What about 5 to 7 cars 4 days a week? I can't math

Per fine, not report. So there's the "did they actually get fined" portion of it. But still, That's a nice bonus if only one report goes through a week, for maybe an extra hour of time spent if you regularly bike commute, walk, etc.

A yank tank / wank tank is any SUV or pickup that is larger than the tanks we used to beat the Nazis (not joking)

English (UK)

That’s why this system is great though. Citizens report violations directly to the city and bypass the cops who never enforce these kinds of rules or violate them themselves. The city could fine the cops. Whether or not that happens is a different issue

They should, they'd triple their income.

To add to this as a Diesel mechanic,

Diesel engines are designed to operate continuously for the most part, the most wear and tear on the engines happen during start up and shut down.

They take large batteries and more effort to start so repeatedly doing that over and over in short intervals will lead to flat batteries and burnt out starter motors

Diesel engines run most efficiently I.e less pollution and better fuel economy when warm, cold engines cause more soot etc.

The engines wear poorly and develope carbon deposits from stop start operations too increasing fuel consumption and NOX emissions.

Lastly but certainly not the end of it is most Diesel trucks have what's known as a turbo timer, this keeps the engine running 2 minutes or more depending on settings after the ignition is turned off.

This allows oil flow around the turbo and prevents unnecessary heat damage to components.

Certainly if i applied some thought to this i could come up with more reasons and others could argue against but that's what I've got to say on the matter

an army of mercenary profit driven people out there looking to make a buck off the guy

that's one interpretation. another could be "a group of people who care enough about the air quality of their neighborhood that they finally stand up for themselves".

Yeah all of those things do suck, we empathize with you. Just go ahead and turn off your engine though and avoid the fine.

The first 3 paragraphs are absolute garbage.

Your last one I get, but still, it's a job, delivering in a large metropolitan area sucks. Turning your engine off ain't that hard. Yes I've worked as a driver.

There's a lot of externalizing of costs going on. The trucks are idling because the drivers are operating at the slimmest possible margin under the assumption that idling doesn't cost anything.

What we actually would want to get to is that idling does have a cost (environmental, health, pleasantness of the area, etc). And that cost ought to be passed up the chain so that the various goods being shipped are more expensive.

But without a more centrally-managed economy, the implementation is to put all the pressure on the truck drivers and leave them responsible for passing that pressure to the next step up the chain. It doesn't work out very well in practice because the drivers need to make a bunch of capital expenses for something like adding a cab AC and adding a batter-powered lift, but they've been operating at low margins so they're not in a position to do it.