all i gotta say is, super work, everyone!
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65127-x
Now we can get back to our regularly scheduled global warming, without all those pesky clouds in the way.
In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
441–450 of 524 posts
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#442I'm curious how congestion pricing became a national issue. The strength of conviction people have about this policy–almost either way, but certainly among those against–seems to scale with distance from the city. Nobody in Idaho gets uppity about New Jersey's tolls. But they have strong, knowledge-free, almost identity-defining opinions about congestion charges. Is it because it's a policy that's worked in Europe an…
I think it's because it disproportionately impacts the people who can least afford it. It allows the wealthy to continue to enjoy the convenience (relative to alternatives) of driving into the city while polluting and causing traffic at a price that has zero impact on their lives while it punishes those who already have much less and whose lives will be impacted by the fines and the often significant amounts of time…
Username checks out
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
and would it be true to say that regenerative braking on electric cars reduces significantly this dust?
You can get this lack of brake pad use with an ice with a manual transmission as well if you engine brake.
the engine cannot brake to a complete stop, so break pads are always in use. At low RPMs, the engine is going to stall (manual) or switch to neutral (automatic).
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> 20% more wear of something that is 2x as polluting is 40% more pollution If an equivalent car wore down its tires 20% slower, and those tire particles contributed 2x the intensity of pollution than other types of wear-based pollution, than the increase in produced pollution from that source seems like it would be ~16%, not 40%. If one car drives 100 km and produces 2 units of pollution per km, that would be 200 uni…
> Another car wearing 20% more would produce 240 units, or roughly ~16% more.
This is some Fermat’s Last Theorem shit
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get this lack of brake pad use with an ice with a manual transmission as well if you engine brake.
the engine cannot brake to a complete stop, so break pads are always in use. At low RPMs, the engine is going to stall (manual) or switch to neutral (automatic).
It can brake to nearly a complete stop though with the brakes basically holding the car in place at the end. I got pretty good at it.
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#446One thing that irks me about these schemes is that they often ignore cities role as regional hubs -- i.e. many cities became cities because they serve as geographical gateways interlocking the surrounding region. They are happy to take the benefits of being at the hub, but (increasingly) adopt a nativistic dialogue with the rest of the spokes. I get that no one likes highways running through their communities, but wh…
> it's somewhat inevitable that the network get snarled. Is this happening in/around NYC? > Sure, I'll 'just take public transport' to go downtown, but the options significantly diminish if I want to travel from North Bay to South Bay to see my parents, or Jersey to South Brooklyn to visit my inlaws. The are the same, you just have to pay the fee. Also, for like 90% of NJ you'd be going the southern route into Brookl…
The Verazano is already more expensive than congestion pricing. It's cheaper to drive to Manhattan from Jersey than Brooklyn via Staten Island. Never heard any Jersey driver complain though.
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
My assumption is that stop signs act somewhat as a way to enforce the lower speed limits in residential areas. There's several stretches without stops in my suburb where I've seen drivers whizzing by very obviously above the 25mph speed limit, which is bad enough on its own but becomes a serious hazard when combined with the massive blind spots that come from curbs on both directions being filled to the brim with par…
> A better solution would probably be radar-based speed signs with printed threats of fines, though. I don't think people respond to those as much as they do to "traffic calming" like speed bumps, roundabouts, and narrow choke points.
Of course, drivers respond to speed bumps the same way they respond to other poor road surfaces: 3-ton SUVs.
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're crossovers. Closer to a hatchback.
I mean, they're literally called SUVs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossover_SUV Even https://www.tesla.com/modely uses the term "Electric Midsize SUV"
huh well TIL, thank you. My definitions of Sports Utility Vehicle are outdated. They have almost no clearance, and the suspension is not tuned for anything more than small washboards.
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
Probably very clear-cut, right? "No parking, no business" never made sense, but it makes even less sense in a city where cars are involved in less than a third of all trips Especially considering that * Congestion is an opportunity cost in itself already, which is paid in wasted time by all road users, impacting mostly those who spend a long time on the road, which is busses, taxis, professionals and delivery drivers…
...did you respond to the wrong comment?
yep
Not sure how I managed that
Re: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we're speaking about individual actions, isn't avoiding air travel more effective than any other form of individual vehicle travel choice?
It depends on what you substitute it with. If you substitute with “don’t travel far [or at all]”, it’s a big savings. If you substitute flying 1000 miles on an airliner with “drive 1000 miles instead”, or flying US to Europe with a cruise ship trip to Europe, you’ve probably made it worse; in that regards, it’s less the mode of travel and more the total distance in these trades.
The observation that stuck with me is how much of my county's total carbon emissions are due to air travel which begins/ends at our regional airports (~3%), vs what percentage of the population flies in a given year.
The distribution of air-travel emissions, to me, seem pretty gross when juxtaposed with the number of people who are doing this travel. The incentives for business travel, in particular, seem misaligned.