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Comment by thinelvis | Hacker News Reader

Truck traffic in LA is by far the problem, not so much the car traffic (though that is horrible, based on the population).

Ships come into Long Beach, the containers are offloaded, the trucks begin a lumbering journey to points East. Belching all the way.

I'm not making up the claim. California rules put in place over ten years ago had trucks retrofitted or whatever, and this change to TRUCKS ONLY was like removing 30 MILLION cars from California roads. There are not 30 million trucks in California, though sometimes it appears so.

http://4cleanair.org/DieselTrucks.pdf

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The ports of LA and LB handle something like 40% of the US-China trade.

There are "clean trucks" requirements, but that can be enforced only in the immediate vicinity of the port. I don't have a source but there have been reports that the clean trucks shuttle back and forth between the port and nearby places where the cargo can be transferred to other trucks.

Don’t forget that in 2015 the NAFTA requirements that allow Mexican trucks on US roads were fully put into effect so now we’ve got heavily polluting Mexican trucks on Southern California roads now.

Is there a quota on that ? If not, I predict this will follow the same pattern it took in Western Europe, where low-cost of labor Eastern Europe companies are slowly taking over long distance trucking. The limiter of the rate of change is the number of available EE long-distance drivers, which the companies hiring have vacuumed clean.

I got on the 710 once heading south and it was a whole different world in which it felt like there was an unbreakable chain of trucks. It also felt extremely dangerous since they really didn't care about breaking that chain to let you into a lane if you needed to exit.

Once was enough.

I wonder if Tesla's truck fleet could help change the situation

> Truck traffic in LA is by far the problem

Any citation on that? The article itself says the peak of pollution isn't as high, just the longevity. The article also mentions climate change modifying weather patterns which could be a contributor. As someone who lived in LA you're always preying for rain to wash out ash or smog from nearby fires (which seem more common) or pollution and precipitation has been rarer over the past few years.

No doubt reducing pollution (and trucks have been a huge contributor) will help, but since you mentioned Long Beach, boats have very few regulations and burn giant amounts of the lowest-quality fuel.

An addition, a bunch of recent studies I've seen over the past few years show that up to 30% of the air pollution on the west coast comes from Asia.

It just seems like something that should be addressed on multiple fronts and with things objectively getting worse, every bit helps.

Trucks and shops are definitley one of the biggest problems for riverside. These are the biggest source of pm2.5 precursors because the wind patterns basically funnel all of the LA basin atmosphere out there and the pollution transforms over the 24-36 hr journey.

I used to work for air pollution regulators. I don’t have the citations but I’ve seen the presentations.

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