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Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

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Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#71

Post by jschwartzi »

2sk21 wrote: post #35
thinkcontext wrote: post #30

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. So this is based on n=1, very suspicious. If tires really were this big a source of PM emissions then how would levels in US cities gone down through vehicle pollution control measures. Something is not adding up here.

My guess is that particulate solution due to those emitted from tires is probably very localized near highways.

Or surface roads. Once a month I can come out and sweep 2 or 3 cups of dust off my balcony from living next to a road.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#72

Post by fjeifisjf »

amelius wrote: post #70
_Microft wrote: post #32

Maybe offtopic but a surprising bit of extra information regarding wear and vehicles: Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two axles (e.g. VW Polo, maybe an older VW Golf might only weigh 1t as well): (8t axle load / 0.5t axle load) = 16^4, i.e. the truck puts 2^16 (6553…

> Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Yes. Electric vehicles with their heavy batteries also make things worse.

Not really. EVs are slightly heavy. Loaded trucks are much heavier.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#73

Post by ghouse »

amelius wrote: post #70
_Microft wrote: post #32

Maybe offtopic but a surprising bit of extra information regarding wear and vehicles: Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two axles (e.g. VW Polo, maybe an older VW Golf might only weigh 1t as well): (8t axle load / 0.5t axle load) = 16^4, i.e. the truck puts 2^16 (6553…

> Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Yes. Electric vehicles with their heavy batteries also make things worse.

Except no. The heaviest Tesla Model 3 weighs 4,100 lbs. The heaviest Ford F-150 (the most popular vehicle in the US) weighs 5,600 lbs.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#74

Post by forkexec »

dukoid wrote: post #65
abyssin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a hitchhiking ride in France with a man working in the building and infrastructure industry telling me about these figures, and the intense lobbying against transporting goods on rails...

In France the rubber tyre lobby is so strong, the got them on subway cars. No joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro

At Michelin, we're more than just Green guides, we put our tires on the subway cars and encourage protesters to use ours for all their tire fire needs.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#75

Post by pyrale »

dukoid wrote: post #65
abyssin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a hitchhiking ride in France with a man working in the building and infrastructure industry telling me about these figures, and the intense lobbying against transporting goods on rails...

In France the rubber tyre lobby is so strong, the got them on subway cars. No joke: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-tyred_metro

The subway has tires for technical reasons. Stations in the Paris subway are close enough that better acceleration times have a significant impact on travel time and peak-hour capacity.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#76

Post by wongarsu »

thinkcontext wrote: post #30

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. So this is based on n=1, very suspicious. If tires really were this big a source of PM emissions then how would levels in US cities gone down through vehicle pollution control measures. Something is not adding up here.

My understanding was always that tires produce a lot of particulates but they are fairly large and heavy; most of them fall out of the air very quickly.

If that's true it could be true that cars emit lots of PM from tyre wear but must of it never reaches detectors and can reasonably be ignored. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the overall point: that we reduced PM from exhaust enough that other still unregulated sources are better targets for future reduction efforts.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#77

Post by gambiting »

I also wonder about pollution from shoes with plastic soles - pretty much every pair I have ever owned, the sole just wears out gradually until there's nothing left. Where does this plastic go? It's just ground into fine powder and stays on our pavements? Is then washed with rainwater and goes into our soil? How come this isn't a problem yet? Or if it is - why isn't anyone talking about it?

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#78

Post by iso947 »

seattle_spring wrote: post #55
_Microft wrote: post #32

Maybe offtopic but a surprising bit of extra information regarding wear and vehicles: Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Take a 40t truck with 5 axles vs. a small car with a weight of 1t and two axles (e.g. VW Polo, maybe an older VW Golf might only weigh 1t as well): (8t axle load / 0.5t axle load) = 16^4, i.e. the truck puts 2^16 (6553…

This fact is especially pertinent when folks with their F150s demand that road bikes be taxed equally to use bike lanes.

Taxing by fourth power axel weight per mile sounds good

$10 for a bike doing 1000 miles a year, so 1 cent a mile. Gross axel weight about 100lb.

So axel weight of 1000lb would be $100 a mile.

F150 at 2500lb would be $4,000 a mile.

I suggest putting the first year on the sale price, so that $200 bike costs $210, and the $60k f150 costs $60 million.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#79

Post by iso947 »

wongarsu wrote: post #76
thinkcontext wrote: post #30

> Using a popular family hatchback running on brand new, correctly inflated tyres, we found that the car emitted 5.8 grams per kilometer of particles. So this is based on n=1, very suspicious. If tires really were this big a source of PM emissions then how would levels in US cities gone down through vehicle pollution control measures. Something is not adding up here.

My understanding was always that tires produce a lot of particulates but they are fairly large and heavy; most of them fall out of the air very quickly. If that's true it could be true that cars emit lots of PM from tyre wear but must of it never reaches detectors and can reasonably be ignored. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the overall point: that we reduced PM from exhaust enough that other still unregulated s…

Fall out of the air. Into the sewers. Then into the rivers, and then the sea, where they are broken up into microplastics and return in the food chain.

Re: Pollution from tire wear is worse than exhaust emissions?

#80

Post by nightski »

ghouse wrote: post #73
amelius wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Road wear scales with the fourth power of axle load, so heavier vehicles do much more damage than one might expect. Yes. Electric vehicles with their heavy batteries also make things worse.

Except no. The heaviest Tesla Model 3 weighs 4,100 lbs. The heaviest Ford F-150 (the most popular vehicle in the US) weighs 5,600 lbs.

Right but people buying F-150s are not buying Teslas. The use case is quite different. My Subaru Outback (a rather large car in comparison to the Tesla) is 3,600 lbs. But I doubt the increase in weight is a huge factor in environmental concerns.
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