Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

One would also expect that EVs wouldn't emit that many particles from brakes since the brakes typically wear much more slowly than with ICE cars.

Then from what the pollution in the subway come from ?

Greens seem to deceive in the same way as green-washing except with greener deceptions (whereas green-washing is capitalists pretending to be green).

Example: a report on the cost-benefit of using bicycles, that comes out with a fantastic positive number for introducing a cycle lane. Except the number depends on a monetary estimate of the benefits to society for health improvements. I'm sure the health improvements exist, and it wouldn't surprise me that the health benefits to society were well estimated. The problem is that by cherry-picking benefits you can simply ignore all monetary benefits of cars (no benefits for cars were mentioned as I recall).

I've seen it in other articles which talk sacharrinely about the benefit of some green tech. But ignoring real costs and certainly not being balanced. The ultra-idealistic greenies are not helping their cause when rubbish is repeated.

Yeah, but brakes are not not made from pure iron and you won't have atomic erosion. Silly argument, really. Notoriously, you could still find brake pads with asbestos not too long ago. Pretty much any fine dust is very unhealthy to inhale, but brakes and tires are made from material mixes you really don't want to breath in. Even the "inert" fraction we find as microplastics in everything, the rain, fish and newborn, and we're only beginning to understand their biological reactivity and long term health consequences.

the break pad and tire particles in question are not so large they precipitate immediately. They aren't iron but rather real/synthetic rubber and other organics. There is research on them being bad for human health.

This is certainly a possibility for city cars. In the Netherlands there are a lot more 45kph mini cars driving around now. They were a thing in the past with moped engines but with electric drive trains all these solutions become much more viable. With the low speeds crashes are also less dangerous so everything becomes lighter.

A similar thing is happening with electric bikes and scooters. This was all possible with gasoline but with the lower mechanical complexity this is really taking off.

This results in a wider range for bike like vehicles which replaces a lot of car trips.

The real hurdle to people getting rid of their mostly stationary cars (not everyday for work drivers) is that renting a car is a horrible experience and car shares are also bad mostly. But as the space for personal cars shrinks I suspect this will improve over time.

Seeing as we’re talking Paris, there are plenty of Twizys around. Not light light, but a third the weight of even a new Renault 5 EV. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_Twizy

> What if the cars were made really light?

That is the best answer.

For a little while in the 80s (remnants of the fuel crisis of the 70s) this was the trend. Go light and then efficiency is guaranteed. Combine with a small efficient engine and that's the optimal solution. A CRX HF from 1988 could do 44 MPG, with an engine that compared to current fuel injection technology is very crude and inefficient.

I want to buy a car that is basically this CRX HF but with 25+ years of engine and materials improvements. It could easily be a 1500lb car getting 60MPG.

But, no. Manufacturers (to some extent forced by terrible government rules) have gone heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier. Which is worse in every possible way.

Colin Chapman had it right: simplify, then add lightness.

Cotroen ami

https://www.citroen.co.uk/ami

A really light car would either have to be limited to a very low speed or be terribly unsafe in case of a crash. Since lightness implies small size, it would also not have other desirable properties of cars, like their ability to carry passengers and cargo.

That said, there might be something to it:

1. The "bicycle that's more like a car" angle: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/H0jtCfdvwH4, https://youtu.be/9B0eXmbrBIo?t=30

2. The "car that's more like a bicycle" angle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9ly7JjqEb0

You just don’t want to crash with something like that. If all cars were build like that it might even be ok but try crashing into a normal sized car…

Aptera is shooting for 2,200 lbs with enough performance to handle highway speeds with two people and some cargo. It has three wheels and extreme aerodynamics.

https://aptera.us/article/how-does-the-weight-of-aptera-comp...

Looks like the Renault Twizy is only 990lbs with a 28 mph top speed, so a much smaller vehicle.

If EVs don’t emit tailpipe emissions then 100% of their emissions will be those things. They’re also heavier and so have more tire wear. It seems not unintuitive to me that their emissions might push the boundaries of strict modern emissions standards.

