By Rachel Rowe
Motorists who leave their cars running to warm them up during Ottawa’s frigid winters could soon return to tickets on their windshields.
The City of Ottawa in an attempt to cut down on pollution is preparing to crack down on idling vehicles.
The city’s environmental and planning committee voted 7-2 on Oct. 10 to review the existing anti-idling bylaw, which it decided is too lenient and rarely enforced.
The decision comes after the environmental advisory committee, a panel of concerned citizens, tabled a report detailing how vehicle exhaust is a major contributor to deteriorating air quality in Ottawa.
Bill Pugsley, a member of the advisory committee and a retired meteorologist, calls tougher penalties for idling vehicles a “low-hanging fruit of reducing emissions.”
Suggested changes to the bylaw include cutting permitted idling time from five minutes to three minutes and removing existing exemptions, such as those extended to OC Transpo and the City of Gatineau’s STO buses.
Currently, idling vehicles can only be ticketed under Ottawa’s noise bylaws on a complaint-initiated basis. Idling drivers can only be ticketed if a complaint is lodged and the engine is deemed to be too loud after a five-minute warning is given.
“The city cannot proactively enforce the law while it is classified as a noise bylaw,” Pugsley says.
“The city needs to adopt stand-alone regulations,” he says, to give bylaw enforcement officers the authority to ticket idling vehicles without a citizen complaint about noise.
Somerset Coun. Diane Holmes says she receives many complaints about idling vehicles in her ward, particularly regarding the Greyhound bus terminal on Catherine Street.
Buses idling while waiting for their routes to begin are the biggest problem, she says.
Holmes voted in favor of reviewing the bylaw, calling the current one “totally ineffectual.”
According to Holmes, last year the city received 182 complaints from residents about idling vehicles. From those complaints, only 24 warnings were issued and three charges were laid.
Pugsley says Ottawa is behind most other major Canadian cities that have already enacted more stringent penalties for idling vehicles.
Holmes says the city should pattern their bylaw after cities such as Vancouver and Toronto. Since 1996, Toronto motorists caught idling their vehicles longer than three minutes are subject to a $105 fine and a $25 provincial surcharge. Vancouver has similar legislation limiting idling time to three minutes.
Drive-thrus are another area where cars idle excessively, Pugsley says, and “a problem that needs to be looked at.” Other common culprits of unnecessary idling include parents and school buses waiting to pick children up from school, he says.