Fossil Fuel Savings Through Traffic Reductions for Laguna Beach Dennis Silverman Physics and Astronomy UC Irvine October 2007

Transportation Suggestions Transportation Suggestions  Try to eliminate stalled traffic on busy days by increasing outside parking lots and busing.  Extend some bus routes to Crystal Cove parking and future El Moro parking, and possibly create new North parking lots.  Same for South parking areas.  Create a lot at the start of Laguna Canyon road and the 405 to use busing and relieve congestion on the canyon road and the El Toro interchange.  Increase bus frequency and perhaps routes up the hills.  Enforce speed limits on the fast part of Laguna Canyon Road.  Introduce venue oriented minivans for school busing, children’s classes or sports, and senior events. This uses one minibus for a class of 10 say, instead of 10 parental trips delivering, picking up, and maybe parking. It also frees up the parents’ time.

California Greenhouse Gas Sources  41% of California’s Greenhouse Gases come from transportation.

Transportation Incentives  From the point of view of Laguna businesses, people who use outlying parking lots or buses to come to Laguna are additional customers from those that could only be accommodated by local parking.  Also, most restaurants benefit from not having to provide a parking lot, or validating parking for patrons.  Therefore, they may see it in their interests to offer 5 to 10% discounts for patrons who have receipts from parking in the outlying lots, or who have bus receipts.  Encouraging the use of outlying lots or buses also encourages more visitors as it removes the hassle of local traffic and searching for local parking.

Plug-in Hybrids  In the near future we should expect plug-in hybrids (Chevy Volt, 2010?). See  By using electricity from highly efficient main power plants, they use less then 1/2 the energy in electric mode than present hybrids that generate electricity from their own gas internal combustion engines. They use 1/5 the energy of a gas engine, and therefore generate 1/5 or less of CO2.  Equivalently to gas, they get 100+ miles per gallon.  The plug-in projected 40 mile electric-only range makes them locally pollution free.  The city in the future might provide recharging parking spaces so visitors from up to 40 miles away could also get their plug-ins recharged while in Laguna. They recharge with about one dollar of electricity.  Some of the electricity for the plug-ins would come from the nearby nuclear plant which is pollution free and greenhouse gas free power.

Mode of Transportation to Work  Drove alone: 77%  Carpooled: 8%  Walked: 4%  Bus: 1%  Bicycle: 1%  Worked at home: 9% 9%  Total Working: 13,692  Total Pop.: 24,000

Carpooling and Busing  Carpooling can be encouraged by asking residents to volunteer the company where they work and its cross streets when they apply for their parking stickers.  Computer matching could then notify them when nearby work matches are found.  Large employers should be encouraged to provide vans for a set of workers in Laguna going to the same facility.  Monetary savings of parking spaces at employers lots could be given to workers in lieu of parking.  In town and out of town bus schedules could be handed out at the same time stickers are handed out.  The edge of town parking lots could have part dedicated to all day parking, so that Lagunans could leave their cars there and take the buses out of town.  The traffic staff should investigate the possibility of outsourcing Sunday bus service to a transit company such as Super Shuttle.  Super Shuttle should also be looked at for morning and evening commuting, which does not involve creating a daylong bus route.

Auto Technology Magic  We are all told to wait for technological breakthroughs to solve our energy problems.  However, we can have 60 miles per gallon Hummers, and 100 miles per gallon Priuses right now. How?  Four people carpooling to work in a Hummer is equivalent to a 60 mile per gallon car.  Two people carpooling in a Prius is a 100 mile per gallon car.  Only 4.6% of Americans carpool right now.

More areas to encourage incentives for less traffic or fuel usage  Some employers allow four day with longer day schedules, or four days every other week.  Unique motorcycle or motor scooter spaces should be made available.  Local businesses should provide paybacks for employees who walk, bike, or motor scooter to work.  People should be encouraged to take their good gas mileage vehicle on longer trips or commutes, and only use the SUV/Truck for local trips.  Locals should be encouraged to combine trips outside of Laguna to include multiple uses such as errands, appointments, shopping, entertainment and dining.

Traffic Substitutes  With advances in telecommunication, increased traffic, and costs of commuting, we should find more incentives for people to work at home.  With increasing sales coverage on the internet, and with reliable vendors, we should expect less shopping trips.  Local markets should be encouraged to establish computer oriented ordering and delivery services.

Travel Time to Work Median is about 28 minutes

Traffic Going to Work

Estimating the Commuting Area  From the figure of the travel time to work, we find that about 9,200 workers take more than 15 minutes to get to work.  Essentially, since Laguna Beach is isolated, they are commuting out to the job-fertile crescent consisting of the 405 freeway (going through the canyon or El Toro Road), the UC Irvine and airport area (going by the 73 toll road), or the Newport Beach area (going along the coast highway).  The area of the crescent extends a length of 25 miles from Mission Viejo to Newport Beach.  The “thickness” or width of the crescent is about 10 miles.  Thus, most of the commuters of more than 15 minutes travel time are working somewhere within an area of 25 x 10 = 250 square miles.

Estimating the Potential to Car Pool  We estimate the potential to car pool by finding how many commuters from Laguna Beach on average might work within a mile of a specific commuter.  We have 9,200 long distance commuters distributed over a job-fertile crescent of 250 square miles.  Although many of these workers are going to a concentrated local of businesses or UC Irvine, we get an underestimate of the potential by assuming they are equally spaced out.  Thus we divide the number of workers, 9,200, by the area of 250 square miles to get 37 workers per square mile.  So for any specific commuter, there are 37 other commuters who end up working within a square mile of that commuter.  That amounts to maybe at most a two minute extra drive on the work side to commute.  It well behooves the city to extend its services to try to match up nearby workers to form carpools.