But our Council's draconian idling ban is not a gradual evolution to greener and better business practices. Unlike California's and every other idling restriction I could find it is immediate and sudden with no exceptions. If enacted it will change our city permanently, and not for the better. Lets look at a few of the consequences:
New construction: Those new condos our Council Member Gary Schiff is so fond of are built on concrete foundations and often the entire building structures are built of concrete. Much of that concrete comes from plants here on the other side of the tracks which developers have plopped housing down right next too. Those plants and the "ready mix" trucks that deliver the concrete run 24 hours a day during the construction season. Concrete rapidly hardens to the consistency of rock inside the ready mix truck's barrel if you shut it off, so ready mix trucks must keep their engines running while loading at the plant and waiting to unload at the jobsite. Those plants, the hundreds of good paying union jobs they provide, and new development will leave the city if the draconian idling ban is passed.
Retailing and restaurants: We have a large dairy here in the Northside and several other food producers in the city. With no way to keep food cool while loading and waiting they will probably build a new plant closer to the farms, leaving our city for good and taking hundreds of good paying union jobs with them. With night deliveries and thusly night shelf stocking essentially banned, Cub and Rainbow will make a gradual retreat from Minneapolis and the Lunds slated for Eastgate will probably be aborted. Smaller convenience stores and restaurants that do not have loading docks are commonly served by trucks with liftgates, small elevators on the rear or side of the truck to lift products from the truck down to ground level. Those liftgates are powered by the trucks engine requiring idling during deliveries. With early morning deliveries banned by the proposed idling ordinance, many convenience stores will close and many of our fine eateries will leave the city rather than be forced to serve day old milk, eggs, etc. for breakfast. Of course, the hood stores don't give a damn about the law and will probably expand into the abandoned Cubs and Rainbows...
Infrastructure: When powerlines are brought down across whole neighborhoods by late afternoon storms NSP bucket trucks quickly arrive. Powered by idling truck engines the utility workers swing those buckets into action while lighting the pitch darkness, quickly shutting off arcing wires and then restoring power. But if the anti idling ordinance passes, downed power lines will have to be left to arc away all night, tying up police to secure the area of the sparking line while criminals plunder the darkened neighborhoods. And gas leaks? Unable to keep gas company trucks and their equipment running at night, whole neighborhoods and even goodly chucks of the city may have to be evacuated as gas company crews will be unable to shut off broken gas lines until the idling ban ends at 6 am!
Public safety: It is telling that Council Member Schiff's idling ban provides no exemption for fire trucks... Thusly the fire trucks that power the ladders, the jaws of life, and the water spouting from the fire hoses themselves will be shut off as homes burn at 10 pm and the firestorms allowed to spread unimpeded for 8 long hours until 6 am. Fire insurance will quickly become unavailable at any price in Minneapolis as new condo projects are abandoned in mid construction to blight the cityscape for years.
Council Member Schiff's vision of a green Minneapolis looks more like the gray bleakness of abandoned dairies, stores, homes...
from Hawthorne, where your milk and a lot of other good stuff comes from.
Dyna Sluyter
I've touched on this topic before. I think it is an often overlooked aspect of evolutionary urban life. Depending upon one's perspective, the conflict and its resolution serve as grounds for a tribute to or a diatribe against the "natural" forces of democracy. Flour mills are dusty, and idling trucks can be a nuisance. Eventually democratic forces will expell the nuisances from our back yards. Flour mills and idling trucks per se do not vote, their neighbors do.
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