It's A Turn-Off

We the undersigned residents of New York City are asking the Mayor’s office to enforce the anti-idling law Administrative Code Section 24-163 in all five boroughs.

This law was recently amended to restrict vehicles from idling no more than 1 minute in proximity to schools and no longer than 3 minutes anywhere else in the city. We recommend a widespread public awareness campaign—not just a couple of billboards which is what the city has put forth thus far—followed by a real crackdown, i.e. issuing fines for violations. In February 2009, the Associated Press published an article claiming “New York City cracks down on idling cars”. To date, there has been no evidence of this alleged crackdown.

In New York City, idling engines create close to 24 tons of sooty particles, 940 tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx), 2,200 tons volatile organic
compounds (VOC), over 6,400 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), and about 130,000 tons of the green-house gas (GHG) carbon dioxide (CO2). [We]
estimate[s] that idling vehicles in New York City emit 130,000 tons of CO2 annually. If each of these vehicles stopped idling, that would be equivalent to taking 18,000 cars off the road annually. (These statistics are taken from the 2009 Environmental Defense Fund report “Idling Gets You Nowhere”.)

If Mayor Bloomberg wants New York to be known as a “green” city, let’s start here by ending the rampant violation of this very simple law which is already on the books and which goes un-enforced daily on our city streets, creating excess fuel emissions that compromise our health and contribute to the destabilization of our natural environment.