L.A. keeps building near freeways, even though living there makes people sick
latimes.com
latimes.com
The article is properly scathing about the building of apartments with balconies and sliding doors not more than 100 feet from very busy freeways. But, it does not follow up on Garcetti's point: we need to be more aggressive in curtailing vehicle pollution. That's the root cause, after all.
As their particulate graphs point out, vehicle pollution has an 80/20 quality. A few vehicles cause a disproportionate amount of pollution - they cause the spikes in the graphs. This is also evident from driving around. You can clearly smell, and see, when you are following a badly tuned truck, or almost any 1970s and earlier car.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-emission_zone
The concept is used in many other European cities, too.
My right, and that of my family, friends, and community, to clean and pollution free air seems to be less important than someone else's individual right to drive the vehicle of their choosing and maintain it as their means allow. I know some States have emissions testing etc but that is not universal across the US.
I assume the assumption has always been that the market will slowly correct the issue and the fleet will change accordingly. But CAFE laws are of course a politicized issue.
So a 1970 car will still pollute as much as a 1970 car.
As I understand it older cars have higher allowable emissions, but the state has lowered those limits over the years.
>So a 1970 car will still pollute as much as a 1970 car.
In CA you are not required to get emissions testing for any car older than the 1975 model year. It used to be any car older than 30 years, but in 2005 they decided to leave it at 1975.
To the larger point, yes, older cars can be registered with emissions levels consistant with a well-maintained car from that year. Though the net effect of the rules is to take more older cars off the road, since much of the time when you fail emissions testing it's cheaper to replace the car than to fix it.
* We don't have /good/, /usable/, public transit that can replace vehicle use (outside of some high-density urban cores).
* We don't encourage sufficient building of housing /near jobs/ to reduce the need for commuting long distances.
* We don't encourage the building of family capacity housing in those same areas. (Again, to increase competition, decrease rent and increase more civilly minded communities in those areas.)
* The tax code and civic involvement that exist favor NIMBY, instead of targeting the future potential of an area (a corrective tax would be based on the /potential value/ of given land and what could be built on it, rather than it's current use).Too bad a recent study found that diesel cars (PKW) are much more polluting than previously thought (article in German). [0] They're even worse for emissions than modern trucks (LKW), at least in Europe.
We traded a very well known pollution source (old and/or badly tuned cars) for a new and previously unknown pollution source (diesel cars).
I do honestly think this is the beginning of the end for diesel cars. VW scandal aside, they're just more harmful than previously thought.
For me personally I'm excited for electric cars to reduce noise pollution in the city. You don't realize how loud normal cars are until you've ridden in an electric car, like a Tesla. It's night and day.
[0] http://www.spiegel.de/auto/aktuell/diesel-pkw-stossen-teils-...
People love balconies though. You'd have to push out government regulation to prevent them from buying condos with balconies.
> We find that reductions in traffic congestion generated by E-ZPass reduced the incidence of prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2km of a toll plaza by 6.7-9.1% and 8.5-11.3% respectively, with larger effects for African-Americans, smokers, and those very close to toll plazas.
https://www.princeton.edu/~jcurrie/publications/Traffic%20Co...
There are people who install "delete-pipes" though, and they should be taken out back and made to inhale what they spew.
Big lifted trucks spouting thick black smoke from their exhaust that leave behind little ashy flecks.
We've got a little '81 tractor that's a 3-cyc 1.4L diesel and if the wind blows the wrong way you definitely don't want to inhale too deeply. I'd love to convert it to Tier IV but there just aren't kits made for it.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-m...
Summary: Electric cars are much heavier, and therefore generate more brake dust, tire and road wear (and therefore constituent particulates), etc.
Edit: Downvote all you want, guys, but here's the source:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016...
Since they use regenerative braking, doesn't that reduce this?
Brake regeneration also avoids using the brake pedal altogether in many cases because an EV slows down significantly when the gas pedal is released.
With electric power, smaller brake pads, and less need to use them, I'm surprised the article believes there is only a 1% reduction in overall particle pollution for EV's vs. gas cars.