For taxing cars, you’re still leaving so much car infrastructure out there. It swallows the world. Six months ago for the first time ever I got a job where I could bike to work. The world is so much different from a bike. It becomes clear how dangerous cars are to humans, and how they chop up our cities in to little rectangles. I’m constantly at risk of being hit by cars that don’t stop. I love being on my bike. I feel like I’m part of the world. I ride rain or shine thanks to nice gear. We give up so much to have a world with cars. We could move our road budgets to trains and bike paths and have so much more space and health and life.

My desire not to inhale brake & tire particulate, not to be killed while walking to the store, and not to subsidize others expensive lifestyles, is not rooted in jealousy.

I owned a car once, it was sometimes convenient, interesting & fun, but it was also often infuriating, terrifying and expensive. If I can pull it off, I'd prefer to never own one again. I don't really care if anyone else owns them, I just don't want to subsidize them or have their externalities imposed on me.

An alternative to outright bans is to make some good faith attempt at estimating externalities and internalizing them, and reducing subsidies such as free, or below market rate public land for private vehicle operation & storage. But this is difficult and it's not clear the politics of it would be much better than an outright bans. If a good faith effort determined that operating a car while not being subsidized and not inflicting externalities on others, cost a significant amount of money, then the whole effort would be castigated as limiting driving to the very rich, and probably wouldn't go very far. So it feels like we end up with either "everyone drives everywhere all the time for everything and it's the govt's job to shovel public funds & land at it" or outright bans in popular areas.

Cars, oil, and the internal combustion engine, are all tremendously useful, and we would be foolish to pretend otherwise. But all tools have their ideal uses and all tools can be misused & overused to bad ends, both for the tool user and for others.

A world of 100% gasoline car ownership where the car was simply a fun toy for kick ass weekend road trips, and cities had never been bulldozed to make room for them as substitutes for our legs, would be a pretty great world, even if it involved a bit more pollution/externalities/subsidies than some utopian car free world.

It's not "jealousy"... I've lived in a city where having a car was virtually mandatory, and I've lived in a city where you could safely bike everywhere. There's NO QUESTION which one I prefer.

Even my most reactionary and car-loving extended family members had this opinion when they visited :)

Cities have a positive environmental impact when you compare it with spreading the same population in villages across thousands of miles.

It would be an insane amount of roads, cabling, water pipes, etc.

Cities are bad for human health, but good for the environment.

> If you really hate air pollution, move to the country and be willing to sacrifice the advantages of cities.

i really do hate air pollution! it drove me away from idaho, where 2-3 months of the year massive forest fires would choke the air and force everyone inside (gave my kids asthma).

we recently moved away from a suburb near two highways, out to a rural area where we are half a mile from the nearest paved road.

besides the lowered air pollution, the lower noise pollution is a huge benefit. hearing birds instead of traffic is amazing. and my kids don’t choke in their sleep any more!

Lighter cars, really, that's it. Make vehicles that match the transportation case in question instead of palaces on wheels that carry battery sized for solving some once in a year use case.

And/or make them go slower.

I don’t know about tires, but for brakes we already know how to make lower dust brakes - use drum brakes instead of disc brakes. The friction material is enclosed on drum brakes so much less of it just flies away.

Regenerative braking would tend to reduce particulates from friction braking.

EU is introducing limits for this as part of the Euro 7 standard, which is spurring various tech improvements.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we make great strides in this at the rate that materials science is barrelling along

Regenerative braking helps with brake dust, but is probably offset by extra tyre wear on EVs. I go weeks without using the brakes and usually don’t even touch the brake pedal.

Normal car designers who aren't drug-addicted sociopaths have already more than solved this problem. If you put hard, narrow, high-lifetime tires on small diameter wheels you get a car that it more efficient, quieter, cheaper to operate, and pollutes less in terms of particulate matter. If you are Elon Musk you sell a car with totally inappropriate summer racing tires on 20-inch wheels and the owners have to replace the whole set every year.

