Many people are irritated by drivers who leave their engine running unnecessarily while their vehicle is stationary. Participants in the project “Public Agendas and Citizen Participation”, set up by the Dutch Environment ministry (VROM), wanted to know whether public health would benefit if there was less unnecessary idling of car engines. In collaboration with TNO, CE Delft has looked at two pollution hotspots where idling is known to be frequent.
The following conclusions were drawn:
Based on this study, we recommend not to use air quality as the central motive for any policy on idling vehicle engines. Drawing attention to greenhouse gas emissions, fuel wastage and other negative aspects of road transport would appear to be better motives.