Author: Jason A. Crawford

Publisher:

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13:

A specific program of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments is the Employer Trip Reduction Program (ETR), which is sometimes recognized as the Employee Commute Options (ECO) program. This program required all employers of 100 or more employees in severe and extreme nonattainment areas to develop and implement plans that increase the automobile passenger occupancy (APO) levels of vehicles arriving to the worksite between the hours of 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. by 25%. The purpose of this current study was to evaluate the potential impact of the ETR program on Houston's mobile source emissions and fuel consumption. A secondary objective was to evaluate the characteristics of the ETR program through plans submitted by affected worksites. The ETR database was used to evaluate the potential effectiveness of the ETR program throughout the eight county nonattainment area to see if it had achieved 100% compliance and met the target average passenger occupancies set in the plan. To supplement this analysis, a survey was conducted to determine the indirect trip rates caused as a result of participation in the ETR program. The database was also used for an initial examination into the preferences of employees and employers in choosing specific transportation control measures. Recommendations for future research, based on the findings from this study, are also presented in the report.