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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

#291

[flagged]

You are assuming a car is required. The whole issue with car dependency is that it is a massive barrier for participating in society. Public transit is orders of magnitude cheaper, and very viable and often the better option in the New York area.

> and often the better option

Even before congestion pricing this was the major factor. It's often quicker, more reliable, more pleasant, and has less variation in delays to ride the train/subway in NYC. Speaking from personal experience I could easily eat the congestion charge to daily commute into Manhattan, and I'd rather still take the train because I can do my mindless scrolling or read a book during that time.

The only time I've found that a car is better is during the weekends with a group larger than about 4 people. The train schedules are terrible, the commute time isn't bad, and the price per ticket (assuming you're coming from the outer suburbs) vs parking and tolls works out to be a wash.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the tires are individually controlled - less slippage - and the brakes are regenerative. As a bonus, NYC is pretty much best-case scenario for the latter.

> But the tires are individually controlled - less slippage Not relevant for normal driving. The tires aren’t spinning appreciably due to acceleration except in brief moments with aggressive driving. EVs can actually have higher acceleration related tire wear because they weigh more and have more instant torque on demand. A lot of consumer EVs have filtered throttle pedal inputs to reduce the torque spikes though.

Not all tire wear is when skidding out. A car tire's contact patch is several inches wide (especially on trucks/SUVs where extra-wide tires are often used to give a more premium look), so any time that wheel is turning a corner, there's a portion of it at the outside and inside that's rotating at a different speed than the pavement beneath it is moving.

There's also the regular deformation of wheel just in the course of regular rotation, which is where the majority of highway wear dust comes from.

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

#293
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…

> 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 was promoted in the UK when we were worried about CO2 emissions. There was a subsequent back-pedal when particulates became a prominent issue

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

#294
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes how critical is X and is there a close alternative. In this case I'd say for 95% of people yes driving is easily substituted by NYC's public transit options.

For many people, the thing being substituted for an alternative is not "transportation into Manhattan", but more broadly "engaging in commerce in Manhattan"

What business or shopping trip into Manhattan is small enough that 9 dollars is a significant hurdle or increase in cost? It's there to disincentivize taking a car for no reason when you can use transit while being small enough to absorb if you have a reason to actually use a car.

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because Trump made it one of his obsessions for a period of time, putting it on the MAGA radar.

> It's because Trump made it one of his obsessions for a period of time, putting it on the MAGA radar Had most people outside the tri-state area not heard and formed an opinion about congestion pricig before Trump brought it up?

Why would they? There is virtually no congestion pricing in the US outside of a few major metros and a huge portion of the population live in areas where the lack of density makes the entire idea moot.

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

#296
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…

…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.

I guess I should have said "a more inconvenient time" where owning an EV kinda revolves around your charging setup/schedule in a way that you don't have to think about with ICE cars. I know some people swear by them being more fun to drive but that's the last thing on my list of requirements for a car. I will say I think you're giving ICE cars a bad rap, my little Honda Fit that will be replaced by the EV is at 150k miles with nothing other than like three oil changes (yes i know) and a new set of tires.

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

#297
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…

It always surprises me when people want stop signs in their neighborhood for traffic calming. The last thing I want is all of the noise and pollution of vehicles stopping and starting over and over again; surely various piece of road furniture like bulb-outs, roundabouts, etc, do a better job with fewer drawbacks. Other than cost, of course.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall a discussion on HN explaining that while true, this might be offset by the higher average weight of EVs, leading to more dust from the tires and the road. Again, no easy solution unfortunately, just trade offs.

If that were true of tires, you would expect an EV’s tires to get substantially less range before wearing out…which I don’t believe is the case.

IME they only wear out maybe 15-20% faster than you'd think. On the other hand, over the span of 40,000 miles, a tire loses a LOT more rubber by weight/volume than a brake pad loses pad material. No idea what the PM2.5 breakdown is though.

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be terminally poisoned by capitalism to not understand that giving kids asthma in order to save a few dollars is itself violence.

Please. Truckers aren't intentionally giving kids asthma. Go after the capitalists who incentivized the behavior. Otherwise you're just harming more innocent people. (edit: grammar)

> Truckers aren't intentionally giving kids asthma

The number of trucks I see that are either horribly maintained or purposefully modified to defeat emissions devices spewing massive clouds of black smoke every time they step on the accelerator pedal speaks otherwise to me.

Rolling Coal is absolutely a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_coal

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

#300
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…

> Just the cost to get my garage outfitted with a charging port is about to be in the thousands because it requires me to replace the entire breaker panel. Now this is a me problem because that panel is ancient but it does add to the total cost of "doing this" and going EV. You likely don't need to replace the panel, as load management options exist. Wallbox, in particular, has an option where you can add a modbus do…

I'm probably just going to bite the bullet and replace the panel but this is really good to know.
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