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Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

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Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#301

Post by darkteflon »

numpad0 wrote: post #164
darkteflon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s been like this for days, it will continue into next week. We had no announcements where I am, none of the news broadcasts I checked (and I checked a few) mentioned it. The Tokyo metro site wouldn’t even load on my phone. Glad you got a heads up. Don’t really care what Paris is like, tbh. Shit air is shit air. Saying it’s shitter somewhere else isn’t super compelling. The whole point of my original comment was th…

So where you're mistaken, or are not in accordance with the official narrative, is that the pollution must have to do with severe local negligence. Here[1] is simulation results that suggest a different story. 1: https://pm25.jp/m/230519/011/

Not entirely sure what you’re saying but I’m literally, actually, living here and have been for 20 years. I’ve lived all over Tokyo and indeed elsewhere in Japan. I know what the air is like where people are actually living and working, as opposed to wherever the monitors happen to be placed.

There is loads of research showing a marked drop-off in the danger to humans from vehicle emissions as you move away from the kerbside. Even walking on the far side of a wide curb can significantly improve your prospects. My point here is that people are living in extreme proximity to tailpipe emissions, all day long.

It is a perfect candidate - perhaps the best candidate city in the world given how much else it gets staggeringly right on urban design - for strict tailpipe emissions regulations. Ban diesel trucks, introduce congestion charges, incentivise the adoption of EVs.

That is unlikely to happen, however, as Toyota in particular famously is one of the biggest global lobbyists for the internal combustion engine - a fact covered numerous times at length here on HN. That’s a fascinating political and economic story in its own right and one I’d encourage people to read up on.

Tokyo’s air quality is a story of corporate and political greed. Nobody does anything about it because no one talks about it.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#302

Post by mardifoufs »

ajuc wrote: post #133
throwaway22032 wrote: post #14

The anti car bias on HN is such a blind spot. Yes, lots of us work on computers and have metropolitan hobbies. Huge numbers of people don't. It's an empathy gap. Cars aren't worse or better, they're just different. You can't have NYC with LA's parking and you can't have LA with NYC's parking.

It's USA pro-car bias, not HN anti-car bias. Looking from anywhere else in the world - how car-centric USA is - is fucking insane. Minor regional differences doesn't matter, you're still out there in the top right corner, category of your own. BTW one of the result of this is that somehow Americans think only people living in big cities don't like cars. Like WTF? What does one have to do with the other?

That's not true at all. Tons of places outside the USA love cars and have a car centered transportation system. If anything it's a European biais to assume otherwise

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#303

Post by darkteflon »

duckmysick wrote: post #266
darkteflon wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

accuweather.com. Yesterday morning the AQI was 142. I snapped a photo of it.

This is the air quality page for Tokyo on accuweather.com https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i... Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source. https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows t…

Is that the 24 hour average? I literally have photos on my phone from Thursday morning showing AQI 142 and a Tokyo map soaked in pink and red. I snapped them to send to my wife, who was planning to take the kids to the park. It was also obvious to anyone with a functioning noise on their face. Not sure what to tell you.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#304

Post by darkteflon »

bombcar wrote: post #190
darkteflon wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, smaller cities are better than big cities. Less dense cities are better than denser cities. All else held equal. The neighbourhoods you’re referring to - walkable areas free from car noise - are open to the wealthy only. The absolute vast majority of people in Tokyo live with constant traffic noise and terrible air quality. Not to mention cramped living conditions.

It is really, really hard to compare metro areas without actually having lived there. Tourist areas are always by definition in nicer parts of the city because the tourists pay for it. And if you have enough money most cities have nice parts. But how does the “average” working stiff live?

It definitely is difficult, thank you. It also seems to me to be of limited value unless you’re specifically trying to measure the effect of different policies. Let’s just do what we can to improve air quality everywhere. We know diesel bans work, we know EVs work, we know congestion pricing works. Let’s just do it - especially for our kids. Doesn’t seem particularly controversial to me.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#305

Post by Mawr »

mbork_pl wrote: post #147
s_dev wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is obvious -- look both ways before crossing. Don't depend on sound only to ensure your survival crossing a road.

You understand you are talking to humans here, right? Actual humans, who perform a lot of actions "on autopilot", without consciously thinking about them, and who may have deeply ingrained habits which are very, very hard to change?

Right, but the problem is, it's unsafe to rely on sound in this manner to begin with, regardless of car noise levels.

Sound can only be used for positive identification - if you can hear a car, it's there. It cannot be used for negative identification - if you can't hear a vehicle, it doesn't mean anything.

This is because there are far too many factors that are at play when it comes to the ability to hear:

- Not every dangerous vehicle makes appreciable sound - an ICE car with its engine off, an EV, a bike, any other small personal transportation device, even a skateboard

- The sound may be masked by another, louder sound

- The sound may seem to come from a different direction, there's no telling how the surrounding environment will reflect the sound around before it's reaches one's ears

- The human crossing may, like you point out, be on autopilot, distracted, or otherwise not perceptive to sound

Because of these, and likely more, factors relying on sound when crossing the street is a horrible idea and will get you killed.