Plus, a typical EV is a small and modern 0-2 year old car compared to the gas vehicles out there, such as a 7-year-old, inefficient, v8 engine SUV.
If the brake pads are smaller and aren't required to slow down in many cases, the EV should win, especially when the average EV on the street is likely similar in weight compared to an average non-EV vehicle.
As far as kicking up existing particulate matter, EV's shouldn't be penalized for kicking up dust on the road which came from others cars, which are almost entirely non-EV cars and 18-wheelers.
I bet there are other more significant factors to derive impact on pollution from EVs than brake dust, such as the source of electricity used to charge them.
I'll try to look at the study later to see how the 1% difference between road pollution between gas and EV vehicles was calculated.
That's a pretty misleading statistic too. EV's are 24% heaver than the average subcompact. But most people are already driving cars significantly heavier than the lightest subcompacts.
According to the EPA, the actual average personal vehicle weight was 3,977 pounds in 2012. That is heavier than most EV's -- it's heavier than any Chevy Bolt, Volt, or Nissan Leaf ever sold.
For example, a 2017 Volt is lighter than a similarly-priced 2017 Avalon, even though the Volt has a 18.4kWH battery in it, does 53 miles zero-emission electric, and gets an extra 15mpg when using gasoline.
Regeneration is certainly a benefit, but in my experience with a few different EVs caps out at fairly low levels of braking.
Also, I don't know anyone who's replaced a V8 SUV with an EV. Most of the EV-owning people I know replaced hybrids, generally Priuses.
You may be right, but I'd like to see a source that runs contrary to this instead of pure conjecture:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016...
A Tesla 3 weighs 3,600 lb
A BMW 7-series G12 weighs 4,900 lb
A Tesla S P85D weighs 4,900 lb
Electric cars don't emit chemicals, or the atmospheric fine particles born from the condensation "sticky" hydrocarbon chemicals from the car exhaust fumes.
But the fine particles originating from the wear of tires, road surface and brakes will still remain with electric cars. (The utilization of the electric motor in braking could reduce the fine particles originating from brake pad wear, though.)
Coal is now more expensive than natural gas, which is why the coal mines are now shutting down.
In addition, even natural gas is going to have to fight the renewable energy sources as the costs will continue to go down for them.
So I'd rather have the system's efficiencies improve in a few places instead of the tens of millions of cars that would have to be changed in the long run.
I've been curious what straws the anti-car people would grasp at once combustion engines are gone.
Unless the movement to have electric cars play loud noises at all times "for public safety" gets its way.
In a stylized argument, someone hypes electric cars as eliminating the pollution that comes from gas cars. Then someone points out that the pollution isn't eliminated, it's just moved away from the process of running the car into the process of generating electricity.
But regardless of whether there's less or more pollution after switching to electric cars, it seems like a big win for all the pollution to be off at the power plant instead of hanging over LA.
I know of more than 1 study which has proven serious adverse health effects for people living near traffic axis. It's so obvious: constant noise keeps your stress level high 24 hours a day, and air pollution adds damage to the brain, lungs, cardiovascular system, etc.
Prices seem to be driven less by smog and more by neighborhood quality. In the SF Valley, locations south of the 101 tend to have better schools, less crime, proximity to the hills and west side, etc. The 101 itself seems to serve as a barrier between good neighborhoods and less-good ones.
Perhaps something similar can be noted in San Francisco, again, around the 101 freeway, where it divides the Mission District from Potrero Hill. I mean, the wind is very often out of the west, blowing that smog up across Potrero Hill.
[1] http://news.mit.edu/2013/study-air-pollution-causes-200000-e...
Simi is also more family-oriented if that is the type of city you are looking for.
I can't give any more info, since I personally stick to downtown, hollywood, silver lake, and north hollywood (in other words, far away from the west side).
The real questions are the usual: where are you going to work? what do you consider a reasonable commute? and finally, how much can you afford?
I would suggest looking for an apartment in West LA or Mar Vista instead, but that's going to be a 1-bedroom apartment.
Good luck! My email is in my profile if you have any more questions.