St. Albert city council’s plan to revamp its idle-free bylaw looks more like greenwashing than any real consideration of its effects. We won’t get into the myriad issues of enforcement here but, in the meantime, the proposed changes have caught local education officials and parents off guard.
Currently, drivers are prohibited from idling in their vehicles for more than three minutes during a 30-minute period unless the temperature is above 30 C or below zero, with exemptions for certain types of vehicles.
Under proposed bylaw amendments, introduced at the Sept. 17 council meeting, idling for more than three minutes, regardless of the weather, will be an offence for all non-exempt vehicles. School buses, which have been exempt since the bylaw was first implemented in 2008, will now fall into that category.
The news came as a surprise to the leaders of the St. Albert Public Schools and Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools boards, who were not given a heads-up that school buses will be taken off the exemption list.
The city did not consult nor seek input from the boards, which has not only disappointed respective school board chairs Glenys Edwards and Serena Shaw but the thousands of St. Albertans who rely on those diesel buses to get their children to and from school each weekday.
“Our concern with the proposed legislation is that it does not recognize that our bus operation system requires an allowance for extremely cold weather and that it institutes an unworkable three-minute idling limit,” Edwards said on behalf of the Public Schools board in an email on Thursday.
“The vast majority of our contractors’ yellow buses are stored outside and have to be warmed up properly in order to function mechanically, safely and on time.”
The board, which said it supports the city’s commitment to improve air quality, has written a letter to council expressing its safety concerns regarding the elimination of its exemption. It also plans to make a presentation at an upcoming council meeting.
It’s outrageous that the city didn’t ask for the boards’ views on a move that will have a significant impact on kids, particularly in the winter when they’ll be required to travel in frigid temperatures in what Coun. Sheena Hughes described as “little blocks of yellow ice.”
And while students and school bus drivers ride in the cold, St. Albert’s transit bus operators and passengers will be kept warm because those vehicles will continue to be exempt under the proposed bylaw changes, which have passed second reading.
So making sure the drivers and transit users are comfortable in the cold is important to the city but the comfort and safety of students and school bus drivers can be sacrificed in a bid to improve air quality and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in St. Albert?
The city needs to hear from both school boards before the proposed bylaw comes back for third and final reading. The fact it’s got this far without proper consultation is an affront to the spirit of co-operation.
