Over the past year, Stagecoach has corresponded with me by email, and the Operations Manager at the Worthing bus garage has been very helpful in encouraging drivers to limit idling to a maximum of two minutes. I appreciate that some drivers now switch off their engines when they reach the stop. However, when I asked whether this could be applied consistently across all drivers, I was informed that 'Worthing only have a limited amount of buses with stop-start technology, and this technology cannot be retro fitted. This technology also only pauses the engine rather than switching it off. To switch the engine off, would mean a longer delay when the bus cycles through it's start programme. This would have a huge impact on reliability if we were to adopt a switch off policy for every bus stop, as well as being detrimental to the health of the vehicles.'
Transport andTravel Research Ltd dispute that the switch off policy damages the vehicle engine it concludes that 'the largest emissions savings are realised by immediate switch off of engines when the bus comes to a halt. There is little evidence to suggest that turning off the engine will either damage modern engines or cause reliability issues to modern engines' and also that 'No evidence has been found to suggest that additional emissions are caused by restarting a modern diesel engine.'
However, the World Health Organisation confirms that air pollution is detrimental to the health of the public:
Almost every organ in the body can be impacted by air pollution. The specific disease outcomes most strongly linked with exposure to air pollution include stroke, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and pneumonia.
Health problems in children and adults can occur because of both short- and long-term exposure to air pollutants. For some pollutants, there are no thresholds below which adverse effects do not occur.
