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The city is struggling to shut off engines.

A crackdown on idling by the City Council in 2009 hasn't been as successful as some officials had hoped.

"There are cars that are idling to pick up corporate executives in black cars,” said City Councilman Daniel Garodnick. “We have idling of school buses. We have idling of taxis. We have idling of people who are sitting around and waiting for a parking space."

Garodnick says he has seen little improvement in the enforcement of the city's idling laws and has proposed legislation to make sure every traffic officer can issue idling tickets with handheld devices.

In the last fiscal year, about 3,000 tickets were issued by the city, eight percent less than the year before. The vast majority of them were in Manhattan.

Just five were in Staten Island, and 340 were in The Bronx.

The figures add up to little more than one ticket per traffic officer per year. On top of that, the city has collected less than half of the revenue from those violations.

Some drivers would like to keep it that way.

"I don’t think it's a fair policy, but you can't fight the city,” said a city motorist. “Whatever it wants to do, it can do it."

In the last several years, city officials say they have stepped up efforts to try to reduce idling in and around schools, but advocates beg to differ.

"It's very bad," said Rebecca Kalin of Asthma Free School Zone.

As part of the idling crackdown, the council passed legislation to limit idling in school zones to one minute, but when summer school started this week, parents were sitting, engine churning, for much longer.

It's the city's asthma rate, especially among children, that's a major concern for these officials. Advocates recognize school bus drivers are more likely to switch off the ignition, but they say the city still has a way to go.

"I look forward to the day as part of our social contract that people will say, 'Hey you forgot to turn off the engine,’” said Kalin. “There are a lot of kids here. There are a lot of seniors here."