OVERVIEW

The Southern California Economic Partnership (known as The Partnership), as the authorizing agency of the Los Angeles ecommute pilot, worked in collaboration with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assist in promoting the air quality benefits associated with EPA’s Telework Emissions Trading Study, known as the ecommute Program in the Los Angeles area. 

The National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) was originally awarded responsibility to oversee program administration and disbursement of project funds to participating Pilot Cities.  Their responsibilities included coordination and facilitation of the National Steering Committee, working with local steering committees and overview of design, implementation, and evaluation phases of ecommute.  They saw the project through Phase IA.  In May, 2003 they terminated their responsibilities and the Global Environment & Technology Foundation (GETF) was selected to partner with EPA to oversee implementation of Phase IB through project completion.

The Greater Los Angeles region participated in this pilot program, which began in April 2000 and concluded June 2004, to explore and promote the potential benefits of teleworking as a means of improving air quality. 

BACKGROUND

The Greater Los Angeles market is one of the largest in the country covering five counties:  Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside and Ventura.  The region has a population of approximately 17 million people in an area of more than 38,000 square miles.

The South Coast region in California is an “extreme” non-attainment area for ground-level ozone, and was in serious non-attainment for both particulate matter and carbon monoxide.  For Los Angeles, involvement in the ecommute project represented an innovative means in which employers could contribute to relieving traffic congestion and improving the region’s air quality.

The ecommute pilot offered one way to potentially increase telecommuting participation levels.  With the region’s focus on increasing telecommuting to help them reach the region’s air quality goals, one of their key interests was that the program included robust monitoring and reporting on telecommuting rates, to reliably demonstrate how the ecommute project could help them make progress.

By motivating companies to enable employees to work from home, the ecommute program sought to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) from commuting, thereby decreasing emissions that impair air quality. 

OBJECTIVES

Program objectives were to market to employers within the South Coast Air Quality region, the benefits of implementing a telework program at their worksite(s), to encourage employer sign-up for tracking telecommuting activity and to encourage employees use of the teletrips system to report individual telecommuting activity and provide employers with reports that verify and authenticate miles saved and emissions reduced.  Also, to evaluate the potential of an emission trading program based on levels of telework activity and the potential for creating a telework financial incentive program utilizing the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s (SCAQMD) Air Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) funding program.

PILOT PROGRAM DESIGN

The South Coast Design Team (Supervisor Michael Antonovich & Debrah Mendelsohn – County of Los Angeles, John Cox – The Partnership, Carol Gomez  & Ernie Lopez – SCAQMD, Jeff Weir – ARB, Mark Brucker & Alan Zabel- EPA) modified the ecommute template created by the National Steering Committee to respond to the reality and challenges in the Southern California region.  As part of its pilot design, the South Coast Team envisioned two scenarios for using emissions credits:  one based on providing tax credits for emissions reductions, and the other involving credit trading in the context of the region’s Rule 2202.  However, the realization of either scenario was highly unlikely given the region’s need to meet existing air quality and transportation conformity goals.

The goal of the first scenario was to increase telecommuting at work sites with less than 250 employees through an aggressive marketing campaign, focusing on generation of tax deductions for emission reductions.  If viable, these employers would donate emission credits earned through employee telework activity to the region to meet their state implementation plan (SIP) and conformity requirements.  Employers would receive tax deductions for these charitable contributions equal to the market value of the emission credits.

The second scenario was based on an emissions trading program that would allow employers not regulated by the SCAQMD’s Rule 2202 (worksites with 100-249) and the regulated employers (worksites with 250 or more employees) to trade telework credits for reaching Average Vehicle Ridership (AVR) goals.  Rule 2202 requires that employers with more than 250 employees meet an annual emission reduction target through one or more programs, including vehicle trip reduction strategies such as telecommuting.

In either scenario, the pilot design team assigned SCAQMD the responsibility of certifying credits.  SCAQMD would work with a broker to develop a trading program if a trading scheme was developed.

MARKET CONDITIONS

The Los Angeles market includes a population of over 17 million people, over 6 million of whom commute every day.  The region includes nearly 100 business centers that could represent reasonable target opportunities due to travel characteristics of those areas.

The South Coast region in California is an “extreme” non-attainment area for ground-level ozone, and is in serious non-attainment for both particulate matter and carbon monoxide. 

The 1998 Regional Transportation Plan for Southern California assumed in its 2010 and 2020 outlook that 2.7 percent of full-time workers would commute from home.

Data from the Southern California Association of Government’s (SCAG) State of the Commute Study, which gathered data on commuting from 1989 to 1998, indicated that the average telecommuting level for full-time employees during that 10-year period was actually 1.7 percent.

To assist in regional transportation and air quality planning, the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) conducted a 2002 Telework Survey (below) to determine the frequency of people in the region who work from home instead of commuting to an employer site.

SCAG's 2002 TELEWORK STUDY - FINAL REPORT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - KEY FINDINGS:

Of the total survey population (5,028 respondents), 55 percent are workers. The remaining 45 percent of the respondents are classified as unemployed or outside the labor force (e.g., retired, homemaker, student). The employed respondents fall into one of three categories:

Teleworkers: Employed individuals who work from home some of the time instead of traveling to work (10 percent).

Findings: Teleworkers in general tend to be male, older, White (non-Hispanic), more educated, have higher incomes, and be members of smaller households. The most common site for teleworkers to work is at home or at the regular office. When teleworkers do travel to their regular place of work, their usual means of transportation is driving alone to work, driving a little under 20 miles, for a commute that takes over 30 minutes in each direction.

Of all teleworkers, a little over 18 percent work in retail trade or finance industry and about 14 percent report sales as their primary occupation.

The daily rate of teleworking is about 3.2 percent, that is, on average 3.2 percent of all workers including homebased business owners on any given day work exclusively at home rather than drive to their place of emplacement.

The total number of miles saved by these teleworkers in one week is estimated to be approximately 45 million miles.

Homebased business owners: Individuals who operate a home business (6 percent).

Findings: As expected, the vast majority of homebased business owners work at home, although some do work at an employer's or client's site. When they commute, the principle mode is driving alone to work with commuting distance and time similar to those of the teleworkers.

Employee non-teleworkers: Employed individuals who never work from home in lieu of traveling to work (84 percent).

Findings: The vast majority of employee non-teleworkers indicated that the nature of their work would not allow them to telework, even though 52 percent of these individuals would like to work some days at home. Furthermore, almost 80 percent of the employee non-teleworkers state that their employers would not give permission to work at home.

Of those who would like to work at home, 21 percent believe their employer would give them permission to do so. Of those who do not have any desire to work at home, seven percent think that their employer would give them permission to telework. Generally, employee non-teleworkers have the equipment, such as computers and Internet service to work at home.

Employee non-teleworkers perceive the most important advantages of teleworking as: not having to deal with traffic, helping the environment and reducing pollution, having more flexibility in their schedule, and reducing stress.

"Forget enhanced productivity and quality of life. In the next few years, telework is poised to make a lot of businesses a lot of money."

- NetworkWorldFusion.com