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In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

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Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#161

Post by mikestew »

Spivak wrote: post #116
Angostura wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a lot if EV buyers are interested in the environmental impact of their purchase?

I say this as someone who owns an electric scooter and whose next car will be an EV—the sales pitch for EVs right now is basically pay more (especially now that the tax credit is gone) to have a worse time and maybe eventually claw some of it back over the lifetime of the car in fuel savings. The environmental impact is the pro in the pro con list. So if that doesn't pan out, or doesn't pan out enough it's going to b…

…to have a worse time

Says the person who has never owned an EV. Fifteen years of EV ownership, I’m never going back. Environmental factors aside, an EV is the overall better vehicle. You can keep your rattling ICE vehicles that need special fluid from specific vendors.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#162

Post by eigenspace »

pulisse wrote: post #40
bgirard wrote: post #17

Not surprising. The real question is how do we measure the opportunity cost of these measures? Is it a net gain? You could, at the extreme, ban all motor vehicles but the opportunity cost would outweigh the benefits.

The point of congestion pricing is to let market mechanisms determine where the optimum is.

Well, the market decides where the optimum is *in response to* the price set by the government. So the government can decide at least approximately where they want things to end up by setting a higher or lower price.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#163

Post by fullstop »

jibe wrote: post #135
Spivak wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this as someone who owns an electric scooter and whose next car will be an EV—the sales pitch for EVs right now is basically pay more (especially now that the tax credit is gone) to have a worse time and maybe eventually claw some of it back over the lifetime of the car in fuel savings. The environmental impact is the pro in the pro con list. So if that doesn't pan out, or doesn't pan out enough it's going to b…

Watch out for electricians who try to rip off new EV owners. Make sure you get a few estimates. When we added a charger, bids were $2000, $2000, and $500.

Mine was about $1,100 which included a $250 permit / inspection fee from my township.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#166

Post by MSFT_Edging »

biophysboy wrote: post #10
lkbm wrote: post #2

> Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack. Globally, they are a leading risk factor for premature death. Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines s…

Is that true for slower moving vehicles? I can't imagine there's a lot of brake dust generated by stopping & starting in the 0-10 mph range.

Folks in the comments will say "not really" for EVs because of better control and lower speeds, but if you've ever driven in Manhattan, you'd know it's often light-to-light drag racing at times which with an EV and a heavy foot will undo a lot of the regen braking via stress on the tires.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#167

Post by hamdingers »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #38
cenamus wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air pollution is pretty clearly correlated with reduced life expectancy, even if you don't directly die from it

Also noise pollution, and above ground trains are hella loud. (Or at least CalTrain and BART are...)

This is a widely debunked bad faith NIMBY talking point. A train, even at high frequencies, is less noise pollution than a highway or major road.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#168

Post by bryanlarsen »

Jon_Lowtek wrote: post #144
lkbm wrote: post #2

> Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack. Globally, they are a leading risk factor for premature death. Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines s…

"relatively clean" means 85% of PM2.5 is from non-exhaust sources, and 15% is from exhaust after catalytic conversion. In New York EV and ICE are pretty much on par when it comes to this category of pollution, as the additional weight increases non exhaust sources. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522... It is different in Africa, where catalytic converters are harvested for precious m…

That source is Europe, not New York. It claims EV's are 24% heavier than ICE vehicles. That might be true in Europe but definitely not the case in the US where the average ICE vehicle is a 6000 pound truck and the average EV is a 4000 pound Tesla.

It also assumes they're using the same tires. EV owners put on EV tires, which are formulated to have a lower rolling resistance, quieter and last longer. All 3 of those correlate with lower dust.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#169

Post by cool_dude85 »

stetrain wrote: post #142
Aurornis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff. Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles. The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. PM2.5 is…

Diesel looks good if you are focusing primarily on fuel economy (mpg / L/100km), and when companies cheat the tests on other emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.

Diesel is less fuel efficient than regular gasoline except when you measure by volume. It gets fewer miles per unit of energy in the fuel.

Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution

#170

Post by rdm_blackhole »

stetrain wrote: post #142
Aurornis wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff. Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles. The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me. PM2.5 is…

Diesel looks good if you are focusing primarily on fuel economy (mpg / L/100km), and when companies cheat the tests on other emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.

Not only that, in France for example the liter of Diesel fuel was always 10 to 15 euro cents cheaper at the petrol station due to how regular gasoline and diesel fuel was taxed.

That's why before EVs started to show up on the market en masse if you walked into a dealership they would always recommend that you pick the diesel engine if you wanted to save money of fuel costs.

That was actually the reason why the Yellow vest protests started in 2018 when the French government announced that the taxation gap between diesel and regular gasoline was going to disappear gradually.

Small edit to add to the context:

By that point, when the protests started in 2018, the governments(right and left) of France and the many French automakers had been pushing diesel engines as THE solution to alleviate rising fuel costs and so justifiably, the protesters thought that someone had just pulled the rug from underneath them.

Also this measure was in direct contradiction to Macron's campaign promise which was that he was going to reduce the tax burden or at least not increase it on the middle class, especially the rural middle-class that basically cannot get a job without having a car as public transport is almost non-existent in rural France.

That and many other things which I won't get into since it is not relevant for this discussion really riled people up.

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