It’s a ritual dreaded by car owners all across Colorado: taking vehicles in for time-consuming air pollution exams at inconveniently located testing stations. The legislature recently passed a law that could end the hassle and save car owners a few bucks, too. It involves still-evolving technology, so it’s essential to make be sure the transition is handled carefully so metro- area air quality doesn’t deteriorate.
Fewer than 5 percent of cars fail the state emissions tests, but ones that do account for as much as 75 percent of the metro area’s vehicle-related air pollution. Clearly, the old program has been very inefficient.
The much-amended House Bill 1302 signed by Gov. Bill Owens orders state officials to work with contractors to improve a technology called remote sensing.
With remote sensing, cars need only drive past vans equipped with special monitors – no need for a special trip to the inspection station. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment now has six specially equipped vans that travel among 66 roadside locations in eight Front Range counties, testing about 3,300 vehicles a month, and was planning to expand the program.
The trouble is, the technology isn’t always reliable. It’s very good at showing that cars are clean but bad at identifying polluters. It also kicks up a lot of false positives: Too many car owners are told via mail they must get their vehicles inspected at testing stations, but at the stations they are told their cars are OK after all.
What’s needed is an all-out effort to bolster the technology so it can accurately and reliably separate the clean cars from the dirty ones, and still keep the metro area’s air in line with federal pollution standards.
The new law, which goes into effect July 1, calls for a “phased increase” in remote sensing. It further says the state Air Quality Control Commission “shall use best efforts to eliminate the requirement for regular emissions inspections” and replace them with a program that takes aim at highly polluting vehicles. State health officials must report back to the legislature by next summer on what progress has been made. If the technology works, the tailpipe inspections that we all know and hate may be eliminated by 2010.
So, for a few more years, metro-area car owners will endure the hassle of vehicle inspections, but over time, fewer and fewer of us will undergo the annoyance.
We’ll save a few dollars, too: The new law drops the annual air program fee from $25 to $9. Instead of having to fork over the money at an inspection station, car owners will have the convenience of paying by mail.
