Posted on August 10, 2021 by John Surico ( Bloomberg)
Air-pollution laws, enforcement sprees and educational campaigns haven’t worked. What will it take to make drivers shut off their engines when they’re parked?
The episode provided some memorably insane visuals, and soon after, billboards of Idol and the slogan emerged around the city. But then the pandemic crashed into New York City, and the War on Idling was quickly overshadowed. Anyone who walks down the streets of the city today knows who won.
Look around anywhere in the sweltering summer of 2021 and you’ll probably see someone sitting in their car, parked, with fumes rising from the exhaust. Idling is not just a New York problem: It’s a global phenomenon. Wherever there are cars, there are drivers cocooned in running vehicles, often immersed in their smartphones, seemingly oblivious to the internal combustion engine rumbling pointlessly a few feet away.
Call it a crisis of habit or negligence. Drivers who pull over in a “No Standing” zone — like in front of a fire hydrant or bus stop — are common culprits. Cab drivers, cops, and moms and dads waiting in school pick-up lines are notorious idlers, as are delivery trucks making stops, the number of which continues to soar with pandemic-era e-commerce. Some idling is based on the now-outdated understanding that you need to “warm up” a cold engine, especially in the winter, for several minutes. Long-haul truckers that lack auxiliary power units often must run their diesels all night to heat or cool their cabs as they sleep, a practice that can burn almost 2 gallons of fuel an hour. State and local laws that ban idling after several minutes are widespread, but they’re almost universally flouted, as headlines repeatedly show.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, heavy- and light-duty vehicles waste 6 billion gallons of fuel each year through idling. Half of those offenders are private vehicles, which together add about 30 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year. If idling stopped tomorrow, it’d be the equivalent of taking 5 million vehicles off the road. A 2009 paper said that idling alone made up 1.6% of America’s total greenhouse gas emissions.
The abundant negative externalities of the practice have taken on new urgency amid the many climate-related crises of the last year. Beyond its carbon toll, idling contributes to air pollution, an increasingly prominent environmental justice issue as more researchers look into the links between Covid-19 and local air quality. And it’s a powerful driver of the urban heat island effect — next time you want to be miserable, walk past a line of idling cars on a hot day and marvel at the volume of heat drivers pump out as they run what are essentially 300-horsepower gas-powered personal air conditioners.
On top of everything else, it’s bad for your engine.
When New York Magazine’s David Wallace-Wells wrote, in his book The Uninhabitable Earth, that we are “a civilization enclosing itself in a gaseous suicide, a running car in a sealed garage,” it’s hard not to think of idling as an all-too-literal manifestation of his metaphor — a constant reminder of humanity’s refusal to make even the tiniest of behavioral adjustments (just reach down and turn a key!) to save itself. As far as climate change mitigation goes, getting people to stop idling is just about the lowest of the low-hanging fruit.
But most anti-idling initiatives boil down to education campaigns, pledges, and a few signs. And in general, they’ve failed miserably. So how can cities curb this cursed practice once and for all?
If you dig into this topic, you will quickly come across George Pakenham. The Wall Street banker is a “man on emission,” as the 2012 autobiographical documentary Idle Threat, called him. Since 2005, Pakenham has been politely asking thousands of drivers of idling commercial vehicles around Manhattan to shut off their engine, handing them a simple business card with the legal fines attached. He kept an Excel spreadsheet of every encounter, with what he says was an 80% success rate. (I’ve had similar luck when I attempt to follow his example.)
About two months into his anti-idling odyssey, Pakenham rapped on the window of an idling limousine. “The driver told me, ‘Leave me alone, I’m a cop, I’m on watch, go away,’” Pakenham says. As he walked away, the driver yelled out. “You know, there’s a law against what I’m doing. I don’t know what the law is, but I know there’s a law against it. And if you’re so damn interested in it, why don’t you pursue it?”
That is how Pakenham, who labels himself a “vigilante” for better air, discovered what is the case for many cities: There has been an idling law on the books since the 1970s, but it is barely enforced. “Mostly symbolic,” as one local newspaper in Utah described it, could be a term widely used.
Since idling is technically a moving violation, it’s often not under the jurisdiction of traffic enforcement agents (TEAs). But since it’s also an environmental issue, it is overseen by the city’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which doesn’t have many officers walking the streets. Thus, idling is left in an enforcement purgatory; in many cities, barely any tickets for idling are written each year.
