How to Make Six Figures By Reporting Idling Trucks

A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines. [Curbed]( Tuesday, September 3 street fights [How NYC’s Idling Complaint Law Can Earn You Six Figures]( New York created a program that let citizens earn money by reporting polluters. Then it went to war with them. Illustration: Ben Kirchner Sometimes Wu remembers how his family, Chinese immigrants who lived through the Cultural Revolution, balked when he told them he was going to start ratting out lawbreakers in New York City. But for a chance at making nearly $90 for a minute of his time, he found he could push their skepticism to the bottom of his consciousness. The source of the money was the city itself, thanks to the [Citizens Air Complaint Program](, which allows members of the public to claim a reward by sending in videos of buses and trucks that idle illegally. The statutory limit for leaving your engine running is three minutes. But on a block with a school, that drops to 60 seconds, which is what has now drawn Wu several times to this particular block in Manhattan that’s being poisoned by the pooling diesel exhaust of nearly a dozen yellow school buses. Wearing a mask to filter out the acrid tang of sulfates and carbon soot, Wu uses his phone’s camera to capture the license plates and company markings on the buses, then a nearby address, then the school’s façade. I’ve known him to hide his phone in an empty cardboard box with a cutout, or in a shower caddy as if he were innocently ambling toward a t’ai chi session, or to thrust it discreetly through some bushes, but today he braces it in front of himself awkwardly in a pantomime of texting, so the school staff notice and call the cops on him. [Continue reading »]( Want more on city life, real estate, and design? [Subscribe now]( to save over 40% on unlimited access to Curbed and everything New York. [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( The Latest [This Week’s Worth-It New York City Apartment Listings We scoped out some neighborhoods with the highest elevation.]( By Nora DeLigter [What Even Is a Buyer’s Market These Days? And are we in one yet?]( By Kim Velsey [The Kushner-Klosses Buy a Precarious Malibu Landmark It’s a great house, for however long it stands.]( By Adriane Quinlan [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Read More From Curbed]( [Sign up to get The Listings Edit](, a weekly digest of the most worth-it apartments in New York. [GET THE NEWSLETTER]( [logo]( [facebook logo]( [instagram logo]( [twitter logo]( [unsubscribe]( | [privacy notice]( | [update preferences]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Was this email forwarded to you? [Sign up now]( to get this newsletter in your inbox. [View this email in your browser.]( You received this email because you have a subscription to New York. Reach the right online audience with us For advertising information on email newsletters, please contact AdOps@nymag.com Vox Media, LLC 1701 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington, DC 20036 Copyright © 2024, All rights reserved