Old habits are hard to break. To most, idling
a car may seem fairly harmless, but in fact, there are many adverse effects.
Carbon emissions have a major impact on air quality, with implications for public
health and the environment, as we all know. One way to lessen these emissions
is to reduce needless pollution from idling. However, most drivers don’t think
twice about running their engine while the car is not in motion. For this
reason, the City of Portland and Multnomah County need to work together to
create idling regulations for passenger vehicles.
The two municipalities have worked together briefly on this
issue before, during the “Idling Gets You Nowhere” public outreach campaign in the
summer of 2011. As part of that effort, Mayor Adams’ office convened an idling
reduction task force to look into various options for addressing the
issue. Multnomah County took the lead on
outreach by creating an informational website, hanging “Idling
Gets You Nowhere” banners across the Hawthorne Bridge and mobilizing volunteers
to hand out postcards explaining the dangers of vehicular idling during bridge
lifts and at community events.
The partnership makes sense in
light of the two municipalities’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions. In 2009,
the City of Portland joined forces with Multnomah County to adopt the ClimateAction Plan, a three-year plan to put us on a path to achieve a 40 percent
reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. “The
Climate Action Plan commits the City and Multnomah County to 93 actions over
the next three years and establishes 18 objectives for 2030 (City of Portland,
2009).” However, in the whole 70 page document, idling is mentioned only twice.
