Argonne National Laboratory's paper, "Estimation of Fuel Use by Idling Commercial Trucks" is featured in a story on the U.S. Department of Energy's Clean Cities web site discussing both the impacts of idling light-duty vehicles (LDVs) and alternatives to such idling. Although much attention in recent years has focused on the impacts of heavy-duty vehicle idling, light-duty commercial vehicles such as delivery vans and pickup trucks often idle for a considerable part of the workday.
The Argonne paper, presented at the 2006 Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, provided the first detailed estimates of the extent of workday idling for all classes of commercial vehicles, as well as a description of a phenomenon known as "creep idling" while waiting to advance in traffic lines, typically at warehouses or delivery depots. The Clean Cities article discusses some of the climate control technologies that can help to reduce stationary idling time for LDVs; the creep idling problem could be addressed by technologies (such as hybridization) that reduce reliance on gasoline or diesel engines at low engine idling speeds.