METRO ATLANTA GAS SHORTAGE: If commuters come up dry …

You’re worried about finding gas? Consider the plight facing CEOs. Their commuting employees are facing higher gas prices, if they can get the stuff at all. If folks cannot get to work, the bottom line suffers.

Increasingly, area employers faced with spiking gas prices and shortages are reconsidering how they do business.

Teleworking these days looks pretty good. A worker-filled van sliding into the parking lot is a lovely thing. And who’s to say that a four-day work week is a crummy idea?

While school officials watch and worry about fuel prices, they aren’t too concerned with keeping their buses on the roads. The buses run on diesel, which is in greater supply than gasoline.

But others who sit in corner offices are taking hard looks at creative ways to get people to work.

Some businesses are teleworking, letting people perform office duties from home. Others are offering subsidized mass-transit passes to get workers in the office and out of cars. Some are extolling the virtues of van pooling. Still others have embraced shorter workweeks, meaning fewer commutes.

The interest in commuting alternatives is so intense that the Clean Air Campaign, Atlanta’s environmental conscience, has had to add four temporary workers to handle inquiries. The organization’s 28 staff members couldn’t handle them all, said executive director Kevin Green.

“Our programs are going through the roof,” he said.

The nonprofit organization, which forms clean-air partnerships with employers to get cars off the road, signed up more businesses in June than it did in all of 2007, he said. The partners range from shops with fewer than 100 employees to corporations whose work ranks exceed the populations of some Georgia towns.

At present, 90 member businesses are teleworking, he said. An additional 120 employers, he said, are “solid prospects.”

“People are feeling the pinch and they’re looking for alternatives,” Green said.

WIKA Instruments Corp., which builds air and temperature gauges, felt the pinch earlier this year. In August, it began testing a shortened workweek. Eighty-five people out of the 600-employee force are working four 10-hour days each week, said Theresa Harris, who heads the Lawrenceville company’s marketing and communications.

So far, she said, employees are pleased to fight traffic one fewer day each week.

“If it can be reduced, if it can be minimized, if it can be compressed, we’re trying it,” she said.

Other employers, such as interior-design firm VeenendaalCave, reminds its workers that you don’t always need a car to get to work. It’s part of the Midtown firm’s “green initiative,” said human resources director Leslie Campbell.

In early 2008, the company began offering subsidized transit passes, ride-sharing and discounts for using ride-sharing Zipcars.

The company, with more than 40 workers, then offered $500 to employees who buy a car with two cylinders less than the vehicle it’s replacing, she said. It also ponies up $1,000 to any employee buying a hybrid car.

The result? “We’ve got some hybrids” in the parking lot, she said.

Parking lots look more full at mass-transit sites, too. The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees 400 bus routes daily from the suburbs to Midtown and downtown, said rider usage is up 85 percent over last year.

GRTA has added routes, bolstering ridership, said communications director William Mecke. But the agency, he said, has noticed that more people than ever are riding.

The same is true for Cobb Community Transit, said Rebecca Gutowsky, the lines’ transit division director. She anticipates ridership to hit 4.9 million by the end of this fiscal year, which concludes Sept. 30. “It’s been a steady growth,” she said.

Executives at Southern Insurance Underwriters in Alpharetta have seen a growth in productivity among its teleworkers, said human resources director Nancy Lamborn. The company started teleworking and compressed-week programs recently, and “people love it,” she said.

Delta Air Lines has embraced teleworking, too. The carrier recently launched a formal program at its Atlanta headquarters for employees.

The reason is simple, noted Mike Campbell, the carrier’s executive vice president of human resources, labor and communications.

“Because the dramatic rise in the cost of fuel that is heavily impacting our airline is also hitting our people at the pump, the timing for introducing teleworking couldn’t be better,” he wrote in a memo to employees.

Agnes Scott College and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offer teleworking, too. And the CDC, which employs about 6,500 people in Atlanta, is considering liberalizing its policies.

In a memo earlier this week, COO William Gimson asked department heads to think about loosening the rules for workers telecommuting already. He also urged other measures that might lessen the agency’s reliance on a driving work force.

Doing it, he wrote, “may make a significant contribution to reducing employee stress.”

And, perhaps, lessen his stress as well.

Staff writers Laura Diamond, Margaret Newkirk, Kelly Yamanouchi and Alison Young contributed to this article.

 HYOSUB SHIN / hshin@ajc.com
CHARLES W. JONES, archives / Staff
Atlantans rely on two major pipelines, Colonial and Plantation, to pump fuel from the 
Gulf of Mexico. Moving at about 3 mph to 5 mph, it can take up to 10 days for gas to 
travel from Houston to Atlanta. The metro area began to feel the pinch of short supplies 
about two weeks after Gustav struck, which is about the time Ike came ashore. 

Sept. 1: More than one-third of refining capacity shut down during Hurricane 
Gustav and was beginning to recover when Ike began to threaten.

Sept. 13: When Ike landed, refining decreased from an average of 323 
million gallons per day to almost zero. Most refineries are back online, 
though Texas refineries are running at 43 percent capacity, according 
to the federal government. Both pipelines serving the Southeast 
from Texas continue to operate at reduced rates.

Fuel pipelines (at full capacity)
      Colonial Pipeline: 
95 million gallons per day 
through 5,519 miles of pipeline 
      Plantation Pipe Line: 
20 million gallons per day 
through 3,100 miles of 
pipeline 

Refinery 
details 
(at full capacity) 
Texas 
200 million 
gallons/day 
Louisiana 
125 million 
gallons/day

HOW FUEL GETS FROM THE TANKER TO YOUR CAR 
Crude oil arrives at a port city via seagoing tankers. From there, it must go through refining and distribution 
processes before consumers can use it in their vehicles.

Oil tanker
Crude oil
Refinery
Gasoline
Pipeline storage
Pipeline
Bulk terminal storage
Tanker truck
Local gas station

Map shows route of the  Colonial Pipeline and Plantation Pipe Line.

Sources: Energy Information Administration, Economy.com
Research by NISA ASOKAN / Staff