Research

Overview

Hundreds and probably thousands of premature deaths are caused each year as a result of exposure to high concentrations of air pollutants, especially fine particles. Along with the associated morbidity, air pollution in Israeli cities can be said to have reached crisis proportions. And yet, local policies have not yet addressed the causes of Israel's growing air pollution emissions.

Mobile sources of air pollution are responsible for the majority of air pollution in urban centers, with diesel vehicles, primarily buses and other large commercial vehicles making the largest contribution to these concentrations. For example in 1999, over sixty percent of hydrocarbon emissions in Israel were attributed to vehicle emissions, and a full 95% of carbon monoxide loadings came from mobile sources.

Undoubtedly the massive increase in vehicles on the road contributes to the problem. During the 1990s, the Israeli fleet essentially doubled from one to two million vehicles. But no less important is massive noncompliance with national tail pipe emission standards. According to a 1998 study conducted by scientists at the Technion University in Haifa, 33% of vehicles stopped for road-side inspection were in exceedance of the standard. In a subsequent follow-up study conducted in 2001 the number was still 31%.

Figures from the inspection centers that conduct annual air emissions tests are less dramatic, with only 7.3% violations recorded, but their top management estimates that among older vehicles, the figure for both gasoline and diesel vehicles is closer to 25%. It should be pointed out that these older cars enjoy a standard that is 400% more lenient than present emission limits which beginning in 1993 required tougher carbon monoxide standards and implicit utilization of catalytic converters. Israel's environmental enforcement program had apparently failed to adequately evaluate and respond to the mobile source air quality conundrum.

In December 2000 the author, through the Center for Environmental Policy at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies with the support of the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, assembled a task force to address the enforcement challenge. The objective of the initiative was to consider the reasons for the high air pollution caused by transportation in Israel and recommend concrete measures to improve the enforcement program for overseeing vehicular emissions. The task-force included a broad collection of stakeholders involved in the issue among which were: top managers at Israel's Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of the Environment, the Israel Police, representatives of Israel's Union of Licensing Centers as well as the Garage Association, public interest NGOs, bus cooperatives, the City of Tel Aviv environmental unit and a variety of experts from related disciplines from the academic community.

In January, 2002, after a year of work, the task-force completed its report. The Position Paper, based on visits to the field, extensive review of international experience and Israel's own institutional, political and sociological reality is divided into two sections: The first offers the background to the problem, describes the magnitude of the air pollution problem in Israel from transportation and its impact on public health, provides an analysis of the pollution sources, describes the institutional and legal framework that has arisen to address the problem and describes the required standards in force today in Israel regarding mobile source air pollution, as opposed to those existing outside the country. In the second section, the enforcement program in Israel is described and analyzed with recommendations for improvement.

Among the proposed recommendations are:

it is important to replace the present carbon monoxide standard that tests performance when the vehicle is "idling" to a test at a high rpm level as part of the annual inspection test for gasoline powered vehicles as a first step in improving the existing emission standard. The goal of the test should be: characterizing the performance of the catalytic converter; an idling test does not provide an indication of whether the catalytic converter is still reducing gas emissions effectively. The standard should be updated to reflect the development of new technologies, which enable more precise and efficient testing protocols.
The frequency of the annual inspections should be increased for old gasoline-powered vehicles and for all commercial diesel vehicles (buses, taxis and trucks.) After listing the frequency of vehicle testing requirements in European countries, the task force accepted the recommendation of the Garage Owners Association that would require bi-annual testing of vehicles after they have been on the road for ten years. Commercial diesel vehicles, such as buses and taxicabs, should be checked twice annually, regardless of age, due to their extensive travel (typically four times a private vehicle) and subsequent "wear and tear", as well as their contribution to health problems in Israeli cities.

Israel's vehicle licensing inspection centers have begun the process of shifting to automated computer-generated results of emission testing. This transition should be expedited as it reduces the potential for human error or even the perception that inspection technicians might register results inaccurately.

The emphasis of enforcement activities in general and of road-side inspections in particular should be on diesel vehicles, especially commercial vehicles, including trucks traveling in excess of their allowable loadings. Increasing the severity of penalties for exceedance of standards, including driver's license suspension is among the measures that should be adopted.
Enforcement personnel should focus their limited resources on large sectors with the potential for considerable loadings of air pollution. Accordingly, this would include testing bus fleets when they return at the end of their routes to parking lots. Also a responsible official within the corporate structure should be assigned the role of air emissions officer.

Results of the emission tests at the annual vehicle inspections at the Testing Centers should be filed in a clear and accessible database that specifies the gasses measured. This information should be made available to the public via the Internet. This would allow the public to supplement present oversight activities that could evaluate the performance of different inspection centers according to geographic location.

It is important to organize enforcement campaigns against a substantial group of vehicles that appear to avoid being tested altogether in the annual inspection, even as they pay the testing fees to Israel Licensing Authority. This finding can be characterized as the "surprise" discovery of the task-force. One task force member's husband works as a volunteer policeman and noticed that a high percentage of cars stopped at security roadblocks lacked renewed vehicle licenses. A bureaucratic disconnect between the Ministry of Transportation and the Israel Licensing Authority allowed cars to pay the licensing fee (and thus receive the mandatory insurance) but continue to drive without being tested. This snafu is presently being amended, but it underlies the value of a periodic systematic external review of an enforcement program.

It is important to consider the possibility of imposing an emission standard and an annual emission test on entire groups of vehicles that are presently exempt from the emission inspection process. For example, even though motorcycles must comply with emission standards and testing in several states around the world, at present they lay completely outside the Israeli air quality control system.

Numerous measures utilizing economic incentives for driving cleaner vehicles should be considered as part of the overall effort to improve compliance and supplement conventional command and control activities.

Products

Tal, Alon, Air Pollution from Transportation, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, (49 p.) (monograph in policy publication series) 2002.

Day Long Conference based on Air Pollution and Transportation, Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, February, 2003.