Santa Barbara County traffic officials are trying to get local commuters fired up about carpooling or otherwise getting workers out of their single-occupant-vehicle commute habit. They’re offering cash and prizes. That might do it.

Actually, local commuters have been leaning toward mass or combined-user transportation for several years. According to a survey of commuting habits by the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, there have been significant increases in the past five years of carpooling, mass transit and telecommuting.

In a 2007 commuter profile, 71 percent of local workers still drive alone to work, but that’s less than in 2002, and substantially below the 77 percent of Americans who have only themselves to talk to on the drive to and from the office.

We found that statistic to be interesting, but not nearly as fascinating as the data that tells us why daily commuters need more options.

According to 8-year-old Census Bureau data, a ton of people drive into the county each day to work — and that’s not counting the thousands of in-county residents who drive from, say, Santa Maria to Lompoc or Santa Maria to Santa Barbara to punch in.

Every workday, at least earlier in this decade, about 7,500 commuters drove into Santa Barbara County from San Luis Obispo County. Another 9,000 or so attacked from Ventura County. As unbelievable as it may seem, 1,750 drove all the way up from Los Angeles County — and a stunning 150 or so commuted from San Diego County.

Gas prices and other economic factors probably have reduced the actual number of commuters from those faraway places over the years, but likely not by much, as population increases will have wiped out any statistical gains. At the same time folks are pouring into Santa Barbara County, about 9,000 or so local workers are heading to jobs in those other counties.

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And you wonder why traffic is backed up on the northbound 101 between Carpinteria and Ventura — before dawn and after dark — Monday through Friday.

It’s a problem, and one in search of a solution, which is probably where Santa Barbara County officials came up with the name for an organization called Traffic Solutions, whose purpose is to try to convince workers that there are alternatives to grinding it out, alone, behind the wheel each day.

Traffic Solutions’ latest ploy is called Curb Your Commute, the centerpiece of the county’s two-month Commute Challenge, which began Friday and runs through the end of September. The program aims to get people to consider replacing the single-occupant-vehicle commute with one that’s more economical and perhaps more efficient. The focus of this campaign is the county’s private business community. Employees in teams of five can win prizes for using carpools or other alternative means of commuting. Business owners can earn a little extra pocket money simply by keeping records of how often their employees log a Commute Challenge trip.

We may very well be on the downslope in the history of California’s car culture, the inevitable victim of glutted highways and $4-a-gallon gasoline. We’ll be keeping our cars, but they’ll likely be a fraction of the size of the current behemoths, and we’ll be driving less and less.

While this reality may be hard to accept, and particularly harsh for some people, it could be an epiphany for many others. Without the free-ranging abilities afforded by cheap fuel, people may actually stick around home a bit more, maybe get to know their neighbors a little better. We’ll certainly become better acquainted with co-workers if we’re cajoled into a carpool situation. Even if we feel forced to do it, we probably will come to enjoy walking and bicycling, healthy forms of transportation that also can be very relaxing and enjoyable.

Remember, if life tosses you a lemon, make lemonade.

August 3, 2008