Wednesday’s Headlines: Idle Chit-Chat Edition

Plenty of ink has been spilled about the “Narc Yorkers” — the band of brave Gothamites who help the Department of Environmental Protection enforce New York City’s 52-year-old anti-idling law, and earn a cut from every successful violation the city issues in response to their video complaints. But Curbed’s latest piece by journalist-cum-citizen enforcer Rafil Kroll-Zaidi takes the cake.

Kroll-Zaidi, a citizen enforcement insider, takes the reader out on the street with fellow complainants — including Patrick Schnell, a Brooklyn pediatrician and one-time Streetsblog contributor whose passion for catching idling violators is nearly unmatched. Kroll-Zaidi introduces the reader to “Mike the Cop,” a retired detective who waged a one-man campaign against DEP’s attempts to add cumbersome new requirements for idling complaints. We also meet “Wu,” a Dartmouth-educated engineer who has a team of four subcontractor based in India handling the processing and data entry of his many, many complaints.

The Citizens Air Complaint Program has exposed the city’s lack of interest in enforcing the 52-year-old environmental law on its own, and made a major dent in smog-generating emissions across the five boroughs. Citizen complaints don’t always solve the pollution problem in the poorest parts of the city, but that may soon change — Kroll-Zaidi describes volunteering at a non-profit in the South Bronx to “help train young people to start enforcing in their own community.”

But the CACP may be an endangered species, according to Kroll-Zaidi, who appears to have been subjected, along with some of his complainant compadres, to targeted prosecution by DEP as it seeks to weed out complainants that the agency, in Kroll Zaidi’s words, “wants gone.” (DEP denies this.) Kroll-Zaidi has spent thousands of dollars defending himself in court to charges he submitted a false report (the driver in one of his video complaints shut off the engine without him noticing).

A proposal in the City Council, meanwhile, would slash citizen bounties, shorten the time citizens have to file complaints, make it easier for school buses to idle and allow DEP to ban citizen enforcers and exempt companies who install “anti-idling technology on their vehicles” — allowing those companies’ drivers to idle without the threat of a DEP violation. More on that soon.

In other news:

• Gov. Hochul on WNYC continued to insist that the state legislature will pass some alternative form of congestion pricing or find another way to fund the MTA when it reconvenes in January. Earth to the Gridlock Gov: Pols weren’t willing to back down on their 2019 tolling legislation in June, so what’s changed? (Transcript via the Office of Gov. Hochul)
• Midtown pedestrian traffic is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels. (Gothamist)
• Rick Steves, welcome to the war on cars. (The War on Cars)
• Emma Fitzsimmons talked to mayoral aspirants about “The Power Broker” as the seminal tome turns 50. (NY Times)
• TWU endorsed two Republicans in upstate U.S. House swing seats. (Politico New York)
• What’s driving the housing crisis? Local government. (The Atlantic)
• As New York City prepares to open its public schools on Thursday, let’s all be thankful we don’t live in Texas. (Slate)
• Tell Hell Gate about your OMNY proof-of-payment struggles. (Hell Gate via Twitter)
• And finally, illicit vendors are still selling illegal license plate covers on Instagram — and we exposed the practice on Twitter: