Radically Reducing Cities $$$ Costs, Carbon and Exhaust Pollution.

Like every town and city across the United States and Canada, New York City is plagued by the costs of out-of-date ‘60’s idling' beliefs and behavior in 21st-century vehicles operated by citizens and by city employees in NYC’s corporate fleet. It’s generating hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon and exhaust emissions while costing government and households $millions in fuel annually.

However, unlike other jurisdictions, New York City’s idling problem is led and influenced by a municipal fleet fuel bill unlike any other; a projected $81.8?million for the 2022 fiscal year. That's compared to $50 million the previous fiscal year; a whopping 61% increase in fuel costs.

NYC’s comptroller, Brad Lander positioned the higher fuel costs; "inflation and global shortages are fueling the rising cost of gas, and everyone is feeling the squeeze, including city agencies.?We are working towards transitioning the city’s fleet to electric vehicles and retrofitting buildings to rely less on natural gas and oil. As New York City becomes less dependent on?fuel, we will become more green and save green."

As fleet efficiency leaders and pioneers in the adoption of electric vehicles, hybrids, and alternative fuels, in addition to its leadership in reducing fleet emissions, New York City has left one proven, fuel-saving solution on the table: driver education. Why isn’t the city considering upgrading the idle management skills of the city’s fleet operators in its thousands of fossil-fueled vehicles?

Perhaps it’s because of two traditional barriers that have quashed any idea of getting fleet drivers to care about their idling behavior: there was no program and no proven methodology to build an idle reduction behavior modification business case for city hall.

That was yesterday. Today, it is now readily possible to do both. An organization can now sensitize 1000s of drivers to their unconscious idling habit; engage drivers across any large organization, across a city, a state, or province in becoming enthusiastic champions of cost and carbon reduction while improving air quality across their communities.

In terms of the business case, the payback for an idle reduction behavior modification program for New York City promises to be astronomical, costing just a fraction of what the city is now spending on fuel. As we know from our extensive research and work with municipal fleet operators across the US and in Canada, typically a minimum of 40% of engine hours are lost to driver idling behavior.

The lion’s share of this idling is driver idling ‘by choice’, at least 80% of which can be eliminated by upgrading drivers’ personal idle management skills; in other words, driver education on the proper idle management of every 21st century vehicle they operate, which requires virtually no idle time at all.

There is another very important aspect to New York City’s plan to fully electrify their corporate fleet while side-stepping their idling behavior problem in their fossil-fueled vehicles. It sends the wrong message to the drivers of greater New York in their 4.5 million cars and trucks (or, as I sometimes call vehicles: ‘carbon delivery devices’).

“Don’t do as we do, do as we say with our anti-idling campaigns, don’t idle.” From our experience, promoting a virtue (do what we say, "don't idle") while doing something else (idling NYC's fossil-fueled fleet) does not engage the public.

Therefore, every public awareness campaign on reducing idling has failed over time to sustain mass behavioral change or a systematic, continuously managed idle reduction culture in a corporate fleet of vehicles. It’s because these initiatives typically fail to get drivers to truly care and modify their behavior. And the initiatives fail to measure real reductions in costs and emissions from idle reduction.

What’s required is a program of personal and emotional engagement that wins the ‘hearts and minds’ of drivers to truly care about how they idle a 21st-century vehicle. Any vehicle. The upshot of industry’s idle reduction behavioral science is that fleet drivers are evangelized with eLearning which motivates them to save twice; first in their personal vehicles and then in their work vehicles.

So, the city can continue to spend at an even higher cost for its driver idling while continuing to be the wrong idling example for citizens. Or the city can ‘walk the talk’ and become one of the first idle-reduction certified fleets in the U.S. savings $Millions in fuel and downstream costs. The city will also become a shining example that citizens will follow in their fossil-fueled vehicles, which are going to be around for a long time yet.

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Get your organization's fleet operations idle reduction strategy started with a limited time no-cost Idle Reduction Opportunity Assessment?

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