City considering ramping up 14-year-old anti-idling bylaw. Motorists have mostly ignored Toronto's "toothless" efforts to discourage unnecessary idling. And no wonder, with an average of only 76 tickets a year being written for idling longer than three minutes.

To get them to pay attention to what they're doing to the air, the board of health is thinking of reducing the legal idle time to just 60 seconds, eliminating a loophole that says you can idle if it's very cold or very hot, and turning over enforcement to the city's parking cops, who routinely write 2.9 million tickets a year.

Back in 1996, Toronto led the way in fighting smog-causing emissions by passing Canada's first idling control bylaw, which set the limit at 3 minutes and offered a long list of exemptions from the $125 fine.

Click here to continue reading.