Good point.

I'm quite sure it was brake dust because during COVID 19 lockdowns everything was the same (heating etc) but streets were void of cars.

Then I've read some scientific article about brake with pics and it looked exactly as what I got inside my house.

I can't conclude 100% it was it (or just it), but it seems to be the most probable cause along tires.

I live in a house next to a moderately busy street with car traffic and also some public transport (bus lines). I noticed that the windows (and frames) facing the street get dirty much faster than the windows facing the garden. The dirt on the street side is also pretty gross, sticky and hard to clean. It's just an anecdotal observation, but I could not come up with a better explanation so far.

Only electric vehicules are allowed inside the ZFE.

By a miniscule amount - probably less pollution than that produced by people walking.

It's proportional to weight, so I imagine bicycles are negligible.

Yes, but so do humans walking. The proportions matter.

Yes cars are bikes

Poor taxes are not a great solution with respect to equality.

This is a bad approach. At least if its only that.

In Manhatten this works because there is already a decent public transport, already a culture of waking and an established culture of biking.

You can just force people into better cities with punishing taxes. You actually have make the roads safer, provide alternatives and so on. And this is easier said then done, almost all cities in the US have zoning codes and other laws that make it completely impossible to build decent urban infrastructure. And the traffic standards are literally 100% backwards to providing safety.

In fact, because the traffic standards are so bad that less cars actually kill more people. This is because a lot of traffic slows down vehicle speeds on avg.

So basically, if all you are doing is forcing less people to drive, without doing anything else, you are just gone make the roads unsafer, and not improve the city or the lives of most people.

I frequently drive through 20 mph areas with little stop start traffic. I rarely drive at busy times.

There is nowhere in the UK I can think of that has had a 50 limit in my lifetime that requires frequent breaking. 20 mph limits are invariably reduced from 30.

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, it’s literally, objectively true.

The only reason Carnegie built 1500 public libraries is because he knew otherwise there was a good chance some vigilantes would take things into their own hands and he and his family would hang.

Yes, it sucks that the only way to reach the rich and powerful is to harm women, children and property. But at least the rich and powerful of old knew this, and preemptively prevented it.

New billionaires are far too cavalier. They believe themselves invisible, and it shows in their utter disrespect onto the average people. Where is our philanthropy? Why do you not fear for your life?

We have become too civilized, and allowed the evil to laugh in our faces.

Do you perhaps see a difference between "massive strikes" and "destroying your neighbor's property?"

The suffrage movement in the UK also had a militant component:

> The tactics of the [Women’s Social and Political Union] included shouting down speakers, hunger strikes, stone-throwing, window-smashing, and arson of unoccupied churches and country houses. In Belfast, when in 1914 the Ulster Unionist Council appeared to renege on an earlier commitment to women's suffrage,[27] the WSPU's Dorothy Evans (a friend of the Pankhursts) declared an end to "the truce we have held in Ulster." In the months that followed WSPU militants (including Elizabeth Bell, the first woman in Ireland to qualify as a doctor and gynaecologist) were implicated in a series of arson attacks on Unionist-owned buildings and on male recreational and sports facilities.

This influenced the US suffrage movement, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_the_Unit... , even during WWI: "groups like the National Woman's Party that continued militant protests during wartime were criticized by other suffrage groups and the public, who viewed it as unpatriotic."

What if the owner haven't even paid back a 5-year loan for the car?

People wouldn't use publicly-owned cars, they would used publicly-owned buses, trams, subways, and other forms of mass transit, plus (as the article points out), making it easier to walk or bike.

I believe the goal of limiting car use in Paris is as part of re-designing the city so it can be lived in without having to use cars, yes.

