By Chad Klassen

City staff, councillors focusing on education with anti-idling bylaw

Jun 19, 2018 | 4:25 PM

KAMLOOPS — The City of Kamloops is going ahead with its anti-idling bylaw after council approved it on Tuesday afternoon. It means vehicles can’t idle for more than three minutes in public spaces. 

Councillors and city staff realize enforcement will be difficult, but it’s focusing more on the educational aspect to try and change people’s behaviors

“My experience is most people in Kamloops abide by the bylaws,” said city bylaw manager John Ramsay. “For me, as long as the education campaign is a strong one and we’re communicating that to the whole community, you’ll see changes in people’s behaviour.”

City staff, and council agreed, it was time to put a bylaw like this in place, noting Kamloops is among the last B.C. communities to implement such a bylaw. Vancouver has had one since 2006. 

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“I find a lot of people in Kamloops unfortunately idle a bit too much,” said councillor Arjun Singh. “Having a bylaw is just a way for us to actually further the education. You’re not really able to enforce much with a bylaw like that, except for very egregious situations. But what you can do is send a message that it’s not really something we want to see happen.”

Councillor Tina Lange has been pushing for this for the better part of seven years, but even she acknowledged on Tuesday that changing people’s behaviours in their vehicle might be a challenge.

“I see the education component is going to be a bit of a battle,” she said during discussion. “It seemed that everybody [on social media] that answered on this one long list was saying that ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll adhere to that. I will run my big diesel engine for 20 minutes because that’s what it takes to warm it up when it’s really cold.”

There was some discussion about certain weather-related exceptions. Councillor Denis Walsh noted a vehicle should be able to run for a longer period of time during extreme weather situations when children or animals are in the car. 

The city said bylaw officers will use discretion on a case-by-case basis. 

“John’s staff will come and evaluate and assess the situation, and we’re assuming in this case the occupants in the vehicle, so there will be an opportunity to have a discussion, find out what’s going on and see that there’s young children or whatever the circumstance is, and there’s the education opportunity.” 
 
The anti-idling bylaw will only apply to public spaces, and while council asked about monitoring private parking lots, bylaw said it’s not in their jurisdiction. 

“The private property, I can’t go there and enforce that. I have no authority,” said Ramsay. “But the education campaign’s what’s going to make the big difference here.”