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Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#461

Post by robocat »

jodrellblank wrote: post #386
robocat wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greens seem to deceive in the same way as green-washing except with greener deceptions (whereas green-washing is capitalists pretending to be green). Example: a report on the cost-benefit of using bicycles, that comes out with a fantastic positive number for introducing a cycle lane. Except the number depends on a monetary estimate of the benefits to society for health improvements. I'm sure the health improvements e…

> " example: a report on the cost-benefit of using bicycles, that comes out with a fantastic positive number for introducing a cycle lane. " Rubber-stamp a multi-billion dollar highway widening project that won't reduce traffic*, no problem, doesn't deserve any comment. Bike lane? Scrutiny with a fine-tooth comb, subject it to years of studies, complain about the cost, complain about why anyone would want a bike lane…

Yeah: I'm totally not a fan of biased car shit either. Some of your examples seem like strawmen to me.

> complain about the cost

Bike lanes in my country are mostly paid for by taxes on cars and petrol. The costs/benefits are often justified by cherry-picked benefits (e.g. reduced car congestion, or reduced pollution). The congestion arguments anecdotally appear to be lies: low usage priority cycle lanes seem to cause extra congestion (through phasing of lights and islands and other traffic controlling features).

Try and fairly point out that the numbers are juggled and you'll get skewered by cyclist ideologues. Read my sister comment where I reference the thesis that was the basis for my original comment.

I have an acquaintance working in our council on improving bike lanes.

I'm not against bikes. I'm against badly biased reports : towards/against both cyclists or cars.

Balanced discussion seems so difficult.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#462

Post by cycomanic »

flomo wrote: post #284
cycomanic wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fascinating how the debate around cars in cities evolves. Initially counter arguments always are that reducing cars is not desirable "nobody wants less cars in cities, people need to do their weekly groceries, nobody wants to bike in bad weather...". Once these points are refuted it always evolves into "yes it would be great, but it can't be done, because it's too expensive, politically controversial...". I…

You are putting a lot of pointless words in my mouth. As I said, I have actually lived the San Francisco car-free bike and streetcar lifestyle, and quite enjoyed it. So I have the perspective of why it does or does not work (for Americans). I would love to see some concrete solutions proposed here other than just the usual Cars Bad/Cars Good handwaving and downvoting. (I just looked at Bodega in Google Maps, and it i…

Chicago has a density of 4500 people per sq km compared to Bogota at 4100 so Chicago is denser? That said I actually meant Medellin not Bogota which is significantly denser. However Medellin topology makes it extremely challenging to build infrastructure, the central valley floor is more than 1000m lower than most of the suburbs. Moreover the GDP of Medellin is 70 billion compared to a GDP of Chicago of 800 billion and Chicago can't build public transport infrastructure because it's 1.5 less dense? That doesn't make any sense.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#464

Post by flomo »

panick21_ wrote: post #426
flomo wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the truth is nobody has any real idea how to retrofit the last 70 years of American suburbia so that mass transit is actually effective and useful for people. "Transit-oriented development" really only helps downtown workers and doesn't get you to the grocery store or daycare. (And even in NYC, the subway is not great out in Queens/etc, so people own cars.) But it is nice to live in the Mission and take the t…

Except that many European cities copied US cities in their development styles, and then later reversed them. So we absolutely do know how to reverse it. > But it is nice to live in the Mission and take the techbus to Mountain View and handwave all the hard trillion dollar problems and say let the poors eat cake. Which is effectively how these discussions seem to go. Every study shows that the poor are hurt the most b…

It's funny, seems like people had me pegged as some Suburb Guy, when that couldn't be further from the truth. (I have mostly walked the talk, which is more than I can say of some of the former Bike Guys I have known.) Anyway, I completely agree with much of this, just a couple nits:

> Every study shows that the poor are hurt the most because of car centric development.

Yes, the poor always lose out versus Hypothetical Utopia. I'm referring to reality as it exists in the current and near future where many many poor & middle-class people need cars. You can't just take them away because of a dumb student-type notion that "cars are only for rich people".

> Change your zoning code and other access regulations (etc)

Yes, I would love to tell Silicon Valley how to zone, but even the popular governor is having trouble doing that.

(Meanwhile, my urban SF neighbors are arguing about what paint colors should be allowed, like it is a HOA or something.)

> Develop a 50 year rail plan.

We have that, but it doesn't actually help because it's mostly about building rail out to new suburbs where people can get into city center office jobs (and the rail agency can get tax money). In the meanwhile, we built an urban subway with 3! stations.

Like I said, it's a trillion dollar problem, and there's no easy button. Just incremental improvements.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#465

Post by microtonal »

Saline9515 wrote: post #186
andrepd wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's mind boggling to me that this is a genuine comment. I suggest this yt channel as a start to open your eyes as to how yes, another world is possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

I live in Riga, here cyclists ride on the sidewalk, along with e-scooters. I went out for a ten minutes walk with my son, I had to physically and verbally intervene three times to avoid him being hit by a cyclist or e-scooter. Last month our nanny was hit by a cyclist. In Paris it is very common and the main reason they banned e-scooters. So, while the US paradigm is toxic, I'm not convinced about the one you are pro…

I live in Riga, here cyclists ride on the sidewalk, along with e-scooters.

