No Fare Zone

Spare the Air/Free Transit Program Digs Deep to Back Air Quality Talk
By John Goodwin

When it comes to reducing vehicle exhaust emissions by promoting transit ridership, there are plenty of agencies that can talk the talk. But in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and more than two dozen separate transit operators have been putting their money where their mouth is — spending more than $2 million a day to provide free rides when ground level ozone levels are forecast to exceed federal limits.

"The Spare the Air/Free Transit campaign is by far the most extensive and ambitious program of its kind anywhere in the country," says Ashley Nguyen, project manager for MTC. "There are a handful of similar programs that predate the Spare the Air/Free Transit initiative. But none has even been attempted in a metropolitan region as big as ours; involved as many customers as the million-plus passengers who ride Bay Area buses, trains and ferries each weekday; or involved as many different operators as the 26 separate systems now participating in the program."

The concept debuted in 2004 with a pilot program that offered free morning commutes on Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) trains and WHEELS buses operated by the suburban Livermore-Amador Valley Transit Authority. MTC, the Air District and the participating transit agencies established three clear goals for the program — increase public awareness; encourage Bay Area residents to drive less and use public transit more; and reduce emissions to avert exceedances of the national eight-hour ozone standard.

Every one of these goals was met. BART carried 16,000 more riders than usual on the first of two Spare the Air days during the 2004 smog season, and transported some 24,000 extra riders on the second day. More importantly, ozone levels remained below the federal standard.

Building on this success, the campaign was expanded in 2005 to cover free morning commutes on the first five Spare the Air weekdays on 20 of the region's transit systems. Though there was only a single Spare the Air Day in 2005, ridership increased by 7 percent (21,035 trips) and eight-hour ozone levels once again remained below federal limits. Even during the extraordinarily hot summer of 2006, when the campaign was expanded again to include free rides all day on 26 separate systems, eight-hour ozone levels remained below federal limits on two of the six weekdays. And participating agencies' ridership jumped 15 percent, with a whopping 1.3 million additional riders coming aboard.

"MTC commissioners and the Air District board members," explained Nguyen, "really supported expanding the program to include free rides all day, instead of just during the morning rush hour. The intent was to encourage the public to ride transit not only for regular work trips, but also for school, medical, recreational, shopping and other trips that occur throughout the day. This way, Bay Area residents truly have an attractive, viable choice to use transit for their daily routines instead of driving. It also made the marketing message to the public easy as pie."

The campaign involves comprehensive outreach to raise awareness about the link between transportation and air quality. By persuading an estimated 465,444 drivers to reduce an estimated 1.14 trips each, MTC and the Air District calculate that an average of some 2.221 tons of nitrogen oxides, 2.179 tons of reactive organic gases, and 0.852 tons of particulate matter were reduced on each of the six Spare the Air weekdays in 2006. These emissions reductions came with a fairly hefty price tag of $410,000 per ton.

Perhaps not surprisingly, money is the biggest challenge facing the program. The $13.2 million operating budget for the 2006 campaign was funded through a combination of federal and local air quality improvement funds, with MTC providing the federal dollars through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ), and the Air District supplying local funds through the Transportation Fund for Clean Air.

"By far the biggest expense is reimbursing the transit operators for lost farebox revenue due to the free transit promotion," explains MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger. "To implement the program in future years, our challenge will be to find some additional ways to fund the campaign."

A private sector partnership may be one possibility, with Heminger indicating that MTC and the Air District already are talking about soliciting financial assistance from large Bay Area corporations to help pay for and implement the Spare the Air/Free Transit campaign in the summer of 2007.

John Goodwin is a public information officer for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the transportation planning, financing and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.