Coronavirus control measures curb traffic, clearing Bay Area’s air

Everyone wants the deadly coronavirus pandemic to fade into the past, but it has - by idling cars and trucks and clearing the air in Sonoma County, in California and around the world - shown one way toward a healthier future.

Traffic on Bay Area roads dropped sharply following the stay-home orders issued last month, prompting immediate improvement of the region's air quality, a trend that has continued through the first two weeks of April, with well-below average measurements of vehicle emissions at 20 monitoring sites, including Sebastopol, San Rafael, Napa and Vallejo.

Those four sites within the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and 16 more in San Francisco, Oakland, Concord, Hayward, San Jose, Gilroy and other places have recorded “good” air quality every day this month.

“We have an extraordinary situation,” said Kristine Roselius, a spokeswoman for the regional air district. Transportation is the No. 1 source of pollution in the Bay Area and far fewer vehicles on the roads mean far less smog in the air.

“Obviously, this is not the way we want to get these conditions,” she said. “It's hard to get people out of their cars, and this is not how we want to do it.”

The new coronavirus has sickened 152 people in Sonoma County and nearly 25,000 statewide. The global death toll Tuesday was close to 126,000.

Weather also contributed to the cleaner air, with temperatures warm enough to reduce wood burning for heat but not hot enough to generate much ozone from vehicle tailpipe emissions, Roselius said. Wind and rain also helped clear the air, she said.

“Wow, it looks pretty good out there,” said Ann Hancock, co-founder and chief strategist for The Climate Center, a Santa Rosa-based nonprofit formed 19 years ago to fight greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

The unwelcome pandemic has “shown us what's possible,” she said, “almost like a time machine transporting us to see what it could be like in the future if we brought down our emissions.”

“It is startling,” Hancock said.

All 20 of the Bay Area's air monitoring sites have measured Air Quality Index scores mostly in the 30s since April 1. The index sets scores from zero to 50 in the good air range, while the worst category, for “hazardous” air, runs from 301 to 500.

On Tuesday, all but one of the 44 monitoring sites in the Greater Los Angeles area reported good quality air with scores in the 40s, according to AirNow, a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency program. Bakersfield, home to some of the nation's foulest air, had a score of 50 Tuesday, so just inside the “good” range.

The coronavirus- to-cleaner air connection has occurred worldwide, with megacities such as Delhi, Bangkok, Beijing, Sao Paulo and Bogota - all with some pandemic restrictions in place - registering “an unprecedented decline in pollution,” the Guardian reported Saturday.

The skies in Delhi, the world's most polluted city, were “suddenly a rare, piercing blue” and “even the birdsong seem(ed) louder,” the report said.

“No one could imagine what's happened on a global scale this fast,” Hancock said.

The Climate Center advocates eliminating use of fossil fuels to help meet the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change goal of cutting global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Stay-home orders and school and business closures intended to curb coronavirus transmission have transformed Bay Area travel.

An ABC traffic map about 9 a.m. Tuesday showed free-flowing highways throughout the area, with vehicles crossing the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge at 60 mph.

The CHP website showed just 13 incidents in the Golden Gate district in the first eight hours of the day, with only one involving a call for an ambulance.

On Monday, nearly 19,000 vehicles crossed the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, about half the number on the comparable day last year, the Bay Area Toll Authority reported. Traffic on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge of about 68,500 vehicles was also down nearly half on Monday.

Sunday traffic was down 63% on the Bay Bridge and 69% on the Richmond-San Rafael span.

Golden Gate Bridge traffic declined by about 70% when the stay-home orders were implemented in mid-March and has remained at that level, a “good sign that people are following the … orders, keeping our communities healthy and safe during this crisis,” said Paolo Cosulich-Schwartz, a Golden Gate Bridge District spokesman.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.