Council Turns Down Car Deal and Ponders Traffic Counts

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

Feb. 26 -- Despite a dealer discount, the City Council Tuesday night said no thank you to paying nearly $100,000 for a new hydrogen cell-powered SUV and, in an unrelated item, asked staff to examine ways to update the methodology used to measure traffic.

Council members voted 4 to 1 against a three-year, $85,000 proposal by Toyota to lease “fuel-cell” technology that is equipped in one of the car company’s new energy-efficient Highlander SUVs.

The offer -- priced at $200,000 when Toyota first approached the City in January -- was again rejected by the council as being too high for one experimental vehicle. Council instructed staff to renegotiate with Toyota on a more reasonable price.

“Let the auto companies fund it themselves!” said Richard Norman. Norman, an auto engineer and one of a handful of energy-efficient vehicle enthusiasts who spoke at the meeting, let the council know he thought the project was not a good idea.

Hydrogen cell-powered autos are a new technology and are not as efficient as other “green” vehicles, such as pure and hybrid-electric motors or compressed-natural gas-powered engines, according to Norman.

Others who spoke noted that there is no existing infrastructure for hydrogen like the one already in place for electric vehicles. The City has installed numerous recharging stations across Santa Monica, but there are no hydrogen pumps, and the fuel would need to be trucked in from outside the city.

Council members also had problems with Toyota’s offer.

“I still question why we are paying one dime for (Toyota’s) research and development,” said Council member Herb Katz. “They should give it to us for free.”

“What was particularly galling… is that while Toyota was offering the Highlander in one hand, it was taking back the electric vehicles with the other,” said Mayor Pro-Tem Kevin McKeown, referring to the fact that electric carmakers, including Toyota, are refusing to renew leases on electric cars and then destroying those vehicles.

Such a policy could have an impact in Santa Monica because 13 City-operated RAV4s are up for lease renewal within a year, according to Craig Perkins, the City’s environmental director. City officials are optimistic they will be able to renew those leases with Toyota and keep the electric vehicles on the road, according to the staff report.

McKeown -- a Green party member who sits on the City’s Environmental Task Force --
said that while he is not opposed to hydrogen technology, he wants to study the issue more carefully.

Mayor Richard Blooms said that while he wants to support the item, and hydrogen may be the dominant energy source for cars in the future, he was concerned that the proposal came at a time the City lacks funds for this level of experimentation.

Council member Ken Genser said he thought the City should pay something for the fuel cell vehicle and suggested offering Toyota a price close to what the City would pay to buy a hybrid vehicle, such as the Prius. Staff indicated a hybrid would cost the City between $21,000 and $25,000.

From the future of vehicles to the future of Santa Monica’s traffic, the council later changed gears to explore ways to update traffic methodology.

The council decided the City needs to update the way traffic data is reviewed and requested staff to explore various research institutions and universities to develop a new methodology.

Council members suggested the problem should be tackled in tandem with the Planning Commission because it is a topic touched on often by both government bodies. Review of the traffic methodology comes at a convenient time, since the City is expected to update its traffic report in the next three months.

The current methodology is flawed because the data presented often does not match reality, since it averages out traffic coming from different directions, said Planning Commissioner Julie Lopez-Dad, who gave a presentation to the council.

For instance, an intersection may see heavy north and southbound traffic, but much lighter traffic east and westbound, Lopez-Dad said. The average traffic at the intersection, however, would not be considered heavy.

“What this is about is the metric we use,” McKeown said, agreeing with Lopez Dad that traffic often seems worse that what the City’s counts indicate.

McKeown was referring to disputes that often arise between developers and residents near a proposed project about how much traffic a new development actually creates.

McKeown pointed to the fact that there are no more “peak periods” in Westside community traffic anymore.

Santa Monicans who spoke to the issue echoed that sentiment.

“What we are doing isn’t working,” said Tom Cleys, vice president of the neighborhood group Friends of Sunset Park.

Another Sunset Park resident said that he supports a change in the traffic methodology because it may close some of the loopholes he feels developers exploit in the Environmental Impact Reports, which regularly shows the impact a project may have on traffic.