Since instituting a citizen-driven anti-idling enforcement policy in New York City back in 2018, the city has made about $50 million in revenue from the resulting fines. Some 83,000 fines were issued in 2023 alone, up from 48,000 the year before. Many of these fines are the direct result of citizen complaints, timestamped videos showing the offense and location laboriously uploaded to the Department of Environmental Protection’s clunky submission system. A small handful of people are making a living, though perhaps not a killing, taking videos of idlers full time. But now the complainants are facing a battle with the city that pays them.
A recent piece in New York Magazine’s Curbed blog showcases not only the lengths to which idling complainants will go to catch an offender, but the myriad ways in which private companies and the Governor’s office are thwarting them. It seems that thousands of New Yorkers would rather continue contributing to the needless poisoning of the air they themselves breathe, while paying thousands of dollars of fines for the privilege, instead of switching off their vehicles while stationary. This particularly seems to be a problem with school buses, large delivery box trucks, armored vehicles, and food trucks.
There is a symmetry that produces this peculiar form of self-interested activism: Those of us who wound up doing this because we are activist tattlers became enamored of the money our zeal incidentally produces, and those of us who joined solely for the money became legitimately passionate about the environmental stakes.
There is a deep and weird world of exhaust snitching going on in New York right now, which grew from city council rulings and efforts to clean up the city’s air. The Adams administration introduced this month a new so-called anti-anti-idling bill, which would gut the program. Based on the increased number of fines paid to the DEP each year since the program began, it would seem that the rules need to be more strict, not less so. I know if it were me, I would much rather turn off my vehicle while stopped for more than three minutes instead of risk paying a $350-2,000 fine. Maybe I’m just built different from the average New Yorker.
There is a whole lot more to this story, and it’s well worth reading. Go check it out on New York Magazine’s site now.