Truck Idling Limits Increasing Nationwide
By Andrea Fischer, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the Sept. 24 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.
Truck idling limits in Rhode Island, New Jersey and California are the newest restrictions in a growing list of regional regulations, according to a recent report published by the American Transportation Research Institute.
Mike Tunnell, director of environmental research for ATRI, said truck-idling restrictions and enforcement activity have grown in recent years, expanding a “patchwork” of idling regulations.
“There are an increasing number of regulations across the nation that truckers are going to have to face more and more, because we’re generally also seeing increased enforcement,” of those regulations, said Tunnell. “There’s a growing awareness of where these idle regulations exist.”
To help truckers keep up with new regional regulations, ATRI publishes a monthly report called the “Idling Regulation Compendium and Cab Card,” said Daniel Murray, vice president of ATRI.
In Rhode Island, where no idling ban previously existed, truckers now are limited to five minutes of idling in any one-hour period. Exemptions to the regulation include sleeper-cab idling during federally mandated rest periods, idling during maintenance or roadside truck inspections, or idling during emergency situations.
Fines in Rhode Island range from $100 for the first idling offense to $500 for each succeeding offense.
California will do away with its sleeper-berth idling exemption Jan. 1. The state currently limits truck idling to five minutes but allows truckers to idle while they are resting in a sleeper berth.
According to ATRI’s latest report, New Jersey also restricts idling for “permanently assigned vehicles,” or trucks that run predefined routes in the state. Those trucks were previously exempt from the state’s three-minute idling restriction.
Meanwhile, a new bill introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives would limit truck idling time in the state to five minutes in any one-hour period.
According to the bill, trucks would be allowed to idle for up to 20 minutes per hour when temperatures are lower than 40 degrees or higher than 80 degrees.
