Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
410 MRAK HALL
DAVIS,CA 95616-8671
Performing Department
Agricultural and Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
This project supports the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station by addressing the Hatch Act area(s) of: rural and community development.Many residents of the San Joaquin Valley are poor, especially farm workers. Many rely on old and poorly maintained vehicles to get to their jobs. The San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the US. California's biennial smog check program insists that vehicles be maintained in order to be registered. But many owners of vehicles that fail a smog check, especially those in the San Joaquin Valley, simply drive the vehicle unregistered when they cannot afford the repair. Valley Clean Air Now, a charity, with much funding from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, subsidizes repairs to those unable to afford them, spending about $3.5 million annually on about 10,000 vehicles. Even though the program seems successful by the number of vehicles repaired, no systematic analysis has been conducted of the repairs. Perhaps they just prolong slightly the life a vehicle that will be junked soon anyway - a subsidy for vehicle "retirement" might be more effective. Perhaps VCAN-funded repairs are provided to vehicles driven little, missing the gross polluters often on the road. Perhaps the program should be targeted even more to rural communities. The analysis of the vehicles recently repaired, namely the types of repairs and the mileage they had been driven, should improve the VCAN program.
Animal Health Component
100%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
(N/A)
Applied
100%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
Valley Clean Air Now, a 501(c)(3) public charity, subsidizes emissions repairs for vehicles that fail a smog check within the San Joaquin Valley, the region with the worst air quality in the U.S. The San Joaquin Valley is also a major agricultural region. Many of the farm workers are poor, their vehicle among the oldest and in poor repair.VCAN involves some 10,000 vehicles annually, with close to $4 million spent in the subsidies. Most of these funds come by way of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. A question is always present: Do these expenditures pass a simple cost/benefit test? Who is helped? Farm workers?For over a decade, VCAN has operated what it calls Tune In Tune Up events on Saturday mornings up and down the San Joaquin Valley up to 24 times per year. The advertising for these events has been targeted at disadvantaged communities. About 500 vehicles come to each event. (More properly, their owners bring the vehicles.) About 400 fail a quick tail-pipe test and the owners are given a voucher for a repair at a local smog check shop. Typically, over half of the 500 vehicles have not been registered, principally because they failed a smog check, and the estimated repair cost would have been upwards of $1,000. Many of these vehicles are uninsured. The supply of older, unregistered, high polluting vehicles seems endless. They come from many "fringe" communities.At first glance, any cost/benefit analysis may seem straightforward. Formulae exist for the conversion of tailpipe readings to grams of pollution per mile; the change in the pollution per mile before and after the repair can be compared to the cost of the repair (using accepted estimates of the harm in dollar terms from the pollution). But these readings themselves do not indicated how much the vehicle will be driven after the repair, let alone whether the repair will last. Nor do the readings themselves indicate the what the owner does for a living. If the vehicle is junked soon after, for another reason, the repair was not worthwhile. If the vehicle, a gross polluter, was being driven a lot before, it is of great benefit to have made the repair even if it did not last for long. The cost/benefit analysis of VCAN raises deep methodological issues about what would have happened without the subsidies to repairs.
Project Methods
Smog checks, within California, including readings of polluting gases, plus odometer readings. From these can be computed the effects of repairs, not only only the amount of pollution per mile but the annual pollution, given how much the vehicle is driven. Available from previous work are all 300 million smog checks in California from 1996 and registration records for many of the vehicles. VCAN will provide the specific costs of repairs on more than 50,000 vehicles over recent years.