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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

#421

Post by vel0city »

MisterTea wrote: post #408
vel0city wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

You really don't see that here in NYC. Enforcement for big rigs and even pickups curbed a lot of that. Used to be common to see a big truck or especially a city bus belch black smoke but nowadays with enforcement and emissions systems it's much less common. Ironically, the worst offenders are the obviously poorly maintained school busses.

> Truckers aren't intentionally giving kids asthma

This was the claim I was addressing. Truckers (a group that applies to more than just people in NYC) are intentionally giving kids asthma through their choices to defeat or not maintain emissions equipment, I see it every day. Maybe NYC is enforcing their emissions standards enough to no longer make it worth it to truckers there, but don't doubt they'd go back to belching toxic fumes to save a penny if given the chance there. They do it practically everywhere else.

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

#422

Post by expedition32 »

cogman10 wrote: post #400
afavour wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, I think there's a hard stop at "having a functioning public transit system". I could imagine DC implementing a congestion charge. Nashville less so.

Sure, but that also drives the question of "why don't we have functioning public transit?" or "why aren't we building out our public transit?". There will be a stop and balance struck everywhere, but this sort of thing really does make people that deal in the car industry nervous. I'd gladly ditch my car tomorrow if I could catch a bus within walking distance. I'm unfortunately 5 miles from the nearest bus stop.

I recall reading that many US cities started as railway stops! Back when the iron horse was the only way to ship cargo across the US.

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

#423

Post by fsckboy »

coryrc wrote: post #263
thmsths wrote: post #240

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.

And to add info, an F-150 will change brake pads 3-7 times over 200k miles, while a Model Y will still be on the original set with nearly no sign of wear.

but compare the wear of the tires, and weigh tires vs brakes by the amount of "total pollution delivered to the environment", i.e. 20% more wear of something that is 2x as polluting is 40% more pollution. I don't know the numbers or the answer, I'm just saying it's not as simple as your statement makes it out to be.

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

#424

Post by mrguyorama »

rangestransform wrote: post #319
ceejayoz wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-03612 > Some drivers can apply for Low-Income Discount or Low-Income Tax Credit for Residents. > A 50% discount is available for low-income vehicle owners enrolled in the Low-Income Discount Plan (LIDP). This discount begins after the first 10 trips in a calendar month and applies to all peak period trips after that for the remainder of the calendar month. The revenue a…

I hate this distinctly American idea that no policy can cause any detriment to any disadvantaged people at all, even if the policy effects are incredibly income-progressive overall. This is how we end up with carveouts for every special interest group in every single policy, the populace justifying turnstile hopping, lack of traffic enforcement by police, opposition to speed and red light cameras, opposition to rezon…

>I hate this distinctly American idea that no policy can cause any detriment to any disadvantaged people at all

This "Distinctly American idea" you cite does not at all exist.

Tens of millions watch a news channel that openly stated we should euthanize homeless people. Millions more moved to a crazier channel because that one wasn't lying enough

They vote against free school lunch programs that cost very little.

They hate "welfare queens" with a passion, despite that being a lie, and still being a lie decades later.

Democrats had no qualms voting for the Crime Bill back in the 90s, and were willing to turn around and get aggressive about the border to win an election.

>This is how we end up with carveouts for every special interest group in every single policy

No, the reason we get so many special interest carve outs in the US is that special interest groups fund election campaigns. Fix campaign funding (IE, make it publicly funded and extremely time limited) and you make it significantly easier for people who eschew bribery to be and stay politicians.

Sure, HN has a strong "Not perfect should never be done" bias, because HN is full of turbonerds that crave validation for how smart they are and always need to pipe up with a nitpick to be heard. 95% of the time, the exact "complaint" someone on HN makes up was already noted and covered in the very article. We aren't allowed to sass people for not reading the article.

This is not the case off of HN and in reality. Conservatives are perfectly happy doing "Obvious and common sense" measures that actually have insane second order effects. They insist tariffs are a good policy the way they are being implemented. Democrats want all sorts of things that are not at all perfect and would be happy to have slightly fewer new problems than the same problems our grandparents had to fight about.

