OSOYOOS TIMES-February 17, 2010
The Town of Osoyoos is facing a pretty big challenge with its pending anti-idling bylaw.
The bylaw is currently before the provincial Environment Ministry after receiving first, second and third readings from Osoyoos town council last month.
Under the draft policy, vehicles won’t be allowed to idle within the town’s boundaries for more than three minutes.
Some of the exemptions to the bylaw include emergency vehicles, mobile workshops where keeping the engine running is essential to carrying out a particular service, transport vehicles where keeping the engine running is necessary to keep items from perishing and idling to warm up a vehicle.
In the last case, a person must remain with the vehicle while it warms up.
The fine for violating this bylaw has tentatively been set at $50, although the draft bylaw states that “any person who contravenes any provision of this Bylaw is guilty of an offence and is liable upon summary conviction to a fine not more than two thousand (2,000.00) dollars plus the cost of prosecution for each offence.”
The $2,000 figure is the proposed maximum penalty.
Where the difficulty lies, as with most bylaws, is in the enforcement.
The exemptions to this bylaw are reasonable as, sometimes, idling is necessary, especially in emergency situations.
For this policy to have any real teeth, however, the Town would have to increase the number of bylaw officers out patrolling for violators of the policy and increase the number of hours bylaw officers spend on Osoyoos’s streets.
To make a real difference, enforcement officers would need to be present in the evenings when idling transport trucks often park along Main Street or Osoyoos’s other highways while their drivers get a bite to eat.
They would need to not only keep a close eye on vehicles in the downtown core as many drivers will often leave their cars and trucks running while running into a business to carry out an errand, but they would also need to patrol the parking lots of Osoyoos’s two supermarkets where it’s not unusual to see people run in to shop while their vehicle idles.
For many, leaving the car or truck running for a long period of time while they wait for a passenger to run into the pharmacy or the bank or the movie store is a matter of habit and the Town has its work cut out in trying to wean people off of this behaviour.
It’s difficult to say whether the proposed $50 fine will be enough to discourage people from giving up the convenience of keeping the heat or air conditioning on, even when they have left the vehicle to carry out an errand.
Council had talked about tougher fines, but the $50 figure is currently part of the draft bylaw.
A meatier penalty would be better to persuade someone to turn off the engine.
Hopefully most drivers will choose, once the bylaw is adopted, to respect the need to protect the area’s air and the health of local residents.
Whether this proposed policy, while good in principle, changes idling habits in Osoyoos will ultimately depend on how committed the Town will be to its enforcement.
