Community Corner
Tuesday is Spare the Air Day
Everyone is asked to cut back on car trips and consider public transportation for their commute.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011, is the first Spare the Air Day in the San Francisco Bay Area this year. Concentrations of ground-level ozone pollution are forecast to be unhealthy.
Automobile exhaust is the single largest source of air pollution in the Bay Area according to Kristine Roselius of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. "There are usually between 3 million and 4 million cars per day on Bay Area roads," she said. "There are 5.2 million cars registered in the nine county Bay Area region."
Hot temperatures and light winds can combine to produce poor air quality for the Bay Area. To help prevent smog please:
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- Carpool or vanpool with friends or co-workers
- Take public transportation
- Telecommute
- Work from home instead of driving to work
- Link necessary trips and postpone errands if possible
"We always encourage people to use alternative modes of transportation," said Roselius. "We definitely recommend bicycling. It's one of the features on the new iPhone app, a bike route mapper."
Visit the Apple App Store to download the free Spare the Air iPhone application for alert notifications, local air quality forecasts, podcasts and other tools to help reduce air pollution, including the bike route mapper mentioned above.
Find out what's happening in Berkeleywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
To plan your commute by alternative modes, visit 511.org.
To monitor current air quality conditions, visit http://www.sparetheair.org.
How do you get around? Tell us in the comments.
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