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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

#561

Post by seoulsubway »

rsynnott wrote: post #467
jmward01 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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; to…

[dead]

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#562

Post by flomo »

mtalantikite wrote: post #506
flomo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I'm an old urbanite/suburb-hater. But because of ppl like me, I don't think there's any place left in the USA which has 'good' transit and isn't expensive. (And solutions like congestion tolls only work because of the boogieness.) What's done is done.

Yeah, agreed. We built the country for the car and there’s no easy path out of that. Every time I’m in LA I think “man we could have had a city like Barcelona” and get bummed it’s just a sprawling car dependent amalgamation of suburbs. There’s clearly demand for more cities like NYC in the US, but we’re not going to get it.

Yeah, some local billionaires want to build "San Francisco by the Sacramento Delta", and it's been nothing but NIMBY opposition. My guess it will be McMansions in 20 years instead. Politically, we can't even build one high-density suburb.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#563

Post by flomo »

epolanski wrote: post #485
flomo wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not unsympathetic, but I don't think a "European who studied at OSU for a semester" really knows what they are talking about.

You might be right, I was just sharing my experience and what I've heard from locals. Anyway, there's an abundant literature that links inequality with transport opportunities. But those topics are so touchy for you Americans tbh, it's like arguing about weapons, it's too heated of an argument for rational discourse.

Yeah, "mobility opportunities". I recognize the issues, and the lack of easy answers, so I think I'm only "touchy" about is simplistic solutions.

European car commuter rates are almost identical to USA's. But I know little about the details, so don't really have any commentary, other than not all of Europe some glorious bike/transit boogie utopia. (And some ppl get "touchy" about that.)

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#564

Post by tordrt »

epolanski wrote: post #80
bri3d wrote: post #12

Worth noting that 50-60% of passenger cars in France are diesel, but Paris have been gradually banning older higher emission diesels (Crit’air 3, 4, 5) from Paris. Banning cars outright also works, of course, but I suspect a lot of the reduction can be attributed to getting particularly bad diesel cars out vs. the limited areas where cars are entirely restricted.

I lived in downtown Rome, Italy. By far the biggest pollution you get in your house, it's...dust from brakes. It's a tragedy. Not saying diesel ain't bad, but even now that diesels have been largely banned or reduced to euro 6, it has changed nothing about brake dust. My flat would fill with it in a single day. It's everywhere. And I lived on a third floor, not even at street level.

Electric cars (some hybrids) use their brakes less due to regenerative breaking. So thats something at least.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#565

Post by andrepd »

codedokode wrote: post #429
dublinben wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame that riders of bikes and scooters in your city feel so unsafe riding on the road, that they are forced onto the sidewalks. Blame dangerous drivers and the lack of protected bike lanes though, not your neighbors who are just trying to arrive at their destinations alive. Pedestrian collisions with bikes versus collisions with automobiles are utterly incomparable both in number and severity. If that cyclist…

Delivery drivers on e-bikes are the worst in my country, they ride on the sidewalk between pedestrians and cross the roads ignoring traffic lights and rules, feels like you are in a developing Asian country. Why don't they want to ride on the roadway? Because with their and car drivers style of driving it's dangerous.

Delivery drivers are a completely separate problem, and they are a menace whether they ride bikes, scooters, or cars. The issue there is the gig economy apps incenctivising by every means possible (including threats of termination) that drivers go as fast as possible, rules and their own safety be damned. All for someone to get their soggy fries in 35mins instead of 40.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#566

Post by saltysalt »

stouset wrote: post #551
saltysalt wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am under no such obligation.

Your refusal to give any example of any work that meets your threshold only serves to underscore my point.

Your point is deflection.

Why don't you provide evidence that Airparif is independent instead, to address my original question? I'll wait.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#567

Post by saltysalt »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #537
saltysalt wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they can be right, I agree. Also I never stated I disagreed with them. I simply questioned their independence. Let me give you another hypothetical example: Would you trust a report on the impacts of fracking by a pro-fracking NGO, with private funding? Even if their data looked ok on face value? The messenger matters.

Of course I'd be skeptical. Skepticism is healthy, especially in your example. In that case, the most productive conversation to have would be examining (and either refuting or accepting) their evidence. So far you've refused to do either one here. Instead, you repeatedly engage in the genetic fallacy I linked to above, or insisting that we should consult some impossibly impartial oracle of objective truth instead. T…

But I have looked at their evidence in the article. I then done a web search to learn more about Airparif, who leads them (and their resumes), who funds them etc. because I never heard of them (I am not French).

I have literally done my own research, and came away questioning their independence.

Nobody on this thread has given me any evidence that they are fully independent, best I got was a comment with a link to the Airparif website.

Instead I got attacked for even daring to ask the question. Go HN.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#568

Post by saltysalt »

stouset wrote: post #536
saltysalt wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they can be right, I agree. Also I never stated I disagreed with them. I simply questioned their independence. Let me give you another hypothetical example: Would you trust a report on the impacts of fracking by a pro-fracking NGO, with private funding? Even if their data looked ok on face value? The messenger matters.

Right, right, you never said you disagreed. You’re “just asking questions”. The messenger matters less than the data, the collection methods, and the approach to analysis. Bias can be a reason to more carefully examine a conclusion and the methods, particularly if a source has had quality issues in the past. But simply throwing out accusations of bias in the absence of literally any other reason to doubt a pretty str…

Asking questions is how we learn. If I disagreed, I would have wrote that instead.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#569

Post by Jhyrachy »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #214
bri3d wrote: post #12

Worth noting that 50-60% of passenger cars in France are diesel, but Paris have been gradually banning older higher emission diesels (Crit’air 3, 4, 5) from Paris. Banning cars outright also works, of course, but I suspect a lot of the reduction can be attributed to getting particularly bad diesel cars out vs. the limited areas where cars are entirely restricted.

Many cities in Europe have introduced climate zones in the past ~20 years, mainly to ban older smoky diesels like that. Petrol cars have also gotten more efficient; smaller engines (1 liter 3 cylinder ones are the norm now for smaller cars), smaller cars, more efficient engines, stop/start systems, hybrids and EVs (especially good for city traffic), etc. That said, when I was in Paris last there were a lot of motor-s…

Scooters are incredibly more efficient because they weight incredibly less. A small Toyota Auygo is 860kg, a non-electric smart is 645kg.

A scooter (125cc) weight from 100 to 150Kg.

Even comparing a 150kg scooter to a car as light as a smart you get 6 time increase in weight for a motor that is not 6 time less efficient.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#570

Post by simonebrunozzi »

grg0 wrote: post #31

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

That's one of the reasons why I moved to Venice, Italy. No cars. City is still the same it was 500 years ago, more or less.
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