A good time to line up against idling

OK, so you’re sitting in the line of cars waiting to pick up or drop off children at school and maybe you’re wondering if there’s something you can do to reinforce the sense of responsibility you expect your own child to be developing throughout the day. Here’s a thought, courtesy of an Arlington Heights village trustee, the village of Lombard, town leaders from around the Chicago region and hundreds of environmental experts nationwide:

Turn off your engine.

And not just at school but also waiting for that long freight train, sitting still in a traffic jam, waiting in the overflow spot for those french fries that weren’t quite ready at the drive-up window, or any time when you might expect to be idling for more than 10 seconds.

Yes, 10 seconds. That’s the length of time that most experts say it takes a typical idling vehicle to use as much gasoline as was required to start it. Everything after that is waste.

Sure, it may be unrealistic to expect anyone to turn the car on and off every 11 seconds in stop-and-go traffic, but it’s still an important number to keep in mind whenever you expect to be idling your engine for some period of time.

Arlington Heights village Trustee Michael Sidor is pushing this message in his role as a member of Arlington Heights Cool Cities, emphasizing facts about idling engines promoted by the city-suburban Metropolitan Mayors Caucus. Putting philosophy into practice, the village of Lombard emphasized earlier this month actions it has taken in connection with the caucus’s Clean Air Counts initiative, including implementation of an anti-idling policy for village vehicles and placement of anti-idling signs at schools, railroad crossings and the Metra station. Other suburban towns also are acting to limit idling by official vehicles and discourage it among all drivers.

Among the expert information these towns have come to understand:

Ÿ An hour of idling burns up to a gallon of fuel.

Ÿ Exposure to car and truck exhaust has a significant effect on children’s asthma symptoms.

Ÿ Excessive idling can damage a vehicle’s spark plugs, cylinders and exhaust system.

Ÿ Indirect costs caused by decreased fuel economy and engine efficiency add another $42 to $83 a year to the cost of idling, the environmentalist Hinkle Charitable Foundation says.

Ÿ Engineers and environmentalists agree that a typical car engine idling 10 minutes pumps into the atmosphere about 9.5 ounces of carbon dioxide, the principal compound making up harmful greenhouse gases.

You can learn more at www.coolcities.us and www.cleanaircounts.org. Check them out. If nothing else, it could give you and your kids something to talk about in the car when you ask what they learned today and you get that “nothing much” shrug.