Community Associations for Environmental Sustainability

New Idling By-Law Approved by City Council

On October 2nd, City Council voted to amend Ottawa’s Idling Control By-Law. While it’s not all that we advocated for, the new by-law is a significant improvement over the old one. 

The original 2007 by-law put no limits on how long a driver could idle their vehicle when the temperature was below 5° C or above 27° C. That meant there were some 265 days a year when idling was “just fine.”

Now there is a limit – 10 minutes in a 60-minute period – and the lower temp threshold is 0° C. In between 0° and 27°, the limit remains at 3 minutes in a 60-minute period. We had urged for a 1 minute limit, and the staff report recommended it. 

The discussion at Committee and Council raised awareness among Councillors and the Mayor, providing those who were generally on-side with strong reasons to support a more effective by-law, and sensitizing those who disagreed with making a change to the justified concerns of citizens.

It’s good to see that the Mayor voted in favour and spoke supportively in media interviews following the Council decision. From the CTV news story: Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said the new idling by-law will focus on education, "Making sure that people are aware that idling your car has negative consequences for air quality and the environment."

The Mayor notes that staff say there are 200 days a year where the original by-law didn't affect idling vehicles. "The signal that we've sent is that we don't want people to idle their cars, even on cold and hot days there's a limit to what they should be doing," Sutcliffe said. "We know that there's not going to be a huge amount of enforcement of this by-law. The important thing is that we're setting a tone and we're sending a signal to the community and we're reminding people about the importance of shutting off their cars if they aren't in motion."

What’s critical now is to push for education and especially signage. CAFES and partners will be reaching out to by-law staff in the coming days to seek a meeting in regard to the communications plan. It would have been ideal to see money immediately assigned to school signage and we’ll be working on that. But it’s great that Councillor Menard was able to secure the agreement of the public works department — and funds — for signs in 16 high-traffic corridors.

While education is more critical than enforcement, it’s still important that egregious offenders face consequences. We will push to get videos provided by citizens accepted as proof for enforcement purposes. In fact, we will first need to push the city to enhance its software to accept videos – which should be possible using a file zip feature or links to YouTube accounts. We should not have to send officers to a scene, but be able to report with evidence. Otherwise, typically, officers arrive long after an idling vehicle is gone. 

City vehicles are often seen idling, and we plan to approach fleet managers to reinforce the need to educate and monitor the behaviour of the city’s own drivers. As the new by-law indicates, the convenience of the driver is not a valid reason to idle.

To view the Council Minutes from October 2nd, visit this link here.

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