Amy Eickhoff says the charter buses that idle outside her 62-floor building spew fumes so noxious that residents avoid sitting on their balconies.
“All those fumes do is go right up the side of the building like a chimney,” said Eickhoff, who’s worked for 14 years as the building manager of 340 On The Park, a downtown Chicago luxury residential tower. “If you were sitting on your balcony trying to enjoy the beautiful view of Maggie Daley Park or Grant Park, you’re smelling that odor for as long as they’re idling.”
The idling buses have been a problem for years, according to Eickhoff, who says she sees at least one to three buses a day idle on the upper and middle levels of Randolph Street.
But, what’s of greater concern, Eickhoff said, are the four or five charter buses that she sees idling every day outside the nearby Blue Cross Blue Shield Tower. Eickhoff said those vehicles wait to transport the building’s employees to and from a train station. That tower is just a short distance from her building, but Eickhoff said it “doesn’t really make a difference” because the wind spreads the fumes.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois did not immediately respond to repeated requests for comment.
Legal guardrails like a 2006 state law are supposed to hold diesel-fueled commercial vehicles and heavy-duty trucks accountable for excessive idling. The rule limits idling time to 10 minutes per hour and imposes fees for those who violate the law. State lawmakers passed the bill to protect the environment and to reduce public exposure to diesel pollution, which has detrimental health impacts and disproportionately affects marginalized communities.
But a WBEZ and Sun-Times investigation shows that a collection of Chicago-area law enforcement agencies, in total, have issued just two citations for violations of the state’s excessive idling law in the nearly 20 years the rule has been active.
To determine how often citations had been issued for violations of the state’s excessive idling law, WBEZ and the Sun-Times sent public record requests to the Chicago Police Department, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, the Illinois State Police, the Elk Grove Village Police Department, the city of Des Plaines and the village of Melrose Park.
The Cook County Sheriff’s Office and CPD were the only departments with responsive records — with each providing a record of one citation.
Brian Urbaszewski, an environmental activist who advocated for passage of the state law, expressed outrage when he heard about the lack of enforcement.
“What are local governments doing to protect their own citizens from excessively polluting trucks that can sit there for hours idling outside someone’s window, outside someone’s business, outside of school?” said Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the Respiratory Health Association.
Former State Rep. Elaine Nekritz, who said she introduced and co-sponsored the bill after Urbaszewski brought the idea to her in 2005, laughed when she heard of the total number of citations WBEZ and the Sun-Times found.
“That’s more in line with what I might have expected. I don’t think they’re writing them at all,” said Nekritz, who served 14 years in the Illinois House.
Nekritz has attempted to report vehicles for breaking the anti-idling law. “When there’s been tour buses sitting around idling, occasionally, I would call the police and nothing ever happened,” she said.
“I appreciate that our law enforcement has other crimes to be concerned about and that they also have limited resources,” Nekritz said. “But it’s a real public health issue, and diesel pollution is so bad for our health.”
Officials with some law enforcement agencies, however, said enforcing the state law would require officers to spend an excessive amount of time.
“To prove excessive idling, an officer would need to time how long a diesel-fueled vehicle has been idling and the [Cook County] Sheriff’s Office does not utilize its resources to pull officers away from more pressing public safety duties to enforce this law,” Sophia Ansari, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office, wrote in an email.
The Cook County Sheriff’s office will investigate complaints of excessive idling but doesn’t see it as a “top priority to stake out an idling truck,” Ansari wrote.
Melaney Arnold, chief public information officer for the Illinois State Police, also highlighted the time needed to catch violators of the state law.
“Per statute, to issue a citation for excessive idling, an officer would need to observe the idling for more than 10 minutes and ensure the vehicle is not idling due to one of the 17 listed exemptions,” Arnold wrote in an email.
Under the state law, idling restrictions don’t apply to emergency or law-enforcement vehicles working in emergency capacities, public transit authority-owned buses or vehicles weighing less than 8,000 pounds. Drivers can also idle if sitting in on-highway traffic or when the outdoor temperature is below freezing or above 80 degrees. Diesel-fueled vehicles are also allowed to idle for up to 30 minutes per hour when waiting to load, unload or weigh cargo or freight.
Elk Grove Village has issued zero idling citations because the police use rapport and partnership with drivers, not tickets and fines, to prevent drivers from idling, said Mayor Craig Johnson. “We just do it in a better way of working with the [business] owners and the truckers, and they’ve always been very cooperative with us.”
Brad Goodman, director of communications at the city of Des Plaines, said that the city and police department have not received complaints about idling vehicles and “remain focused on the public safety of the community at large.”
Andrew Mack, a spokesperson for Melrose Park, said the village is aware of the hazards posed by excessive diesel idling. “We are grateful to have strong relationships with commercial businesses,” Mack wrote in an email. “While we have not received any complaints about excessive idling, any resident can reach out to the village with their concerns.”
‘It goes on every day, every block’
Chicago also has an anti-idling ordinance, which was passed in 2009. The city ordinance and state law restrict diesel-run vehicles from idling under similar circumstances. Chicago’s law, however, reduces legal idling time to three minutes every hour. Like the state law, exemptions are allowed when temperatures dip below freezing or surpass 80 degrees. The city also exempts authorized emergency vehicles, vehicles standing in traffic and vehicles being used as airport equipment are exempt from the law.
The city law has been enforced much more often than the state law, according to records WBEZ and the Sun-Times obtained from various city departments.
In all, more than 800 violations of the city law have been cited since 2010. The city’s department of finance produced records of 631 municipal idling tickets. Nearly 160 were issued by the city’s department of public health, and 64 were issued by the Chicago Police Department.
“That’s encouraging, but when you extrapolate that over 17 years, that’s still not a lot considering how often it goes on every day, every block,” said Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd).
Enforcement of the city law has slid in recent years. Among citations logged by the city’s finance and police departments, 2011 was the peak year. Finance flagged 147 violations that year while the police logged 38 idling citations. But citations by the police have dropped into single digits for several years since 2011. And the finance department issued just 19 citations last year.
In 2019, after receiving constant complaints about downtown idling violations, Reilly co-sponsored an amendment to the municipal idling code. The idea was to “deputize citizens” and reduce the burden on local resources, Reilly said.
His proposal would allow Chicagoans to document idling vehicles and then file an online citizen complaint with the Chicago Department of Public Health. It’s an idea he borrowed from New York City’s anti-idling law.
“I figured this would be a way to free up city resources and enforcement resources to focus on those higher priorities, while citizens could serve as an extension of the city and report these violations in real time,” Reilly said.
Currently, New York City residents can document illegally-idling vehicles and submit a complaint and supportive documentation, like a video, through an online portal. In 2024 alone, laypeople in the Big Apple logged more than 124,000 vehicle idling complaints, according to the American Journal of Public Health.
In cases where the city verifies the violations, New Yorkers can collect 25% of the fines imposed on the violators. One man said he earned a six-figure-sum just by reporting idling vehicles, CBS News reported in 2025.
Reilly’s proposed amendment, which did not include a financial reward, failed to pass in 2023, but he intends to revive the measure.
Eickhoff, one of Reilly’s constituents, emphasized that she doesn’t want to see tourism-related services eliminated in the Windy City.
“We’re asking for responsible operational planning that acknowledges that people live in these areas full time, and they shouldn’t have to absorb any environmental or safety issues as a result of commercial transporters’ convenience,” Eickhoff said.