With a boost from the Environmental Defense Fund, Pakenham’s push spurred media coverage and helped lead then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg to impose stricter limits on idling, particularly near schools, where children are more vulnerable to air pollution. (Michael R. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg CityLab.) Still, the laws “lacked teeth,” says Pakenham. New Yorkers (including the mayor) continued to idle.
But in 2018, the city’s anti-idling movement notched a major victory: New York started what’s known as the Citizens Air Complaint Program, the first of its kind in the nation. Essentially, citizens are invited to submit evidence of a truck or bus idling to DEP in exchange for a quarter slice of the fine, should one be issued. (Passenger vehicles are notably given a pass.)
Before the law, only 24 idling-related summonses were given in 2017; in 2018, after the law was enacted, that number jumped to 1,038. Nearly 20,000 complaints have now been filed from about 2,500 people, 90% of which have resulted in summonses. Pakenham himself has made more than $10,000 in the hustle, he said. He’s now part of a group of nearly 40 people who call themselves Idle Warriors; they submit the bulk of the videos. “They’re very ardent, they’re very professional, and they’re very earnest in making this thing work,” he says.
One member told me that an awareness campaign like “Billy Never Idles” isn’t sufficient. “Education has been tried for a long time, but until there’s a penalty associated, it’s either a) I don’t care; or b) I’m just waiting for someone,” the member told me. (They requested anonymity, because they have received occasional threats from angry drivers.) “It’s a tragedy of the commons, really.”
These kinds of citizen watchdogs are needed, advocates say, because they outlast the enforcement spikes that some cities do. When I asked Pakenham if he thought that this was the best system — having residents report infractions, instead of the government — he bristled. “It’s absurd that it’s on citizens!” he said. The cash prize made it digestible, he added, but more institutional support was needed. The city was considering a smartphone app that would streamline submissions, he said, but talks have stalled since Covid. (Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia have since launched similar programs using various apps, but without the financial incentives.)
Calls to allow TEAs to enforce idling have been opposed by the New York Police Department, which cites logistical reasons; with the law as is, an officer would have to wait around three minutes before writing a ticket. Worries of confrontation have also been flagged, as police officials say traffic enforcement agents are more likely to be victims of assault than uniformed officers. A similar argument doomed a citizen complaint program for illegal parking in January. But this question comes at a time when advocates and policymakers are revisiting the role of police in traffic enforcement writ large, thanks to racial discrimination issues and other problems. Is it worth giving law enforcement more responsibilities? Or should a new approach be taken altogether?
To try to answer this, I reached out to Jeff Novich, who analyzed all 20,000 citizen complaints about idling in New York City this last June in a Medium post. Novich created the Reported app, which allows any user in New York to report a car that is blocking crosswalks, parked illegally, or driving recklessly. (It doesn’t come with a cash prize.) “Citizens should always feel empowered to file complaints on drivers and be able to act on them without getting police involved,” he argued. “But that’s a fallback.”
Like many transit advocates, Novich is skeptical that the police, even if further involved, would help solve the problem. “As a tax-paying resident, I should feel confident that enforcement is being done effectively,” he said. “And I don’t feel that way at all.” The rampant use of illegal placards and official vehicles that are parked illegally (not just in New York) lends to his cause.
Instead, Novich said that cities should explore automated enforcement. While no camera currently exists for idling, Novich said he can imagine one that identifies and timestamps how long a vehicle is in a zone, similar to the parking enforcement system in Amsterdam. Thermographic cameras, for heat, are another option.
“At the very least, we have tech that could get us more accurate survey data to know what’s going on,” Novich said.
There’s another kind of technology that promises to turn the tide in the war on idling — eventually. When every internal combustion-powered car and truck on the road is replaced by a battery-powered electric vehicle (EV), the phenomenon disappears.
Of course, that date still appears as a hazy oasis; EVs make up less than 5% of all new U.S. car sales. But in other countries, adoption is picking up speed. President Joe Biden is pushing to put as many EVs into U.S. garages as possible by 2030, and automakers are lining up to rid themselves of gas-fueled cars in the coming years.
Many newer cars, especially hybrids and low-emission vehicles (LEVs), already boast an anti-idling feature — stop-start systems that automatically shut the engine down when the car is in gear but not moving, to save gas. (Listen next time you’re at a stoplight: a newer car will shut off entirely before cranking back up when the light turns green.) But these systems typically don’t operate when the vehicle is idling in “park” for extended periods. And many owners are sufficiently annoyed by the feature to disable it.
