Why this matters
About 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the state are caused by cars and trucks traveling on the roads.
Twice a week at 7:15 a.m., 29-year-old Matt Beer waits at the Route 2 bus stop in North Park for his commute to work on in-office days.
His company, an engineering consulting firm called AECOM, gives its employees $100 every month to pay for parking or public transit. A monthly bus pass costs him $72, so he bought one. Perks of riding, he said, include being able to “zone out,” text his friends or fiddle on his phone doing other tasks.
“It’s kind of a no-brainer to take public transportation,” Beer said.
The San Diego Association of Governments is trying to create more commuters like Beer. This year the regional planning agency increased funding to $2.3 million from $600,000 for a program aimed at incentivizing employers to encourage staffers to skip driving to work and ride public transportation, cycle or carpool instead.
Most of the budget’s increase will be used on assisting employers, organizations and local jurisdictions with kicking off commuter programs that reduce single-driver trips. The end goal: SANDAG wants to increase the number of employers participating.
The money, which comes from the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program, can be used for a variety of things to cut emissions, including funding bike-sharing and shared scooter systems.
One way SANDAG aims to get single-driver cars off the road is by funding discounted bus fares, encouraging vanpooling and promoting bike-to-work days for San Diego businesses.
SANDAG recognized more than 100 employers participating in its commuter program for encouraging sustainable transportation. The highest achieving recipients were responsible for keeping 30,000 single-occupancy vehicles off the road and reducing vehicle miles traveled by 844,000.
Coleen Clementson, SANDAG’s deputy CEO of planning, projects and programs, said the agency contacts employers throughout the San Diego region to encourage them to participate and help tailor a commuter program to suit their needs.
It’s expensive nowadays to own, maintain and fuel a car everyday, she said, so if commuter alternatives work for more San Diegans, spreading the word is a good thing.
“So often we find that people never would’ve taken transit before,” Clementson said. “They try it once and all of a sudden they think, ‘Gosh, why wouldn’t I take this all the time?’”
Helen Neppes has managed the transportation alternatives program at Scripps Health, a medical network in San Diego, for more than a decade. She sends weekly newsletters informing employees about the company’s incentives and climate awareness events, such as Clean Air Days. The company organizes carpooling and offers discounted bus passes. Anyone who bikes can also use showers and lockers at their gyms, she said.
A few years ago, Neppes said Scripps used to get a maximum subsidy of $450 from SANDAG per van per month until it paused vanpooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Nowadays, she said she’s seen lots of requests for bus and trolley passes from employees. Here’s how it works at Scripps: employees can purchase passes using an online voucher that gives them 20% off the pass. Scripps Health has a contract with SANDAG and they each subsidize half of the discount.
“It’s sort of a win-win because it benefits our employees, but also benefits our community,” Neppes said about the commuter program.
According to the agency, about 40% of greenhouse gas emissions in the state are caused by cars and trucks traveling on the roads, and SANDAG hopes to accelerate its efforts to get drivers off the roads – a key goal of the agency’s climate action plan, which includes curbing emissions.
For years, SANDAG has been tracking changes in San Diegans’ travel behavior to see how it can step in.
The agency surveyed 627 businesses and 1,100 employees this year and found that more businesses began offering remote work between pre-pandemic years and today — from 27% to 57%, respectively — especially in job areas like finance, insurance, scientific, and technology services.
However, remote workers were more likely to drive alone when they did go to the office compared to employees who do not telework.
Currently, about 20% of trips around the region are individuals traveling to or from work, according to the survey.
Public transit ridership plummeted in 2020 when the COVID-19 era began, but the average weekday transit ridership in the region picked up again by nearly 49% from 2021 to 2022, to over 242,000 boardings on weekdays.
SANDAG’s bike usage report says that bike activity across eight travel corridors increased by 4% between 2021 and 2022. However, activity is still down 10% from the historic “bike boom” of 2020, according to the report.
Ken Chin-Purcell, who serves as a president for the North County Cycle Club, said the increased funding to promote transit alternatives is positive, but communities need to improve bike infrastructure, too, and that can be costly.
“They’re very expensive problems to solve,” Chin-Purcell said.
Investing in bike lanes has also been a controversial topic for San Diegans. Some say bicycles serve as an exercise option and help the environment, but others argue bike lanes take away much-needed parking from residents and businesses.
Scripps employee Bill Heidler, 69, buys a monthly rail pass for $25 at a discount through his employer, and rides his bike to take the COASTER to work.
Most of the time, he works from home. But when he uses his bike on in-office days once every few months, it’ll be a ride that he says will make him “sweaty and everything.”
“I’m lucky enough there are shower facilities where I work,” he said. The showers are just another incentive at his workplace, along with lockers to store toiletries and towels and a rack to park and lock up his bike.
The Encinitas resident said that he doesn’t see many other cyclists at work.
“If you live more than two or three miles away from your workplace, then biking is not an easy choice,” said Heidler, who chooses to bike when he does because he enjoys riding for recreation and exercise.
Obstacles for cyclists include not having enough continuous bike lanes and navigating through long or uphill distances, he said. Despite that, Heidler said that using commuter alternatives is something that San Diegans should try out.
Beer, the bus commuter, is from the East Coast and said using public transportation is in his nature. But he admits that changing “car-centered” behavior will be hard, and that Californians need more reasons to take public transit.
Commuter benefits like discounted bus passes are a start, he said.
“I really think that that alone is incentivizing me to take the bus,” Beer said.
Editor’s note: Ken Chin-Purcell is married to an inewsource board member, Michele Chin-Purcell.
Type of Content
News: Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
