it's illegal to idle your car in NYC? | The Compost Bin | Forums

Didn't know that, time to make some money! 

If you see something, they’ll pay something.

Two city lawmakers want to recruit everyday New Yorkers to help battle the scourge of idling vehicles by paying them for video footage that results in fines.

City Council members Helen Rosenthal (D-Manhattan) and Donovan Richards (D-Queens) will introduce a bill Wednesday that would give citizens up to 50 percent of the summons revenue if they catch someone breaking the idling law, take a video and submit it to the Department of Environmental Protection.

The exact cut for videographers would be determined by the DEP, they said. But citizen enforcers could makes hundreds — even thousands — of dollars.

The bill would keep first-time idling violations punishable by just a warning, but would boost fines for second offenses to between $350 and $1,500. Any subsequent violations within a two-year period would yield even heftier fines of between $440 and $2,000.

Citizens seeking to cash in on their videos would first have to undergo training by the DEP, which would be offered five days per year under current plans.

“On my block alone, I could produce 20 tickets a day, easily,” said banker George Pakenham, an anti-idling advocate who made a documentary on the issue called “Idle Threat” in 2012.

He says that he has documented his own encounters with roughly 2,900 idlers over a five-year period, and that he was successful in getting 80 percent of them to turn off their engines by pointing out the environmental impact and the city laws.

“This is going to be the thing that makes the entire difference,” Pakenham said of the bill. “This will be just the tonic to have people engaged and earn a great deal of money along the way.”

According to council documents, idling limits of three minutes have been in place in the city since 1971. The restrictions were recently shortened to just one minute for vehicles standing in front of schools.

http://nypost.com/20.....-vehicles/