Employees or students late for work or school because of delays in New York City’s public transportation system can get notes from the transit agency to give to their bosses. Anyone can request a delay verification letter over the phone, and an official note will arrive in the mail within two weeks.

NYC Transit says it mails more than 34,000 a year.

One catch: The letters verify the exact time and length of the delay, not just the date. So if you’re going to stretch that 10-minute power outage into a half-hour coffee break, you’ll need some other evidence to back up your story.

Phone and “snail mail” not your preferred method of getting a letter? Don’t fret — NYC Transit is working on an online system that can accept Internet requests and automatically e-mail your boss the excuse letters.

After implementation of new transit regs that require drivers to have at least three passengers to qualify for the carpool lane, New Zealanders have been scheming to trick the system.

Traffic cameras monitor passing vehicles, and anyone caught in the carpool lane without the required number of people gets slapped with a $114 fine.

That hasn’t stopped commuters from trying to pull a fast one. Among the list of fake vehicle occupants: blow-up dolls, shop mannequins and dogs dressed up as children.

Local college students are turning the problem into a business opportunity — they’re charging a small fee to get driven past traffic cameras and enforcement officers, and then they run back up the road to repeat the trick for other needy vehicles.

They’ve got to earn their beer money somehow, right?