The Adams administration is poised to approve the largest carve-out ever to the city’s 53-year-old idling ban in what could be the first of several exemption requests from the private bus industry.

Academy Bus Lines, a New Jersey-based charter bus company, claimed in its variance request to the Department of Environmental Protection that no technological alternative exists for it to heat, cool and power-up its buses without violating the city’s 1972 prohibition against idling for more than three minutes. DEP will hold a legally mandated public hearing on the company’s request next week.

“Academy has — in fairness to them — a pretty extensive variance request. It’s got a lot of documentation and argument behind it, and we are very much hoping … there are experts or advocates out there who have a different perspective on the challenges that they face,” DEP Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala told Streetsblog this week. “At the moment, the case they make appears strong.”

Academy has racked up over $566,000 in idling violations, through a city program that allows citizens to submit complaints and receive a portion of any resulting violation. In its request, the company called its growing idling tab “a major, unsustainable hardship” and threatened to stop operating in New York City entirely if it is not given an exemption from the anti-pollution law for its 723 vehicles.

The city expects more bus companies to seek exemptions going forward. Yet while other industries granted DEP variances have made specific commitments to the city to electrify their fleets within specific time periods, Academy and bus industry groups insist that doing so is not “feasible” for long-distance “motorcoach” buses.

According to Academy, accessory power units can only be installed in luggage bays or on top of the bus itself. The former “limits the bus’s usability,” while the latter “prevents the use of motorcoaches in tunnels,” the company said.

“Academy researched and has not been able to find any commercially available, viable APU products capable of providing power for the critical onboard systems,” the company wrote in its variance request. “DEP should issue this waiver for the benefit of the riding public who are provided with this service because it is infeasible to comply with the anti-idling law while buses are in service.”

Anti-idling advocates and citizen enforcers believe the existence or non-existence of tech to replace emission-spewing engines is irrelevant to whether Academy and other bus companies should follow the law. They point to a recent settlement between a similar bus company and Washington, D.C. earlier this month.

That company, DC Trails, which also operates the inter-city bus service BestBus, agreed to “program its engines to shut off after three minutes of idling” and pay the city $85,000, according to an Oct. 9 press release from the D.C. Attorney General.

Activists are demanding that New York City forge a similar agreement.

“Diesel exhaust contributes to the early deaths of 3,200 New Yorkers each year, yet a New Jersey bus company is trying to weasel a deadly corporate giveaway from the lame-duck Adams Administration to let it pollute more,” the New York Clean Air Collective said in a statement. “If granted, this variance would effectively gut the city’s strong, sensible law against idling.”

Idling engines and engine exhaust pollute our air, make DC noisier, and cause serious diseases like lung cancer.

In DC, the harmful effects of idling are magnified because charter buses move millions of visitors here each year.

We won’t let companies risk DC residents’ health.

— AG Brian Schwalb (@DCAttorneyGen) October 9, 2025

The city’s 1970s era anti-idling law was hardly enforced before the City Council created the Citizens Air Complaint Program in the late 2010s. Idling violations have surged since — to an expected nearly 200,000 by the end of this year. While some companies have sought exemptions, top violators such as FedEx and Amazon seemingly treat the fines as a cost of doing business.

DEP, meanwhile, has leveraged violations to win electrification commitments in exchange for exemptions for several armored vehicles companies, while supporting efforts to weaken the program: An agency-backed bill from City Council Environment Chair James Gennaro (D-Queens) would reduce the citizen bounty and cut fines for violators who pledge to install “anti-idling technology” on their vehicles, among other restrictive changes.

Citizen enforcement is no walk in the park — school buses are exempt, for example, while riders are boarding or disembarking from the vehicle. Vehicles that carry 15 or more passengers may idle if the outside temperature is below 40 degrees.

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Rather than turning off their engines, however, the bus companies have declared war on the idling law in general and citizen enforcement program in particular — bringing their case directly to Mayor Adams and City Hall. In an April 21 letter addressed to Adams, the American Bus Association panned “aggressive and unruly” citizen enforcement and the fact that the idling law does not apply to government-owned vehicles and buses. In June, New York-based bus groups sent a letter to Aggarwala asking to be allowed to idle for up to 15 minutes. (Reps for the mayor’s office deferred comment to Aggarwala and DEP.)

“We respectfully request you or your representatives explore a reasonable path forward that ends the citizen bounty program,” ABA President and CEO Fred Ferguson wrote to Mayor Adams.

In its variance application, Academy pointed to reliability questions surrounding electric buses — including at New York’s MTA, which has struggled to keep its small fleet of electric buses on the road due battery tech issues including overheating and under-charging. Unlike Academy, however, the MTA has pledged to electrify its fleet (though not until 2040).

“I think one thing that we have to take seriously is the fact that we’re not talking about private automobiles. We’re not talking we’re talking about transit vehicles,” Aggarwala said. “From an air-quality perspective, from a congestion perspective, we want to encourage people to use this mode of transportation, and I do think we may need to balance that against the air-quality issues. Now, does that mean unlimited [idling]? I’m not sure that that is appropriate.”

Aggarwala expects more variance requests from the bus industry.

“I think this could well open up, you know, not just this one bus company, but basically any other bus transit company that uses the same kind of equipment would probably follow suit,” he said.

Hayden Brockett, a New York Clean Air Collective member who has caught several idling Academy charter buses contracted to Columbia University, said the company appears to have hired people to stand watch and tell drivers to shut off their engines if citizen enforcer come by and start filming.

“They hire somebody to tell them to shut off the engine when they see one of us. It completely undermines the argument that they need to idle,” Brockett said. “We can’t wait for them to comply with the law, which they can do overnight.”

Members of the public can comment on Academy’s variance request via online form or at the virtual public hearing at 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 29.

Council Member Shaun Abreu (D-Manhattan), whose district includes areas where Academy’s Columbia-contracted buses have been caught polluting, said he’ll testify against the bus company.

“The illegal and persistent idling that is happening in our neighborhood is completely unacceptable. The fact that it’s coming from a major contractor that is looking to avoid responsibility for repeatedly offending near a daycare center is even worse,” Abreu said in a statement to Streetsblog.

“I hope that the Department of Environmental Protection will enforce the law and not grant a variance request. Giving them a free pass opens the door to further pollution without consequence. Upper Manhattan is long overdue for accountability and clean air.”