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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

#391

Post by jijijijij »

pornel wrote: post #321
10-1-100 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also worth noting that with modern emissions standards (and transition to EVs), over 50% of handful particulates come from tires, brakes, road surface wear, and resuspended dust: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/non-exhaust-particulate... I don't think there's any healthy level of private cars coexisting with humans in a city, without even considering the more immediate harms from crashes, etc.

Heavy particles and gaseous emissions are not comparable in such a simplistic way. If you take a dump on the street it doesn't mean you caused 50 million times more emissions than the EPA limits for ICE car exhaust. For example, iron from brakes is heavy but ecologically pretty harmless. OTOH NO₂ weighs almost nothing, but is toxic. You can eat 30mg of iron per day to stay healthy (just don't lick it off the asphalt…

Yeah, but brakes are not not made from pure iron and you won't have atomic erosion. Silly argument, really. Notoriously, you could still find brake pads with asbestos not too long ago. Pretty much any fine dust is very unhealthy to inhale, but brakes and tires are made from material mixes you really don't want to breath in. Even the "inert" fraction we find as microplastics in everything, the rain, fish and newborn, and we're only beginning to understand their biological reactivity and long term health consequences.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#392

Post by 7speter »

flomo wrote: post #138
epolanski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's one of the biggest promoters of inequality. I am an European who studied at OSU in Columbus for a semester and it was absurd to me how on one side there was lots of work downtown, yet you could live 20 miles of it and it would take you two hours by public transport to get there, an odyssey. People without a car, insurance, poorer parts of the society were cut off from the job market for not having a way to c…

In the USA, the working poor generally don't work downtown, and it's really the industrial areas where there is awful transit service. So cheapo used cars are a must for these folks. There is some awful HN bias here where young healthy well-paid tech workers live in some boogie part of SF/NYC/Boston/etc and enjoy the "car-free lifestyle" (and I've been there), without any idea how the other half lives.

Thank you for saying this. My household is smack dab in the middle of a food dessert. We have a 25 year old car we got 10 years ago for $2000, and we use it primarily to go to the nice supermarket because you can get fresh, non moldy food at prices better than you can at the sketchy “supermarkets” and bodegas that always have rotting, moldy and non rotated food products on shelves. I do most of the shopping and I keep the freezer full of meat we can get on sale (just got 7 pounds of chicken wings for 2.49 a pound this week) and cook through that. A lot of the types in spaces like these don’t know how to cook and just use services like grubhub, and thinks everyone should too, or they buy 8 dollar a pound organic chicken thighs from Whole foods the day of. Everybody doesn’t live this way.

Also, I use the bus and train to go downtown and places where it would take an hour to find a parking spot. I even lug big bags of food from Aldi on the crowded bus at rush hour weekly. I don’t know why it has to be either you drive everywhere or never need a car in these discussions. Use what you need to use given the situation.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#393

Post by 7speter »

skort wrote: post #164
flomo wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the USA, the working poor generally don't work downtown, and it's really the industrial areas where there is awful transit service. So cheapo used cars are a must for these folks. There is some awful HN bias here where young healthy well-paid tech workers live in some boogie part of SF/NYC/Boston/etc and enjoy the "car-free lifestyle" (and I've been there), without any idea how the other half lives.

I've seen this "car free utopia" idea dismissed as an idea by and for "elites" (see Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's comments on people who ride the subway in NYC) plenty of times as a tactic to avoid doing anything about reducing dependence on cars. It's quite a counterproductive argument in my opinion. Even if there are well paid tech workers who are able to enjoy a "car-free lifestyle", why should it end ther…

Poor people live in the parts of cities you avoid until your rent gets expensive, too.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#395

Post by saltysalt »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #389
saltysalt wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument that I should accept one source blindly because I cannot name a better alternative in the moment is pretty weak.

> Your argument that I should accept one source blindly Others may have made that argument, but show me where I’ve done that. So far, all I’ve done is ask you who you’d accept as a valid authority, or what evidence you’d accept. And you can’t even do that. A claim has been made that air quality in Paris has improved, and evidence has been provided to back that claim up, in the form of AQI readings provided by (in you…

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.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#396

Post by toomanyrichies »

saltysalt wrote: post #395
toomanyrichies wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your argument that I should accept one source blindly Others may have made that argument, but show me where I’ve done that. So far, all I’ve done is ask you who you’d accept as a valid authority, or what evidence you’d accept. And you can’t even do that. A claim has been made that air quality in Paris has improved, and evidence has been provided to back that claim up, in the form of AQI readings provided by (in you…

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.

If even “an NGO run by environmentalists and funded by the EU” is beyond the pale for you, then there is no such thing as a source which will meet the standard of “independence” that you’re applying. Which again, means you’re not discussing in good faith. Good day.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#397

Post by saltysalt »

toomanyrichies wrote: post #396
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.

If even “an NGO run by environmentalists and funded by the EU” is beyond the pale for you, then there is no such thing as a source which will meet the standard of “independence” that you’re applying. Which again, means you’re not discussing in good faith. Good day.

[flagged]

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#398

Post by Saline9515 »

dublinben wrote: post #356
Saline9515 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

The problem is that most cyclists in my city have no idea about the basic of safety and how to evaluate risk. Most of them ride with headsets on, often noise-cancelling, no helmets and no reflectors. So I'm a bit dubious about the excuse "they are so scared". And even then, they can still walk instead of endangering pedestrians.

As for your last paragraph, this is false; walking on the sidewalk is and should be safe: adding cyclists there makes it unsafe, irrelevant of the car's behavior. Typical predatory thinking of a toxic cyclist.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#399

Post by Retric »

Spooky23 wrote: post #361
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not inherently heavier. They're only heavier if you put a long-range battery in them, even then it's not by very much, and even that may not persist as higher energy density batteries are developed. Or to put it another way, the difference between a small car and a large SUV is far greater than the difference between an electric car and a gasoline car.

A Tesla Model Y is 30% heavier than a Honda CRV. They have alot of other advantages, and are about the same weight as a three-row SUV and lighter than a Tahoe on a truck frame. We shouldn’t be singling out EVs if we suddenly care about tire wear… it’s pretty ridiculous.

Those are wildly different crossovers. That glass roof on the Y adds a lot of weight, it’s kind of silly how popular such an impractical feature became.

The other common issue with EV’s is many don’t integrate the batteries casing as a structural element. Skipping the lead acid battery would also be useful, but that’s a different issue.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#400

Post by Saline9515 »

const_cast wrote: post #238
Saline9515 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The infrastructure changes required to get cars out meant to reduce the flow speed of cars. As a result, even buses, who have dedicated lanes, are much slower. [EDIT]: since I'm being answered that it isn't true, here is a chart made by the city hall about the decreasing speed on Paris' roads: https://cdn.paris.fr/paris/2024/07/12/original-4ee2d20dafdc9...

This is just not true, sorry. EDIT: Okay, to expand, it's true that speed limits in progressive cities have been falling for a while. This is meant reduce the number of pedestrain fatalities and overall make the cities safer and more pleasant. HOWEVER, this does not mean that traveling by car is worse. These, in combination with anti-congestion legislation, make driving faster. The thing about driving is that broad r…

Paris has an ever increasing congestion caused by those measures, as most of the drivers are professionals linked to the city's economic activity who need to get there. Deliveries, constructions vehicules and workers, and so on. It is so bad that surface public transports are being shunned and see usage decrease because they are too slow.

https://www.leparisien.fr/paris-75/paris-ville-la-plus-embou...

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