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

#425

Post by earlyreturns »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #216
bryanlarsen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that brake dust is the primary PM2.5 emission from vehicles in an urban environment. However the PM2.5 component from tail pipes are still very significant, higher than the contribution from tires. The order is: 1. brake dust 2. road dust 3. engine emissions 4. tire dust https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456... https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle...

and would it be true to say that regenerative braking on electric cars reduces significantly this dust?

I’m guessing not as much as standard transmissions, which largely eliminate the need for breaking while also reducing fuel usage. Yet there are almost no new cars with standard transmission. If only people cared a bit more.

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

#426

Post by cogman10 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #407
cogman10 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that also drives the question of "why don't we have functioning public transit?" or "why aren't we building out our public transit?". There will be a stop and balance struck everywhere, but this sort of thing really does make people that deal in the car industry nervous. I'd gladly ditch my car tomorrow if I could catch a bus within walking distance. I'm unfortunately 5 miles from the nearest bus stop.

> that also drives the question of "why don't we have functioning public transit?" or "why aren't we building out our public transit?" The answer to which in many American cities being because there isn’t enough density. Outside America’s 4 to six largest cities, ditching cars probably doesn’t work.

I'd argue there is, you just need good locations to board.

One problem that faces my city, as an example, is that we have a community that is being built out in a mountain area. There is a 2 lane highway going up there and, as you can imagine, it gets absolutely jam packed. On a clear day you can do the trip in 10 minutes, during rush-hour it can take over and hour.

This is the perfect place for something like a toll and a park and ride location within the community.

But instead we are maybe going to spend 10s (or maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars expanding the road.

This concept works great for airport's economy lots. It's a bit crazy that it doesn't seem to work for anywhere but the top 6 largest cities in the US.

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

#427

Post by bryanlarsen »

earlyreturns wrote: post #425
somewhereoutth wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and would it be true to say that regenerative braking on electric cars reduces significantly this dust?

I’m guessing not as much as standard transmissions, which largely eliminate the need for breaking while also reducing fuel usage. Yet there are almost no new cars with standard transmission. If only people cared a bit more.

You guessed wrong.

An electric car can use its engines to bring a vehicle to a complete stop. It can also use the motor to hold the car in place, even on a fairly steep incline. You can't do either with a standard transmission ICE vehicle.

There are people with electric cars that have their brakes rust out because they're never used. A standard piece of advice to EV owners is "make sure to use your brakes at least once a month".

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

#428

Post by MLgulabio »

ceejayoz wrote: post #121
MLgulabio wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change my argument at all. The more money you have, more you benefit from this ruling. Now you can buy a service which was not possible before.

> Now you can buy a service which was not possible before. It wasn't possible to drive a car in NYC before congestion pricing? I find that… unlikely.

It wasn't possible to buy reduced traffic.

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

#429

Post by taeric »

bluGill wrote: post #396
taeric wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lived in Atlanta and Seattle. Both have perfectly workable transit. Even if Atlanta does seem to have gotten a bit worse over the years.

Workable is not a great endorsement. If things are not fast and frequent people will prefer to drive even if transit could work. Also both have workable transit only for some destinations - I don't live in either city, but I'd guess without looking getting downtown is easy but if your destination is one suburb over it is technically possible but you could baby crawl faster.

I mean, yes. But I hate to point out that even in Tokyo, having a car is faster than not. Just a lot more expensive.

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

#430

Post by MLgulabio »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #148
MLgulabio wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't change my argument at all. The more money you have, more you benefit from this ruling. Now you can buy a service which was not possible before.

> more money you have, more you benefit from this ruling This is nonsense. The poor of New York benefit from congestion pricing. It means more funding for the public transit they predominantly take. And for the minority who drive for a living it increases their revenues. The opposition to congestion charges comes from principally outside New York, often from folks who have little to no familiarity with it.

As long as this system is a fixed price and is independent of the salary you earn, its benefits the rich more.

Its the same principle with kindergarden and late fee; Without a late fee, people sometimes were late getting their kids, with late fees more people were late getting their kids. Now they were able to 'pay' for this.

You now can pay for having less traffic for you. Who can afford this? The rich/richer person.

This increases inequality.

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