While some vehicle idling is unavoidable, such as at stoplight and in traffic congestion, most drivers end up voluntarily idling their vehicles at various times—in drive-through lines, waiting to pick-up passengers, while stopped to talk on the phone, etc. Voluntarily idling adds up to 5-10 minutes a day on average for typical drivers, and light-duty vehicles use between 0.3 and 0.75 gallons of gas hour of idling. Consequently, most drivers end up wasting one to two tankfuls of fuel per year idling.

Vehicle idling has been identified in the Denver metro area and elsewhere as a significant source of air pollution. An idling vehicle produces about 4.8 grams of carbon monoxide per minute while idling. For comparison, there is about 67mg of carbon monoxide in the smoke from one cigarette–that means that one minute of idling produces more carbon monoxide than the smoke from 3 packs of cigarettes.

In the Denver Metro Area idling is responsible for an estimated 40,000 tons of harmful air pollution a year and 400,000 tons of CO2 emissions–the result of over 40 million gallons of fuel wasted while idling, costing area residences and businesses over $100 million dollars a year.

Action Items:

• Turn your engine off, even for stops less than a minute (when not in traffic): idling for even 10 seconds uses more than restarting the engine.

• Modern engines only need to warm up for about 30 seconds on cold days.

Engines Off is the Denver Department of Environmental Health’s city-wide anti-idling campaign with the goals of improving air quality and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The City and County of Denver’s idling ordinance limits idling to 5 minutes in most situations to help reduce air pollution (in addition to the air ordinance, for safety reasons Denver Police can ticket vehicles left idling for any duration if they are left unattended).  The goal of the Engines Off campaign is to foster voluntary behavior change so that enforcement is only necessary as a last resort.

Learn more about Denver’s efforts to reduce idling at: enginesoff.com