By Forum Staff
State Attorney General Tish James on Monday announced settlements with four school bus companies to stop illegal excessive idling at their bus yards in communities of color and low-income communities in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and on Staten Island. The companies—Consolidated Bus, Inc., Logan Bus Company, Pioneer Transportation Co., and Total Transportation Corp.—will each be required to invest up to $2 million to purchase new electric buses or electrify some of their current fleet.
The Office of the Attorney General alleges that these four companies violated New York laws by allowing school buses to idle for extended periods of time at their bus yards. Emissions from buses and cars are the largest contributor to air pollution in New York, and excessive idling endangers the health of surrounding communities. By contrast, the new electric buses will not emit any air pollutants. The companies will also install automatic idling shut-off timers on their remaining traditional buses and implement anti-idling training for drivers.
Data provided by the fleet management system that the New York City Department of Education has installed on all New York City school buses indicated that the companies had all repeatedly exceeded idling limits. The data revealed thousands of instances of excessive idling by Consolidated, Logan, Pioneer, and Total at their bus yards. Most of these bus yards, which are in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and on Staten Island, are located in areas identified by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as potential “environmental justice areas,” or neighborhoods that are disproportionately impacted by environmental harms such as air pollution. The companies’ bus yards are sometimes clustered together in these neighborhoods, which exacerbates their negative impacts on the surrounding community.
New York law prohibits idling for over five minutes, while New York City law prohibits idling for more than three minutes, or one minute when the vehicle is near a school building. The OAG investigation focused on instances of idling for periods of more than two hours in the early morning to rule out instances where extended idling might be allowed under the law due to other circumstances, such as traffic or picking up and dropping off students.
Emissions from cars, trucks, and buses are one of the leading sources of air pollution in New York state. Idling is a significant source of these emissions, with an estimated 130,000 tons of carbon dioxide emitted in New York City alone each year. Emissions from diesel-powered vehicles like buses are particularly harmful to the communities surrounding bus yards because they emit fine particulate matter that has been linked to numerous problems, including asthma, cancer, and heart disease. The health impacts of air pollution are disproportionately felt in low-income communities and communities of color in New York City, which are often home to bus yards and other high-emission facilities like power plants located in close proximity to residential neighborhoods. Children in Central Brooklyn, the South Bronx, and Upper Manhattan—which are predominantly low-income communities and communities of color—are three times more likely than children in other areas of the city to be diagnosed with asthma.
