Help stop idling

From NBC:

Vehicle idling in NYC is not only bad for the environment, it's also not strictly enforced, but now you can help enforce a decades-old law and get paid for it. The I-Team's Andrew Siff reports.

Trying to get a handle on idling

From CBS:

Leaving a car idling is annoying, smells bad, and at the end of the day is hazardous to your health.

The law is already pretty clear.

“You can’t idle for more than three minutes anywhere in the city and if you’re in front of a school you can’t idle for more than one minute,” [Council Member Helen] Rosenthal explained.

She is proposing a new program to train citizens to spot illegal idlers.

“You can see if the car behind me is idling all you would need to do is videotape the license plate, and then load it onto a website at DEP and then DEP would issue a summons,” she said.

The program would require citizens to attend special training. An initial offense would result in a warning, next come a summons and a $350 fine.

The person reporting the violator could earn up to 50 percent of the money once it’s collected by the city.

Bus company needs to clean up its act

From the Queens Chronicle:

Ozone Park resident Eduardo Venegas has been waking up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of idling school buses for the past two years, and he’s sick of it.

Venegas’ house neighbors Logan Bus Co.’s Ozone Park depot, located at 97-14 Atlantic Ave.

He said the school buses depart via 95th Avenue, a quiet residential street, in the early morning hours and idle their engines in front of people’s houses.

The buses often double-park on the narrow road, he added, causing people stuck behind them to honk.

When they’re parked curbside, he claims the drivers are behind the wheel either sleeping or eating before they begin their routes.

Venegas said in addition to waking up residents along 95th Avenue, the drivers are throwing their garbage in front of their houses and on the streets.

Venegas said he has brought his complaints regarding the depot to Community Board 9, but has not reached out to any elected officials about the situation yet.

He brought his complaint to the board at its Dec. 9 meeting.

Corey Muirhead, a representative for the owners of Logan Bus Co., said the company is aware of the situation and is working to correct it.

NYPD inspector warns drivers not to be morons

From DNA Info:

A trio of bungling motorists had their cars boosted in Corona and Elmhurst recently after they left them running to keep warm while they got coffee, delivered pizza and ran errands.

The spike in auto thefts has gained so much traction that the local precinct commander vowed to ticket motorists who keep their cars running under the city's idling regulation.

"If your car's running, and my officers see it and they observe it for three minutes, they are going to write a summons." said Deputy Inspector Ronald Leyson, the commanding officer of the 110th Precinct, which covers the neighborhoods.

"And I do not feel bad for you."

Idling trucks in College Point

From NY1:

At 4 a.m., the blaring beeping of backing up trucks is a rude awakening to residents living near the intersection of 14th Avenue and 130th Street in College Point, Queens.

"The kids are waking up and they say, 'Daddy we cannot sleep.' And I close the windows. It still doesn't help," says resident Turan Ates.

And it's not just the early rumblings of the trucks coming and going from TNP Trucking Company that have residents up in arms.

"The trucks are revving up all hours of the day and night and you just cannot sleep. It's as noisy as listening to this truck that just passed by," says resident Faneeza Alie.

Those living next to the trucking company claim the trucks idle for 30 minutes at a time creating a ton of noise and pollution. Residents says they've made countless complaint to the city, to no avail.

"The DEP, we calling them and they say they coming here, they can't find anything. I mean I can give you proof every time that they are idling," says Ates.

When NY1 called DEP, a spokesman told the station since 2011 there have been 86 complaints about the location. Seventy inspections were conducted there but no violations were issued since, according to the spokesman, no trucks were documented idling more than three minutes.

Still, neighbors say they have the time stamped video to prove the trucks are idling. NY1 called TNP Trucking Company but they had no comment. In the meantime, residents are pleading for the city to assist them with this serious quality of life issue.

Idling MTA vehicles costing us plenty

From AM-NY:

MTA employees waste about $800,000 each year by illegally leaving their work vehicles idling while on the job, according to a report released Wednesday.

Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North workers driving highway vehicles kept them running while they were parked for a combined total of more than 20,000 hours each month, the MTA's Inspector General found.

In one incident, investigators found that two trucks in Forest Hills had idled for a combined 25 hours over one weekend.

New York drivers are prohibited from leaving their cars unnecessarily running for more than five minutes.

DEP's anti-idling crusade

From the Queens Courier:

In honor of Asthma Awareness Month, a two-week long campaign from the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) called “Stop Idling” will be enforced through June 6.

“Stop Idling” will target areas around P.S. 206 in Rego Park; P.S. 220 in Forest Hills; P.S. 98 and 221 in Douglaston; P.S. 811 and 94 in Little Neck; P.S. 41 and 130 in Bayside; P.S. 43 and 104 in Far Rockaway; P.S. 162 in Flushing and P.S. 48 in Jamaica.

According to the DEP, this campaign is an add-on to a 2009 initiative called “Turn It Off,” which reinforced and clarified the legal, financial, environmental and health impacts of vehicle idling.

DEP’s Director of Communications Chris Gilbride said that agency inspectors are going to be monitoring the vehicles in those areas and said that if people are idling for more than a minute near schools or for more than three minutes in other locations, they will be fined $350 for the violation.

Wouldn't it have made more sense to do this in communities of western Queens, like Astoria and LIC, which have long been known as "asthma alley" instead of Douglaston and Little Neck?

NYPD doesn't enforce idling law

From CBS New York:

Engine exhaust from cars, trucks and buses has been linked to cancer, strokes and New York City’s high rate of childhood asthma.

The city has tough laws to prevent drivers who sit with their vehicles running, but, as CBS2′s Don Dahler has seen, some say it’s no more than an idle threat, because it’s rarely enforced.

When school lets out, scenes of drivers, parked and idling as they wait to take kids home, are playing out all over the city.