I cannot emphasize this enough, looking both ways when crossing *is mandatory*!

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#306

Post by fomine3 »

darkteflon wrote: post #44
david-gpu wrote: post #17

I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much q…

I see this take about Japan all the time and do not understand it. No offence, but have you spent any time in Japan? Rural areas might be quiet for sheer low population density, but the cities are disgusting. PM2.5 levels in Tokyo yesterday were like 6x WHO limits and absolutely no one on the local news was talking about it. Every morning I see pregnant and new mothers with infants or small children squeezing between…

As you can see, PM2.5 (and sands) are coming from China. If most of them are locally generated, it should be stable so people don't need forecast. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/taiki/ https://tenki.jp/pm25/ https://tenki.jp/forecaster/t_yoshida/2023/05/20/23296.html

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#307

Post by duckmysick »

darkteflon wrote: post #303
duckmysick wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the air quality page for Tokyo on accuweather.com https://www.accuweather.com/en/jp/tokyo/226396/air-quality-i... Clicking on the Learn more from Plume Labs takes you to the air quality data source. https://air.plumelabs.com/air-quality-in-Tokyo-7Lj5 You can see graphs with the tabs named Live, Week, Month, Year. We can check past data there. The weekly graph shows 72 AQI on May 18th. The yearly graph shows t…

Is that the 24 hour average? I literally have photos on my phone from Thursday morning showing AQI 142 and a Tokyo map soaked in pink and red. I snapped them to send to my wife, who was planning to take the kids to the park. It was also obvious to anyone with a functioning noise on their face. Not sure what to tell you.

It's the value taken at Thu 18 May 01:50PM. It's an interactive chart. The weekly version shows readings every couple minutes.

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#308

Post by dwighttk »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #241
epolanski wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you want about soviet city planning but it was damn efficient. I have never ever seen a soviet-era suburb which didn't have 4 to 12 story buildings with parks and aisles all around them and all kind of services being at a 5 minutes walking distance top (church, shops, post office, elementary and middle school, etc).[1] Literally under every building you would find people quietly enjoying their evening on the…

This is something I heard a lot from people from the former GDR. Usually, they start by acknowledging the bad things: the limited opportunity to travel, the surveillance. But then, they tell you about what they miss. Knowing their neighbours, a certain idea of fraternity and togetherness in hardship, the feeling that even as a poor kid you could achieve something and be useful to society as a whole, the absence of re…

> Knowing their neighbours

Not knowing they worked for the stasi…

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#309

Post by pandaman »

david-gpu wrote: post #17

I live in a high-rise condo next to a six-lane stroad that was even showcased on this YouTube channel and the 24/7 traffic noise is annoying, particularly when you want to go for a walk and can't even hold a conversation. This didn't happen in the places where I lived back in Europe because zoning laws were different. Instead of the sprawl of freehold single family homes separate from a dense urban core, these much q…

>This means people can live within walking distance to where they work and where they shop, so they do just that: walk through quiet streets, often surrounded with trees.

So they have quiet bars were people quietly get wasted and quietly walk home? Quiet trucks quietly unloading goods for the shops every morning? Quiet dumpster trucks quietly picking up commercial dumpsters and quietly flipping them over every night?

If we had these in the US I'd be fine with mixed zoning too. As of now I don't hear any noise from the two lane arterial street behind my backyard but I used to live in an apartment with a window roughly 500' away from a small bar (just a local watering hole in a strip mall, completely inside, not trendy at all) in a direct line of sight and I had to sleep with a white noise machine because of all the screaming the patrons produced walking out (or in?).

Re: Cities Aren't Loud: Cars Are Loud (2021) [video]

#310

Post by caskstrength »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #299
caskstrength wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, like western european countries near GDR (which is in Europe so no point in comparing it with US), but with surveillance and inability to travel?

I don’t know which Western European countries you are talking about but I’m French and the country is absolutely nothing like that.

In what sense is it "nothing like that"? France is quite socialist politically, as a poor kid you can aspire to obtain free and good quality education, get some help from the state if you are in poverty while relying on free health care.

What do you think bloc countries and Soviet union were? Some kind of communist utopias? They appear to "didn't have dire poverty" because "social parasitism"[0] was a criminal offense for a long time. Like, police (sorry, "militia"!) could stop you on the street during work hours and arrest you if you didn't have a document from your boss or from a doctor allowing you to skip work. In later times "undesirables" were just forcibly relocated from "nicer" places [1]. Unfortunately description of these in English are quite lacking, but as a person born in USSR I can assure you that all the nostalgia for that times is either coming from old people who actually just nostalgic for their youth (old joke on the subject: - Gradpa, why are you keep saying it was much better under Stalin? - Because I could still get an erection back then!), or intentional political propaganda.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_parasitism_(offense)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_kilometre

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