No-idling zone: Schools urge drivers to cut pollution by turning off buses, cars

As you gaze into the gunk blanketing Wasatch Front valleys, take heart: Schools are working to help clean it up — with a simple turn of a key.

Washington, Salt Lake City and Cache school districts are piloting a program, expected to go national next year, to train school bus drivers to kill the engines on idle buses. Students and parents at Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School and Emerson Elementary in Salt Lake City and Morningside Elementary in Granite School District are urging parents to do the same when picking up their kids at the end of the day.

Rowland Hall-St. Mark's parent Sarah Uram says it's as important to student safety as buckling a seat belt.

"Idling is really unnecessary and it's a huge source of pollution and causes a lot of distress for kids with respiratory problems, even for healthy kids," said Uram, a member of Rowland Hall's sustainability committee. "It's a pretty easy thing just to turn your car off."

Vehicles contribute to nearly two-thirds of air pollutants in Utah, Utah Clean Cities director Robin Erickson said. Idling, be it at the drive-through or waiting to load passengers, unnecessarily adds to it.

Consider: If every school bus driver in the country each day killed the engine one minute on trips to school, and one minute in the afternoon pickup, annual emissions would drop by 319 tons of carbon monoxide, 185 tons of nitrogen dioxide and 8.3 tons of small particulate matter, Erickson said. The action also would save 150,000 gallons of fuel and reduce bus maintenance costs by the equivalent of 21 million road miles every year.

State transportation supervisor Murrell Martin wants to do even better than that. He hopes to curtail school bus idling five minutes a day.

The three Utah school districts, partnering with three more in Nevada and Utah Clean Cities, are using a $100,000 grant to develop anti-idling training for bus drivers, a project that also includes the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Energy Foundation, Erickson said. Curriculum premiered in Washington School District last November, in Salt Lake City last month, and is coming soon to Cache school bus drivers. Emissions data will be gathered, and the lessons are expected to become part of the national school bus driver curriculum next year.

Basically, bus drivers could kill the engine during student loading, but not necessarily at stop signs, railroad crossings or red lights, Erickson said.