Air Quality Information
for the Sacramento Region
Brought to you by the Sacramento Metropolitan, El Dorado,
Feather River, Placer and Yolo-Solano Air Districts
The Sacramento region's Spare The Air program began in 1995. It is designed to urge drivers to voluntarily reduce their driving on days when air pollution is approaching unhealthy levels, while keeping the public informed about the daily air quality forecast and the health effects caused by air pollution. Since the beginning, the effectiveness of the program has been measured annually through telephone surveys conducted with residents of the Sacramento region on both Spare The Air days as well as on non-Spare The Air, or Control, days.
Awareness of the program, self-reported driving reduction, and estimated emission reductions are all used in evaluating the program. The use of Control-day interviewing increases the accuracy of the evaluation as it corrects for possible over-estimation of the impact of the program as well as possible over-stated driving reduction due to air quality concerns.
Previous research has shown there is a fairly complex relationship among the number of Spare The Air days in a given summer season, the intensity of the episodes (single day vs. multi-day episodes) the advertising budget and media coverage, the temperatures experienced during the season, whether extraordinary events such as wildfires occur, and awareness of the campaign as well as voluntary driving reduction on the part of residents.