First, give cyclists bike paths, second develop your culture around cycling and walking. It's not a problem here. Virtually everyone cycles here (more bikes than people in this country). I am over 40 and I can only think of two people I know who had more serious injuries (one broken tooth and one broken leg), but both managed to fall without any other traffic involved.

Kids in our city walk or bike to school by themselves when they are 9 or 10 (some earlier) and there are virtually never accidents.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#466

Post by flomo »

cycomanic wrote: post #462
flomo wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are putting a lot of pointless words in my mouth. As I said, I have actually lived the San Francisco car-free bike and streetcar lifestyle, and quite enjoyed it. So I have the perspective of why it does or does not work (for Americans). I would love to see some concrete solutions proposed here other than just the usual Cars Bad/Cars Good handwaving and downvoting. (I just looked at Bodega in Google Maps, and it i…

Chicago has a density of 4500 people per sq km compared to Bogota at 4100 so Chicago is denser? That said I actually meant Medellin not Bogota which is significantly denser. However Medellin topology makes it extremely challenging to build infrastructure, the central valley floor is more than 1000m lower than most of the suburbs. Moreover the GDP of Medellin is 70 billion compared to a GDP of Chicago of 800 billion a…

Genuinely curious, do you have a good article about Bogota? Because your entire demeanor is acting like you have some "gotcha", without advocating for anything concrete.

For example, from my brief perusal of Google Maps, it looks like they have some sort of growth boundary, because it goes from dense city to farms in a sharp line. For historical reasons, America is not organized that way. (And Chicago is fucked-up, so be it.)

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#467

Post by rsynnott »

jmward01 wrote: post #141
flomo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the myth. Streetcars were actually torn up because busses were much cheaper, there was no conspiracy. The streetcars were also old and cold and ppl hated them. (I lived in a streetcar part of SF, and loved it, fwiw. But the only reason it's still there is a tunnel.)

That is a statement that really needs citation and qualification to back it up. I'd argue that 'cheaper' is used in a vacuum here. By that I mean that the point of mass transit isn't how much it costs, but how much value it provides. By that measure the bus services that replaced streetcars and other mass transit really doesn't stack up. Busses have led to much lower ridership which has led to a massive amount of bad…

So… it kind of made sense at the time (if you ignored a couple of factors which didn’t become obvious until much later, and which ultimately made it a disaster), and it’s not just an American thing. In 1928, Dublin had 28 tramlines. By 1950, it had zero, with the tram routes being replaced by bus routes (many older Dublin Bus routes basically follow old tram routes even today). It didn’t have trams again til 2004; today it has two lines.

But _at the time_, buses were very competitive with trams; there wasn’t all that much other road traffic, so they weren’t really slower (and they could use the tram lines, while they existed, as a right of way), the trams of the time were non-articulated, so buses had similar or higher capacity, and they were more flexible. It’s easy to see how it happened, and it only became apparent that there was a problem when it was far too late to reverse.

There are really two problems with buses vs trams; buses are slow when there is lots of other traffic, and, _with modern articulated trams_, higher total capacities are achievable (one of Dublin’s modern tramlines has trams that take over 400 people with a frequency of under 3 minutes between trams at peak, which is a level of capacity that you just can’t really get with buses). Neither of these were factors when the first-generation trams died.

Very few tram systems worldwide actually survived from the early 20th century to today; while there are lots of trams today, most are second-generation systems put in from the 80s on.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#468

Post by rsynnott »

timewizard wrote: post #105
grg0 wrote: post #31

Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.

There are cities not designed around cars. We just call them "rural." You could not have had your urban city without cars. There is absolutely nothing "tragic" about this. Meanwhile you live in a world where petty wars are fought over resources to enhance the wealth of an extreme minority of the population. That's an actual tragedy.

> You could not have had your urban city without cars.

… Eh? The city I live in has been here for a thousand years, and that doesn’t even make it a particularly old city. _Outer suburbs_ are a somewhat car-dependent phenomenon, but cities certainly are not.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#469

Post by saltysalt »

stouset wrote: post #428
saltysalt wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply questioned the independence of the source of the evidence, is such critical thinking not allowed? Your attempt to somehow make me responsible to provide an alternative source of evidence is classic deflection. That is not my responsibility. Do your own research etc.

This isn’t critical thinking. Your complete inability to even vaguely hint or suggest at someone who might be better equipped to either perform this analysis or fund it makes that clear. “Someone without bias” is a cop out. Everyone has bias, and literally anyone performing or funding air quality measurements is going to have some sort of interest in their outcome. There is no sterile room of blind and deaf eunuchs p…

Sigh, I already addressed this demand that I MUST name an alternative in this thread. It's deflection pure and simple, I'm not going over that again...

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#470

Post by arghwhat »

otterley wrote: post #451
looofooo0 wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This little friction break usage is actually something which manufacture need to consider. They need to activate once in a while to stop rust and other problems.

They almost certainly do. For example, our Chevy Volt (EV + gasoline engine range booster) puts the engine through a maintenance phase if you haven’t used the engine in a few weeks, and will force the engine to consume any fuel left in the tank if it hasn’t been refilled in several months.

We're talking about brakes, not engines.

But I know at least one EV maker that has a manually selected mode that guides you through driving with the brakes engaged for surface treatment, as rust buildup will be the main issue.

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