that ignore Regulation 15 or fail to make a good-faith effort to implement plans--which they are required to submit to the AQMD for approval--can be fined up to $25,000 per day.

At an Orange County hearing two months ago, members of AQMD’s Special Commission on Air Quality and the Economy heard an unending stream of complaints from local business representatives, who said the costs of complying with some of the AQMD’s rules far outweigh the benefits to air quality.

Linda Uman, who directs environmentally related transportation management efforts for McDonnell Douglas, told commission members that her firm has pumped more than $100,000 into a program of loans and grants to improve its average worker-per-vehicle ratio, mainly by increasing the number of workers who ride bicycles to work. In the short term, it increased the number of bicyclists from 85 to 308.

At that rate, she said, it would have cost the company, which has 7,000 workers in Huntington Beach, at least $2.5 million to achieve the AQMD goal of 1.5 workers per vehicle.

However, within months the number of bicyclists fell back to 133 participants, she said.

“The reason employees gave” for dropping out of the program, she said, “is it is not safe to bicycle in Orange County.”

Some at the hearing argued that worker habits will not change until solo drivers are made to pay the actual costs of their polluting ways. Studies have shown that automobile and truck emissions are responsible for more than 60% of the region’s smog and that drivers are never taxed or charged for the full environmental cost of their behavior.

Providing free parking to solo drivers is tantamount to giving away free to all takers gasoline priced at $4 a gallon, researchers estimate.

The latest AQMD move seeks to shift the real cost of parking from employer to employees, by requiring cities and counties to “adopt a local ordinance . . . which eliminates free employee parking for all employers” and forces employers to “charge employees in single-occupant vehicles for parking.”

The measure, which now targets employers of 100 or more, will be extended at a later but unspecified date to smaller businesses--those with 25 or more employees.

The latest AQMD regulations also require cities and the county by year’s end to adopt parking code revisions that would “reduce the amount of ‘free’ parking at non-work centers,” such as malls, theaters, even downtown shopping districts that some cities--such as Fullerton--have sought to reinvigorate by removing curbside parking meters. Such cities may now have to bring the meters back to discourage solo driving habits.

How much solo drivers would be charged, or what discounts would be offered to ride-sharers, remain to be determined. No city wants to make that determination in a vacuum. What if one city established a $2 surcharge for single-occupant vehicles but a neighboring city charged just $1? Would shoppers flock to the cheaper city? Development too?

“No city wants to do something that’s going to make it less competitive than a neighboring city,” said Joel Rosen, a Fullerton planning official who is chairman of a technical advisory committee studying parking control measures for Orange County’s Regional Advisory and Planning Council.

During a recent meeting of the Orange County Transportation Authority, Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder questioned whether cities are “dragging their feet” on parking rules.

Bill Hodge, executive director of the League of Cities, was sitting in the audience and rose quickly to dispute Wieder’s suggestion. He said that cities are trying to build a consensus and that the matter had been referred to the countywide planning council.

Also, Hodge said, a business and industry panel headed by Hughes Aircraft Co. Vice President Bill Jones has been meeting on the same issue.

“We’re trying to come up with a way to implement these rules that makes sense, by pulling resources together so there will be a united front,” Hodge said.

“We were asked by the county to look at these rules from a business point of view,” Jones said. “We’ve spent the last five months in an educational mode.”

Jones said he knows of no company in the county that has started charging employees for parking. But he said several, including Hughes, are setting aside preferred parking spaces for car-poolers and van-poolers.

If the panel finds ways to reduce emissions that are better than what the AQMD is ordering, Jones said, members hope that regional regulators will allow local governments and businesses to try them.

“We’re now in the process of drafting our recommendations,” Jones said. A report is due in about three weeks.

Meanwhile, Fullerton and Irvine have approached businesses and are working on parking studies that will form the basis of policy decisions later this year.

Irvine has gone a step further: It’s the only city with an agreement with the AQMD to begin enforcing its own municipal air regulations.

Initially, Irvine will take over enforcement of Regulation 15. To do this, the city had to show that its rules are tougher than Regulation 15. Thus, Irvine’s rules not only address employers of 100 or more workers, but building owners as well.

As part of the deal struck with the AQMD, Irvine can take up to a year to respond to future changes in Regulation 15, which allows the city flexibility in coming up with alternatives that city leaders think might be better.

Irvine officials said they hope that parking curbs can be handled similarly, but on a countywide basis.

Some officials, however, balk at the expected costs of enforcing the new local rules. Financially strapped county government, for example, is already spending more than $1 million to respond to AQMD rules, and cities are bearing a lesser but proportionate burden.

Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) recently railed against such costs in a letter to Gov. Pete Wilson and state legislative leaders and described the situation as “an outrage.”

Fullerton’s Rosen has also bemoaned the mountain of paperwork that could be generated through city-by-city enforcement of the new parking rules.

But Irvine’s transportation director, Doug Reilly, said he believes that the fear of creating new bureaucracies is overblown.

So far, he said, his city has added just one contract employee and anticipates hiring just two or three more.

“The idea of (creating) a bureaucracy is nonsense,” Reilly said.

A big fear, Rosen said, is doing something that costs a lot of money, does not work and provokes a strong political backlash that harms incumbent elected officials.

“The real question is who will be responsible for cleaning up the air,” Rosen said. “Will it be the individual or the city?

“As a city, we have no legal right to determine how an employee gets to and from work. . . . For the first time,” he said, “it’s the individual who’s being asked to pay.”

A Plan to Charge for Parking to Fight Smog

Requiring employers and city governments to set fees for parking at work, shopping centers and entertainment complexes is one way the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the Southern California Assn. of Governments hope to reduce smog. Other fees are also under consideration or are being proposed by environmental groups and transportation experts. The benefits vary greatly, as do the costs. Examples of what an average motorist’s daily user fees might be for various activities:

Plan: Fees for using freeways during morning, evening rush Average Price Per Vehicle: $3/day Mileage: -5.0% Emissions: -8.0%

Plan: Fees for employees to park at work Average Price Per Vehicle: $2.25/day Mileage: -1.5% Emissions: -1.5%

Plan: Fees for shoppers, theater- goers, others to park Average Price Per Vehicle: $0.30/day Mileage: -3.4% Emissions: -3.7%

Plan: Smog-based vehicle registration based on emission performance and miles driven Average Price Per Vehicle: $110/year Mileage: -0.4% Emissions: -3.8%

Plan: Deregulation of private transit (to allow jitneys and other entrepreneurial services) Average Price Per Vehicle: -- Mileage: -1.7% Emissions: -2.0% Note: Reductions are calculated using forecasts for the year 2010 as a base. 2010 is the deadline for meeting federal clean air standards.

Sources: Regional Institute of Southern California, Environmental Defense Fund, Southern California Assn. of Governments