Sept. 17, 2006, Brampton Guardian

Friendly reminder to stop drivers from idling

Pam Douglas

If you're at one of the local GO Train stations over the next week-and-a-half waiting to pick someone up, you may hear a tap on your car window.

If you do, you'll be handed a "ticket" and asked, very politely, to turn off your engine. You won't have to pay the "ticket", it's an information brochure, but it is hoped that the experience will change your attitude and your behaviour.

It's the final step in a year-long project aimed at reducing vehicle idling through public education, something Brampton Mayor Susan Fennell believes will work better than the "heavy-handed" approach of passing a bylaw and trying to force drivers to turn their ignitions off.

"With a smile and a clean air ambassador, we believe we will have far greater cooperation and buy-in," she said.

It will take another two years to find out of that is true. The city is working with the Clean Air Partnership and Natural Resources Canada in a research project that will see the effectiveness of Brampton's public education approach measured with the effectiveness of an anti-idling bylaw passed in Markham in June 2005. In the end, the Clean Air Partnership hopes to determine how voluntary and regulatory approaches, and combinations of the two, can be used to reduce idling across Canada.

Brampton started its Idling Control Public Education Campaign last December, producing fliers, posters, outdoor signs and advertisements as well as mailing information cards to residents and businesses.

This next step is to send two ambassadors into the community to meet face-to-face with idlers.

John Brown and Harpreet Singh are Brampton's new Idling Control Ambassadors and they will be patrolling the city's idling "hotspots"-- GO stations and city recreation centres-- talking to drivers about idling and asking them to make a commitment to turn off their engines when they are not moving.

They have already spent a week "observing" driver behaviour at those same sites, and have found the Kiss and Ride areas at the GO stations are rife with idlers waiting to pick up family or friends from the train. Some sit for as long as 20 minutes with the engine running, according to Brown.

"I won't get too technical," said Brown, who just graduated from York University's Environmental Studies program. "I'll remind them how much gas they're wasting and how much money it is costing them."

They will ask drivers to allow them to affix a decal to their car's window, a constant reminder with the words "Don't idle. It gets you nowhere."

"Hopefully, they'll let us put it on so they will always be reminded," Brown said. "I think it's going to go a long way and they are gong to spread the word to friends and family."

Singh, who is in his last year in York's Environmental Studies program, said he believes it will be a challenge to educate drivers in a short period of time.

"They're not going to know too much about what we're doing," he said. "At the sites where there is more idling, people are going to be in a rush."

After handing out tickets for several days, the project will wrap up with a final week of observation, to see if behaviours have been changed. Brown said during the first week of observation it was obvious that the same drivers were idling at the same spots every day, part of their daily routine.

Idling for more than 10 seconds burns gas almost twice as fast as driving, and it produces double the amount of toxic emissions per second than a vehicle moving at average speed, Fennell said.

Lucie Seguin of Natural Resources Canada, said individual drivers can stop 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the environment just by cutting out five minutes of idling every day for a year.

Fennell said reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the quality of the air and water is being attacked from several different angles in Brampton. The city was one of the first Canadian municipalities to use bio-diesel in transit buses, city trucks and cars. The city has assembled a fleet of fuel-efficient cars-- hybrids and Smart cars-- for use by bylaw officer, and putting low-emission street sweepers onto local roadways.

in partnership to promote and coordinate actions to improve local air quality and reduce greenhouse gases for healthy communities.