New Ottawa anti-idling rule could bring $100K fines

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City councillors are considering tougher anti-idling bylaws as a way of improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions in Ottawa.

And it’s not just idle talk. A motion to be debated this week proposes to make it illegal to idle a vehicle for more than one minute in any 60-minute period. When it’s below freezing or warmer than 27 C, that limit would be five minutes to allow time to defrost windows or cool the vehicle with air conditioning.

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The motion will be discussed Thursday at a special joint meeting of the Environment and Climate Change, and the Emergency Preparedness and Protective Services committees.

Ottawa’s current bylaw has been in place since 2007 and limits idling to three minutes. But that’s fallen out of line with other major cities such as Toronto, Burlington, Kingston and Vancouver, which have adopted a one-minute maximum. The Montreal borough of Outremont limits idling to 10 seconds, with a $150 fine for offenders.

Penalties in the Ottawa proposal would range from a warning to a minimum fine of $500, ranging up to a maximum of $100,000 “where continued or egregious non-compliance is occurring.” When the proposal to toughen the idling bylaw first came to council in 2022, it mentioned that higher fines for idling was one of the tactics used to counter the three-week convoy occupation of downtown Ottawa in February 2022.

There are plenty of exceptions allowed in the current bylaw that would be continued under the new proposal. You won’t be ticketed if you’re idling while stuck in traffic — or in a drive-through lane. Emergency vehicles are excluded, as are public transit and private transit vehicles (school buses and tour buses, for example), vehicles engaged in farming, police vehicles since they need to keep their onboard computers powered, mobile workshops, vehicles being repaired and armoured vehicles. Anyone with a doctor’s note saying they must be in a climate-controlled vehicle will also be exempt.

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Exemptions wouldn’t apply, however, if the idling is strictly “for the convenience of the operator,” the city says.

The current bylaw is rarely enforced. Since it came into effect, the city has fielded about 270 complaints annually. Of those, bylaw officers have given an average of 10 warnings and issued seven tickets a year. In about 20 per cent of the complaints, by the time a bylaw officer arrived, there was nothing to see.

The city considered allowing people to submit video evidence, but says its online reporting service cannot handle large digital files.

“When the by-law was introduced, its intention was primarily as a public awareness tool around the harms associated with excessive, unnecessary idling, and enforcement outcomes have focused on education and warnings as opposed to the issuance of infractions,” the report says.

The city is also promising a “robust public education and awareness campaign” should the new rules be adopted.

Anyone who was in downtown Ottawa during the 2022 trucker occupation when the air was thick with the stench of diesel fumes will know how harmful idling can be, says Angela Keller-Herzog of the Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability. CAFES has been tracking the idling issue for several years and will make a presentation at Thursday’s committee meeting.

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While CAFES is pleased with the proposed bylaw, Keller-Herzog called it a “partial success.”

“Obviously, there are vulnerable populations that we need to be concerned about. Around schoolyards, we think there should be signage and more education. When you have caregivers and parents dropping off and picking up kids, they should not all be standing around with engines running, polluting the air. When kids are there and that pollution is going straight into their lungs — that’s reprehensible.”

She’d like to see the city commit some money to more signs, more education and more enforcement.

“If you have a bylaw where the only purpose is to encourage good behaviour, but if there’s gross abuses there’s no mechanism to enforce it, that’s kind of useless,” she said.

“We’re not after random small infractions. But if there is systematic, repeat behaviour — say the same delivery truck always idling or a driver who finds a nice shady spot on a street and takes a nap with the engine running — I think that’s where residents should have recourse,” Keller-Herzog said. “Not everyone’s comfortable knocking on someone’s car window. There should be a response from (a call to) 311.”

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