Epstein questions panel on notice timing and active versus passive regeneration

Eric, you mentioned that you were open to some...

Changes to 561A to improve what processing of these complaints or?

Well, one thing that we believe needs to be enhanced is the timing.

So you want to provide

I had sufficient time for...

Timing for when people get notified of them?

Exactly.

So, I mean, there are a number of small fixes that can improve this, which is, I think, what most of us are after.

Yeah, basically.

So it sounds like we want businesses to know because that's how you change behavior.

If you wait a year, the driver might be gone.

You want them to have quick notice of this.

So they can try to change behavior, but not change the underlying idling law.

Is that what I heard you saying?

That certainly is one of the elements that we think should be addressed.

Right.

So does anybody disagree on this panel that we should notify the businesses sooner that there's a violation?

We can say it orally so we can, it's on the record.

Yeah.

They should be notified earlier.

We all agree they should be notified earlier, which is great.

So it sounds like we agree they should be notified earlier on that there are existing exemptions within the law for when they're doing their work.

Is that what I heard you say?

That is correct.

If they're actively doing something, regeneration obviously is a different conversation.

It sounds like you have really specific knowledge about how regeneration works, and what we heard from the last panel may not be exactly the way you understand it, right?

Correct.

Would you like to expound?

Yeah, could you please?

So essentially the last panel failed to mention the fact that there is a difference between active and passive regeneration.

Active is the actual activity when you would pull over and you would quite literally manually activate a regeneration cycle.

On older trucks, it is true that some trucks, unfortunately, you do have to pull over and you will have to manually hit a button.

When you do that, what it does is it superheats the DPF and essentially burns off all of the chemicals that have been stored inside of this diesel particulate filter.

On most of these newer vehicles, however, and by newer, I mean pretty much anything after 2009, they also have the ability to do a passive regeneration.

What that means is as the vehicle is simply driving around at highway speeds or on the West Side Highway or anything else, as they're driving around, it is literally burning off the excess chemicals.

in the DPF filter.

I do want to note, when they actually go through the activity of doing an active regeneration, that regeneration is almost 30 times dirtier than a passive regeneration.

At no point should anybody be doing an active regeneration in a heavily populated area.

It's as simple as that.

It's incredibly dirty.

It's very dangerous for the health and humans in general, and it should not be done near populated areas.

It's actually so dangerous that if you read the DPF filters for modern trucks, they specifically warn you, A, not to do it in your populated areas, and they also warn you not to do it near anything combustible or flammable, specifically because of the high heats and the chemicals emitted.

I do also just want to note that there is a– this would create almost a situation where there would be an unrebuttable presumption.

All an industry respondent would have to claim is we're regenerating.

And guess what?

How do we go about disproving it?

Most people–

Even with my experience, I can maybe get it to 70%.

The average hearing officer or citizen complaint or anybody else who has had no experience with diesel trucks beyond, you know, filming or seeing them on the road, how are they ever going to determine that a vehicle is regenerated?

So you're saying it would just destroy the whole law itself if we could create an exemption for regeneration because...

All any defense would be is we're regenerating, and it would be impossible to disprove their regeneration.

Exactly.

So that would result in more idling because...

People just always use that defense.

And I would also note that this benefits the biggest respondents the most.

And what I mean by that is large truck and large bus companies.

So a smaller operation almost always, like most of my clients, small businesses, usually if you have less than 10 trucks, it is very common to have gasoline engines, simply because they're cheaper up front, cheaper to maintain over the long term, and the fuel is honestly cheaper.

Gasoline vehicles would not be able to endure themselves with this particular exemption, but guess who would?

Large companies like Baldor, Academy Bus, and things like that that operate thousands of diesel engines.

Got it.

So it sounds like I understand this.

And thank you, Chair, for letting me ask a couple of questions here.

Yeah, you've got a little more.

I think I'm good.

I'll give you 15 seconds back.