Other forms of vehicle technology focus on nudging driver behavior.
“It’s all about the data,” says Kurt Wyman, the North America vice president of sales for Teletrac Navman, a telematics company that helps public and private organizations monitor their fleets. “If you capture data, you can start influencing the behavior.”
In one city case study, the company tracked idling on police vehicles and found that, on average, a police car idled 20 minutes a day. “Just look at the raw numbers,” he said. “If I have a thousand vehicles and every one is idling 20 minutes a day, if you just took two minutes off each one, that’s probably tens of thousands of dollars of cost savings.” When they analyzed the data, they determined where officers were idling and who the biggest offenders were. The system, says Wyman, “paid for itself in months.”
The same results have been found in other cities that invested in anti-idling technology. Geography and other factors need to be considered, Wyman notes: Police cars in Phoenix during the summer may use their engines differently than those in Detroit in the winter. And he recommends sharing data regularly and extensively with municipal workers. One popular approach is gamification. Workers who turn off get a reward — a tactic commonly used in the car insurance industry. It’s a supportive, rather than punitive, approach. “That encourages them to use the electronic lock,” Wyman said, “rather than seeing it as Big Brother.”
Cities electrifying their municipal fleets or cracking down on idling join others in the private sector. With a growing emphasis on “last mile” logistics, or the trip from a distribution hub to your front door, Wyman said private operators are showing heightened interest in reducing fuel costs and climate impacts. For fleets as large as, say, Amazon — which is planning to put 100,000 electric delivery vans on the road by 2030 — anything that reduces costs and negative externalities like air pollution and carbon emissions offers a competitive advantage. “They’re paying attention,” Wyman says.
Local authorities have the power to penalize drivers for idling in the U.K., but Jack Alexander, a project officer with Idling Action London, says that working with those authorities made issues with existing legislation come to light. The fine itself — usually 20 pounds — isn’t really enough to make a difference. Additionally, the officer must ask a driver to switch off their engine before issuing a fine. “In practice, this means fines are issued for failing to cooperate with an enforcing officer instead of for an idling contravention,” Alexander says.
So even though there were an estimated 13,000 interactions last year between officers and drivers in participating authorities, few fines were issued. And the lack of clarity over how to enforce the law makes it confusing for drivers, too. “Ultimately, whilst we would welcome higher fines and fewer legal barriers to enforcement, we believe that enforcement alone is insufficient in driving behavior change around engine idling,” Alexander says.
That’s where the Idling Action campaign comes in. Local authorities that sign onto the educational campaign are instructed to train the contractors they hire in anti-idling behavior and obtain pledges for sticking to it. A number of major contractors — including Veolia, the French-based transportation services multinational — have since complied.
The effectiveness of anti-idling campaigns has been the subject of psychological study by U.K. researchers. One 2017 study looked at drivers at a Canterbury rail crossing who were presented with a spooky-looking sign illustrated with a pair of staring eyeballs and the message “Think of yourself: When barriers are down switch off your engine.” They found that this appeal to a driver’s “private self” activated a kind of internal surveillance and proved more effective than standard warning placards.
But even if drivers don’t self-enforce, London has a secret weapon. The Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), introduced by Mayor Sadiq Khan in 2019, charges drivers with older, more-polluting cars an additional fee to enter the city’s central district (on top of a congestion fee). According to the city’s figures, the program removes nearly 14,000 cars from the road every day and reduces air pollution in the area by a third. In October, ULEZ will expand to a size 18 times larger than the current area.
With backing from Westminster, Bath and Birmingham now also have “Clean Air Zones,” and more cities are set to follow in the coming years. What the mechanism effectively does is force companies and private individuals to invest in cleaner, newer vehicles, which are less likely to idle.
Pakenham’s one-man fight against idling in the U.S. — and his successful monetization of it — has stirred calls for a similar citizen bounty program in the U.K., too. In the times we’ve spoken, Pakenham has voiced frustration that more cities haven’t shown a “real curiosity” in taking on idling. But he’s hoping that the arrival of more aggressive policies, paired with growing awareness of the impact of our collective carbon footprint, will finally get folks to pay attention.
“Fundamentally, this is a public health issue. The bulk of air pollution in all of America is from the internal combustion engine. That’s appalling,” he says. “This is a solution. Nobody likes to go into their wallet, rich man or poor. Do it once, and you’re not going to do it again.”