Vehicle-emissions tests in the Chicago area will take longer and cost the state twice as much as they do now because of new federal rules designed to fight urban air pollution, a state environmental official said this week.
The rules, which stem from the Clean Air Act of 1990, require many testing programs across the country to simulate urban driving conditions on a dynamometer, a series of rollers that allow a vehicle to remain stationary while its wheels spin.
A test operator will put cars and light trucks through a four-minute drill of accelerating, braking, stopping and starting. Because vehicles will first have to be tied down with cables, the test will take about seven minutes, said Jim Matheny, technical services manager for the emissions program at the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Currently drivers stay in their cars and emissions are checked at only two engine speeds. Not counting the wait to be tested, the procedure takes two or three minutes.
An under-the-hood inspection to check a vapor-recovery canister also will be added as part of the expanded tests, which will probably begin in 1994.
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The Illinois emissions test now costs the state about $8.50 per vehicle, for a total cost of about $20 million. The new test will cost $17 per vehicle, according to estimates by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Because the new test is expected to uncover more high-polluting vehicles than the current system, the EPA estimates that hydrocarbon emissions, which play a key role in forming ozone, will be cut 28 percent.
”There`s a fundamental right of people to breathe clean air,” said Stephen Rothblatt of the EPA`s Chicago regional office.
The stricter program, announced Monday in Washington, D.C., applies to 83 urban areas, including most of the Chicago metropolitan area, northwestern Indiana, and Milwaukee.
Under a threat by the EPA to withhold $350 million in highway funds, the state expanded the boundaries of the 6-year-old program this year to cover an estimated 2.5 million cars and trucks in Cook, Du Page, Lake, eastern Kane, and northern Will Counties.
Not all of that territory must adopt the new test. The EPA rule applies to most of Cook County, the eastern two-thirds of Du Page County, the eastern third of Lake County, and the eastern tip of Will County.
But the state may implement the stricter tests at all 19 testing stations in the metropolitan area because it is under a federal court order to reduce ozone levels in northeastern Illinois.
”We`re studying the feasibility of integrating this system into the present testing stations,” Matheny said. ”Concrete will have to be ripped up and dynamometer pits would have to be installed. We`re trying to keep the average wait time to 10 minutes, so to do that under the enhanced program, we`d have to add testing lanes, add stations, or increase our operating hours.”