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NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

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Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#131

Post by alcover »

rsstack wrote: post #110
mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

NYC has 30,000 streets and only a handful of days of snow in the year. By having garbage trucks that can deal with a few inches of snow, you avoid the need of buying dozens of dedicated vehicles that will rot 360 days a year.

  > only a handful of days of snow in the year
I know modern economy has gone full-JIT but I naively wish we could just stop in this case and.. wait.

Then this question of truck fleet would be moot.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#132

Post by kspacewalk2 »

mabbo wrote: post #127
rsstack wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NYC has 30,000 streets and only a handful of days of snow in the year. By having garbage trucks that can deal with a few inches of snow, you avoid the need of buying dozens of dedicated vehicles that will rot 360 days a year.

You're not wrong. I agree with you. I just see that as a better option than continuing to burn fuel in trucks that don't need it 360 days per year.

Better for whom or what? Surely not for the New York City budget, or the folks who pay for it.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#133

Post by petermcneeley »

mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

Why have garbage trucks at all when you can have a series of tubes to transport garbage?

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#134

Post by ars »

echlebek wrote: post #116
novok wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can sacrifice street parking spots systematically throughout the city for garbage dumpsters, as many others have suggested, but it's politically untenable to do so because americans love their cars, even in NYC. Another politically untenable solution is to do what Taiwan does and force people to put out their garbage in very tight time windows and otherwise store it privately in their houses and businesses, but…

The reality is that most other major cities have garbage collection figured out in a better way. For instance in my city, garbage is kept in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building, and on a scheduled day, it's picked up either right in the building or in the alley after the caretaker moves the dumpsters there. The fact that this is considered politically untenable in New York is frankly insane, glad I don…

> in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building

NY has a lot of row houses, there's no room for a dedicated garbage area. And the alleys are not wide enough for a garbage truck.

Before criticizing a place, at least understand it first.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#135

Post by dendrite9 »

ecshafer wrote: post #70

Battery operated garbage trucks don't sound like a great idea, at least for all day use. With the push for EV I am not sure why we aren't seeing a push for the installation of streetcar power lines, these already exist and are used for busses. If we have a garbage truck that has the battery capacity for say 30 minutes, then it could be on the power line for the majority of the time. This would limit battery waste as…

I remember looking into this a little bit and the conclusion seemed to be that for most garbage truck uses the range was not the limiting factor. Pickup time was more important, and batteries are attractive given that most garbage pickup is stop-pickup-start-drive a short distance then stop again. In Seattle I believe I saw the longest route was less than 70 miles but I can't find a source. There was a purchase of battery garbage trucks with a range of 55 miles a few years ago. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/seattle-makes-history-w...

Caternary lines have always seemed like a good solution but there must be a good reason they aren't more popular.

Also, garbage collection in NYC seems to be a weird mishmash of rules and providers. Again there must be a historical reason but from the outside it has never made sense to me. https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly...

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#136

Post by mertd »

rz2k wrote: post #96
hef19898 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid question so, why would you use a garbage truck to plow snow? Over here, cities, towns and musipalities use different vehicles for different jobs, suxh as garbage, snow plowing, street cleaning and so on...

They very rarely need to plow snow in New York city, but when they do there are hundreds of miles to plow, and it is much faster if they begin the plowing before even an inch accumulates. It is much more efficient to press the thousands garbage trucks into this rapid snow plowing service a few days per year than to waste 20 acres storing snow plows for the 350 days per year when they are not needed.

They also bury the trash bags under the plowed snow, which is a win-win for them because they can forget about collecting them until spring. :)

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#137

Post by wolverine876 »

mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

They should buy and maintain a separate fleet of trucks for those few days per year? This is NYC; that's going to be a lot of trucks. Even parking them - for 3xx days per year - would be a problem.

They already have a fleet; it seems like a creative, effective solution - the kind of creativity that cynics say government lacks - to repurpose them for snow removal.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#138

Post by yepguy »

brookside wrote: post #117
mabbo wrote: post #104

Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? Looks, I get that I'm biased being in Canada, but do they understand that you can buy dedicated vehicles for plowing snow ? They're called... snowplows. They're pretty fantastic. You need garbage trucks every day, all year. Electrify those. You need snowplows on a handful of days per year- and that number is falling thanks to climate change. So buy purpose-built snowplo…

> Why are they using garbage trucks to plow snow? You are sort of answering your own question here. > snowplows a few days per year that you need them NYC has 6,300 miles miles of streets. Maintaining an entirely separate fleet of plow vehicles large enough to clear the streets quickly would have its own additional costs.

Why do they even have their own fleet of garbage trucks, though? I'm pretty sure the garbage trucks where I live are all privately owned.

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#139

Post by wolverine876 »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #132
mabbo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. I agree with you. I just see that as a better option than continuing to burn fuel in trucks that don't need it 360 days per year.

Better for whom or what? Surely not for the New York City budget, or the folks who pay for it.

Better for those folks and the budget, both of which will feel the full impact of climate change.

(But I don't think a separate fleet is the answer.)

Re: NYC officials say they can't find EV garbage trucks powerful enough to plow snow

#140

Post by kkfx »

hourago wrote: post #115

The "Elektromote", the world's first trolleybus,[6] in Berlin, Germany, 1882. Maybe New York is lacking the infrastructure, but the technology has existed for a long time. A trolleybus may be expensive to implement in rural areas but in the biggest city in the USA it should be quite cost effective. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromote - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolleybus

That's a nice point for some aspects: we have (had) all over the world trolleybus of various kinds, those on rails have some co-existence with cars and asphalts issues (like slippery passages for bikes, complex ops when the asphalt need to be re-do etc) but beside that have worked HYPER well for decades. Those on tires have proven to be full of issues to a point most who have had them have given up.

I see so far no feasibility study about:

- converting highways to rails with dual-usage vehicles (all vehicles, cars and trucks banning bikes) so vehicles can run normally on road but for just the long range usage they run full electric form grid, converting them to wheels only for going out or maneuvering on a faulty vehicles;

- crafting a urban rail network again at least for some "important traversing roads".

Perhaps the result would be negative anyway, but at least a broad simulation with public discussion, some eventual experiment etc...

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