Motor vehicle emission testing costs the citizens of the Front Range more than $40 million per year. The current treadmill testing program, where drivers have to waste time driving to a test center and waiting in line, is supposed to reduce pollution from cars and trucks. However, state testing combined with more than 15 million on-road, freeway-ramp emission readings from 2008 and 2009 show that the current program is not working.
Why not? Because the biggest violators are vehicles that are either broken or the drivers have found a way to cheat the system and avoid testing. The worst polluters (the highest 1 percent of polluting drivers) in Denver today emit more than 30 percent of the ozone-producing pollutants. Yes, 1 percent of drivers cause 30 percent of our vehicle-related air pollution. These are the violators, the cheaters who we need to deal with.
Two on-road remote sensing vans make more than 10,000 valid measurements per day. Just two vans could identify more than 100 of the biggest violators each day, and their emissions greatly exceed those from the vehicles that fail the treadmill tests. The average, every-day motorist isn’t polluting our air; it’s these few bad apples who find it easy to cheat the current system.
What can we do about this problem? Some of our state lawmakers already know. In 2006, the state legislature passed House Bill 1302, which ordered the state Department of Public Health and Environment to consider a combined roadside and treadmill auto emission testing program centered not on testing every vehicle but on identifying and ensuring repair of the biggest polluters. The legislature’s concept would produce greater emission reductions at lower costs to Coloradans than the current program.
The on-road sensors need not be confined to freeway ramps. Excellent surface street locations are provided by the single lanes required for construction projects. The remote sensing van parks at the end and observes vehicles as they accelerate back to normal road speeds.
In 1973, a California remote sensing proponent suggested that the vehicles arriving at the testing center entrance drive through an on-road remote sensor. If low emitting, their owners can pay what they owe and go home, or otherwise take the full test. This suggestion alone could send half of the currently arriving customers home with minimum inconvenience and without loss of air pollution benefits.
The bottom line is, if we want to really deal with our Front Range ozone problem, we need to go after those worst offenders, not everyday citizens driving properly maintained vehicles.
We know from our own observations that the worst violators find ways to avoid coming in for those mandatory checks; they just keep driving. In one week of highway observations, we saw a modern Infiniti sporting a “collector” plate to avoid being called in for testing. And twice, we saw a souped-up Honda Civic with no license plate and no paper plate. These owners will likely ignore a mail request for a required test. The only way to deal with these cheaters is to occasionally pay a policeman for an on-road pullover, which is done in at least one other state. The pullover would only be for the worst polluters.
On-road gross emitters identified by remote sensing in a state study were procured, tested, repaired and retested. Despite the fact that test cheaters rarely participate in state programs, the treadmill test emissions of those vehicles so procured were often two to three times larger, when failing, than the vehicles that fail the regular test.
The very fact that we see them among us every day tells us the current program is not working. Today’s way of testing emissions wastes the time and money of drivers who keep modern vehicles in proper working order. And the cheaters? They just keep getting away with cheating. It is time to implement the program proposed in 2006 by HB 1302.
Donald H. Stedman is John Evans Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, at the University of Denver.
