Vehicle Smog Check (Tulsa, May: inspections, costs, versus)

[Bufford]

Do you need to get your vehicle smog checked in Tulsa area?

[BigOkie]

Originally Posted by Bufford

Do you need to get your vehicle smog checked in Tulsa area?

Not any more. Vehicle inspections were repealed in 2000 I believe.

[Bufford]

Originally Posted by BigOkie

Not any more. Vehicle inspections were repealed in 2000 I believe.

Thanks. Is the air clean out there that it is not necessary?

[LadyRobyn]

Originally Posted by Bufford

Thanks. Is the air clean out there that it is not necessary?

For the most part yes. We don't have the towering mountains to trap all of the bad air in and the wind blows alot, keeping the air much cleaner than CA.

[Goodpasture]

Mostly it is Texas sucking all those fumes and discharges to the Houston area.

[BigOkie]

Originally Posted by Bufford

Thanks. Is the air clean out there that it is not necessary?

Not necessarily. I think the state thought that it was becoming harder and harder to police the inspection agents and they were losing money (annual inspections only cost $6, versus the $21 I remember in Texas from the early 90s; it may be more down there now) and there were only seven or eight counties required to have smog controls. Tulsa was one of them. You could tell if you were a smog control county from the color of the sticker you had (blue was smog control, green wasn't).

Tulsa with its unique geography has some issues with ozone; thus we have ozone season every year starting with Memorial Day all the way through to October. We were the first city in the nation to have ozone awareness and have ozone alerts. We have been flirting with the national dirty air list for ages, but seem to always just barely stay off it. Does that mean our air is as bad as someplace like LA or Houston? Heavens, no, but they're ALWAYS on the EPA Dirty Air List. We hope not to be. In May, expect gas prices to be 10 cents higher than everywhere else in the state because we go to a special oxygenated gas blend to stave off some of the ozone. It costs more to refine, so we have to deal with that.

So short answer is that our air is not clean, but in the long run it was costing more to administrate the inspection system than it was to just let all those old vehicles run their life out and have cars on the roads with some sort of smog control.