Yesterday was another day in which Vermont Newsguy was busy doing in-depth reporting on substantive matters that will be dealt with at length over the next few days. By the time he finished (well, actually, he hasn’t yet finished) it was too late to devote much time to today’s post.

Still, we want to give you your money’s worth.

Uhhh, no. Actually, we want to do quite a bit better than that, because giving most of you your money’s worth would mean giving you very poor quality indeed, most of you having paid nothing. [THAT WAS A SUBTLE HINT. NOTE THE ‘DONATE' OPTION TO THE RIGHT].

How about if we make this worth your time? (Time is money, some say. But they’re wrong; time is much more interesting).

Toward that end, here is one thought and one explanatory report.

The thought has to do with this flap over heavy trucks on the Interstate highways in Vermont, and the Legislature’s perhaps too-clever-by-half stratagem for circumventing it by dropping the fine for being over-weight to a mere dollar.

The problem is simple. The weight limit on the Interstates is 80,000 pounds. Technically, that’s the weight limit on state highways, too, but with a big loophole. According to John Zicconi of the Agency of Transportation (via email), trucks can weigh as much as 90,000 pounds if they get a permit, and “there is a mechanism to get annual permits.”

In effect, then, the weight limit on state roads in 90,000 pounds, unless the truck is “hauling unprocessed forest or quarry products as well as milk or water.” Then it can be as heavy as 99,000 pounds.

The result is that the heaviest trucks stay off the Interstates and wander through little towns, picturesque villages, and bucolic pasture-land, diminishing the serenity of all three. Clearly it would make sense to change a regulation to get those babies back on 89 or 91.

Now here’s the thought: why has no one – no one! – suggested, or even wondered alloud, whether, rather than raising the limits on the Interstate, it might be a good idea to lower the limits on the state highways?

Do not misunderstand. This is not a proposal. Generally speaking, this site eschews proposing; that’s for the politicians and the activists. Maybe it’s a very bad idea. Certainly the truckers, loggers, and farmers might find it so; the efficiency of their operations would be reduced, thereby increasing per-unit costs.

But probably not by much. After all, trucks do zoom up and down the Interstates all day and all night, presumably making a profit for somebody. But the point here is not to make the argument. It is to wonder why nobody else is making the argument, which obviously would solve the problem.

A cynic might wonder whether one reason no one voices this alternative reflects the political power in Montpelier of the trucking business, and especially of the logging and dairy industries. Cynicism, too, is banned from this precinct.

The explanatory report concerns the 2009 installment of the Bill Doyle Poll, taken on Town Meeting day by the Washington County Republican senator, who has been doing this for more than 40 years.

It’s an interesting poll, but some explanation is in order for readers who might recall the excoriation on this site (see This is Not a Poll, January 28)  of other surveys which are not based on random samples of the electorate. Randomness is diminished when the respondents have to take any step more active than picking up the phone and answering a few questions. Respondents to Doyle’s poll have to pick up a copy at their town meeting, fill it out, and in some cases mail it in later.

But there are reasons to take this survey seriously, reasons that transcend the fact that Sen. Doyle is a delightful fellow. First of all, his sample is HUGE. More than 12,000 people. With all those people, the exact rules of randomness can be relaxed a bit.

Besides, look at the results. They’re consistent with other surveys and with common sense. Large majorities of Vermonters think drivers shouldn’t talk on their cell phones while at the wheel and the state needs better high-speed Internet service. A small majority favors raising the gasoline tax to pay for highway improvement. By small margins, people are satisfied with the public schools but dissatisfied with their health insurance.

All that sounds about right.

The “surprises” were Gov. Jim Douglas’s slightly negative approval rating (with 39 percent saying he’s doing a good job, 44 percent saying he isn’t, and the other 17 percent not sure) and the 55-to-38 percent approval of same-sex marriage.

Neither should have been a surprise. Douglas won a big victory less than five months ago. But since then, he’s made several controversial proposals about cutting government programs and slashing school spending. All that is likely to cut into his approval ratings.

As to the gay marriage result, not only is it consistent with the only other poll done in the state recently, it’s even consistent with the nationwide poll – the one by the Pew Research Center, trumpeted by the anti-gay marriage group “Take It to the People” – showing a national majority against same sex marriage.

But look at what the pollsters call the “internals” of that survey. They show that gay marriage is supported by huge margins by liberal Democrats and by voters unaffiliated with any church. Mainline Protestants are just about evenly split, and Catholics opposed by a modest 42-to-48 percent margin.

Stack that up against Vermont demographics and it’s not hard to believe that a small majority of Vermonters favor gay marriage, especially since Pew took its survey two years ago.

Like some other polls, Doyle’s survey might tilt a bit to the left of the Vermont political median, thanks to the “grouchy Tory effect” (conservatives are less likely to participate). But it deserves to be part of the discussion.

H-97 will not become law this year, and even its chief cheer-leader understands why.

The House Natural Resources Committee “had its hands full with Vermont Yankee decommissioning and renewable energy matters,” said Wayne Michaud, the director of Idle-Free VT.

