The St. Catharines Standard has an editorial about car idling and its environmental impact. It also mentions Niagara Falls. I’m sure this is a common problem in essentially all tourist areas:
I spent two summers working in the Clifton Hill tourist area of Niagara Falls, and the number of people I witnessed idling their vehicles daily was enough to make me sick – figuratively and literally.
These weren’t just tourists. There were more than enough obnoxious visiting families that sat in their running vans while the kids went through the attraction at which I manned the booth, but by far the biggest offenders I saw were local residents.
Because the attraction I worked at was situated on a side street close to Casino Niagara, relatives of casino employees figured out that they wouldn’t have to pay for parking if they just pulled to the end of the street and sat in their running cars until the person they were waiting for was finished work.
They’d sit there for 15 or 20 minutes, but it was not at all uncommon to see them sitting there for an hour or more, engines running. It enraged me to see the amount of emissions going into the air, and I always wished there was something I could do about it beyond shooting the offenders evil looks. (This, I’ll admit, did work . . . once in a while.)