By Steve Kemme
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Ohio's much-criticized auto emissions testing program soon will be giving many motorists a little break - in time, not money.

Everyone still will have to pay the $19.50 fee for the E-check emissions test required for all vehicles every two years. But those who own newer vehicles will be spending slightly less time at the state's auto emissions testing stations - one to four minutes less, to be exact.

Beginning Jan. 5, most vehicles manufactured since 1996 will undergo a test that's simpler, quicker and more accurate than the treadmill portion of the test. E-check inspectors demonstrated the test this week at the Middletown E-check station.

The newer vehicles have a built-in diagnostic computer that tracks and stores information about vehicle system performance. Instead of driving the vehicle on the treadmill that measures the concentration of gases coming from the exhaust pipe, the E-check inspector will plug a hand-held tool into a port under the dashboard to connect to the vehicle's computer system.

Within seconds, it transmits information to the inspector's computers about any problems with components of the engine that affect emissions. Vehicles with problems must be repaired and brought back for a second test.

"It tells people exactly what they need to have repaired," said Bruce Feroni, regional operations manager for Envirotest Systems Corp., which is under contract with Ohio to operate E-check. "The treadmill test doesn't do that."

Public reaction to shortening the emissions test ranges from mild praise to indifference.

"It's good if it gets people in and out faster," Middletown resident Charles Miller said at the E-check station in his town as his car was being inspected. "But I'd rather not have to do it at all. I think it's a waste of time."

No one showed up at the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency's public hearing Thursday evening in Middletown concerning the timing of the new test. A public hearing on this topic Wednesday in northeastern Ohio drew only three people.

The new test does nothing to mollify longtime E-check critics like Butler County Commissioner Courtney Combs.

"It's absolutely ridiculous to even test cars that are five years and newer," Combs said. "The E-check fail rate is less than 1 percent for those cars."

Combs, a former president of the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, has been lobbing verbal grenades at E-check ever since the program began in 1996. He says it does nothing to improve air quality and wastes motorists' time and money.

He wants state officials to kill the program and to replace it with one that actually cleans the air.

"It's a government bureaucracy that exists to take taxpayers' money for nothing," he said.

Ohio EPA officials say E-check has resulted in a significant improvement in air quality.

E-mail skemme@enquirer.com