Beyond that, Michaud, acknowledged, the bill wasn’t really ready to become law. It would need some changes, he said, and as written, “enforcement would be very difficult.”

The bill would ban big trucks from idling on the public roads for more than five minutes. Violators could pay a $500 fine.

Wayne Michaud

It’s not exactly a radical proposal. Lots of states, including the other five in New England, have similar laws. A Burlington ordinance imposes a $40 fine on anyone leaving any vehicle idling for more than five minutes, but only between April 1 and November 1, so it doesn’t keep anyone from warming up the car on a cold winter day. Other cities around the country and even more in Canada have imposed various kinds of anti-idling laws.

Vermont will not. At least not yet.

So why bother to discuss it?

Because both the proposal and its troubles illustrate some interesting realities about public life these days: the complications involved in getting  an issue onto the public radar screen; the benefit-but also the disadvantage – of requiring strict scientific evidence in public debate; the inevitability of a certain amount of subjectivity in some disputes.

It’s easy to see why some people want to reduce vehicle idling. It dirties the air, endangering health and exacerbating global warming. It wastes gasoline and therefore money. Idling is one of those offenses in which the villain is the victim. Leaving your car motor idling while you run into the convenience store for coffee is like burning money.

But just because people think idling is a bad idea doesn’t mean they’re going to do much about it. So far, at least, the anti-idling campaign has not had much impact. The Legislature did outlaw school bus idling on school property two years ago. But there the anti-idlers had key allies – parents and teachers, already organized and  always a political force.

On their own, the anti-idlers have been less successful. One reason is that they have no full time operative. Michaud,  61, who lives near Bristol, earns his living as an illustrator and graphic artist. Idle-Free VT is strictly a part-time operation for him.

And he’s not a pro. He’s energetic and dedicated, but inexperienced at playing the political game – forging alliances, getting into the newspapers and on the air, making some trouble. According to its web site, Idle-Free Vermont wanted to get an anti-idling resolution on town meeting ballots earlier this month. It didn’t work.

The organization’s major ally is the Vermont branch of the American Lung Association, whose director of Health Promotion and Public Policy,  Rebecca Ryan, testified on behalf of the bill before the House Natural Resources Committee.

Her testimony supplied the scientific evidence about the dangers of idling. Motor vehicle exhaust is unhealthy, especially for the elderly, people with respiratory diseases, and children , more than 12,000 of whom in Vermont have asthma. Truck idling, the Environmental Protection Agency has estimated, consumes more than 1 billion gallons of diesel fuel, and spews 11 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

What was not in her testimony, because it is not available, was any estimate as to how much idling goes on in Vermont, how many gallons of gas it wastes, how much it pollutes the air here. It is not available because it is all but impossible to gauge. No one is going to assign monitors to stand in every parking lot in the state counting and timing the idling cars.

That’s why the bill itself could assert only that if  ”every driver of a motor vehicle in Vermont avoided idling a motor vehicle for just five minutes a day‚ the state would save millions of gallons of fuel and would prevent thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere and contributing to climate change.”

How many millions of gallons or thousands of tons? Nobody knows. The EPA has determined that truck exhaust is “a likely human carcinogen.”
But the “likely” there indicates some degree of uncertainty.

Still,  this could be one case where the demand for conclusive scientific evidence goes too far. Clearly spewing all that stuff into the air does some harm. All those other states didn’t pass anti-idling laws because they like to pass laws. And what’s the purpose of idling? It’s not a Constitutional right. It is, often, a socially and environmentally damaging self-indulgence, Except on the coldest of winter days, most vehicles don’t need more than 30 seconds or so of idling before moving. Even on those sub-zero days, a minute or two of warm-up should suffice, according to the EPA and Natural Resources Canada.

Unless, of course, the window is fogged up. Or unless the driver doesn’t want to sit in a cold car.

This, as Michaud acknowledged, is where the subjectivity comes in. Some people just don’t like being cold, even for the few minutes it takes for a car to warm up. With or without remote starters, some folks start up their cars on cold winter days and then run back into the house for another cup of coffee until the car gets warmer.

It’s tempting for those of us (yes, I’m among them) who’d rather dress warmly and just start driving to consider these cold-averse people sort of wimpy. But different folks have different cold-tolerance strokes.

Less forgivable are the drivers who leave the car running while they pop into the convenience store. The car isn’t going to get that cold in the minute or so the drivers are inside.

Michaud said that like the “click it or ticket” seat belt campaign, the anti-idling effort should combine education with law enforcement, perhaps with more emphasis on the former. Some places are already cooperating, he said, such as the Vermont State  Employees Credit Union, which put up an anti-idling sign at one its drive-up ATMs (pictured above).

Law enforcement, even for big trucks, will have to wait. Until the anti-idling movement gets a professional who knows how to mobilize public opinion. Or until the price of gasoline goes back up to four dollars and higher. Or maybe just until the trucking industry realizes (as some trucking firms apparently do) that the more states that pass laws prohibiting their drivers from excessive idling, the more money the companies will save on fuel.