I've seen this "car free utopia" idea dismissed as an idea by and for "elites" (see Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's comments on people who ride the subway in NYC) plenty of times as a tactic to avoid doing anything about reducing dependence on cars. It's quite a counterproductive argument in my opinion. Even if there are well paid tech workers who are able to enjoy a "car-free lifestyle", why should it end there?

Just because the system we created means that currently the only affordable place for the working poor is in suburbs where they must rely on cars doesn't mean that it needs to continue to be that way. You can support building infill housing and adding transit to eventually reduce the need for so many people to have cars.

It's one thing to call it "bias" and use that as an argument to not make things better instead of coming up with ways to help make car independence available to everyone across classes.

A friend of mine is writing a history of the Massachusetts Hill towns. The Strathmore paper company plays a big part in that history the mill owners built housing for their workers within walking distance of the mills.

I also know of a tourism industry company that is buying up older hotels that are no longer competitive in the local market to use as seasonal worker housing.

There are solutions other than having someone drive a beater for 45 minutes to get to a low paying job.

When I look around on the subway here in NYC I see every type of person imaginable. There are wealthy people going to work and unhoused people and everyone in between. There are certainly transit deserts and I have friends that live in them who do have cars -- largely out in Queens, East New York, etc -- but many of the people I know in the city with cars are financially doing just fine.

It's also important to note that the extreme cost of living in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn is relatively recent. My friends that grew up here in the 80s, taking the subway to school, were far from bougie. They were living a car free lifestyle then and now just because that's how the environment of many parts of NYC is built. It's not like NYC was constructed as a walking paradise only for wealthy people in the 19th century.

The working poor struggles to find work and stays poor also because mobility.

By the way that's not something I'm making up, it was literally told me by several people in struggling neighborhoods, lacking a car can be easily make a difference for many between being able or not to have different opportunities in life.

Might be different elsewhere but it made sense to me.

You are completely correct about the bias on HN against cars: that will change when they get older and have kids. Not everyone is a young single urbanite working remotely or downtown.

Wasn't GP specifically complaining about the other half not being able to enjoy the "car-free lifestyle"? (/not be forced to use the car to live their life.)

Thank you for saying this. My household is smack dab in the middle of a food dessert. We have a 25 year old car we got 10 years ago for $2000, and we use it primarily to go to the nice supermarket because you can get fresh, non moldy food at prices better than you can at the sketchy “supermarkets” and bodegas that always have rotting, moldy and non rotated food products on shelves. I do most of the shopping and I keep the freezer full of meat we can get on sale (just got 7 pounds of chicken wings for 2.49 a pound this week) and cook through that. A lot of the types in spaces like these don’t know how to cook and just use services like grubhub, and thinks everyone should too, or they buy 8 dollar a pound organic chicken thighs from Whole foods the day of. Everybody doesn’t live this way.

Also, I use the bus and train to go downtown and places where it would take an hour to find a parking spot. I even lug big bags of food from Aldi on the crowded bus at rush hour weekly. I don’t know why it has to be either you drive everywhere or never need a car in these discussions. Use what you need to use given the situation.

Just one example. He required bridges be built too low for buses to pass, limiting access to parks and beaches to those who owned cars…

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...

The prices of cars have “skyrocketed” because the price is now closer to what they actually cost. Meaning, less is being externalized.

Cars are inequality-creators because the drivers offload the cost to everyone, including those who don’t drive. Car centric decisions, air pollution, interstates and freeways, parking lots.

It’s very much akin to tobacco. Tobacco used to be cheap - when the tobacco wouldn’t pay for your addiction, or your COPD, or your eventual death. Now they do - a tiny bit - and tobacco is expensive.

Work from home is great, but there’s more to life than work. Being walking distance or public transport distance to the rest of life’s activities is also great. And EVs aren’t saving the planet they are saving the car industry. They still cause tire particulate pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, and need tons of rare earth minerals

Private cars are an economic sinkhole. They make no financial sense. My town in the exurbs used to have rail service and stagecoaches. The necessity of private cars is a marketing triumph. Not a choice.

I drive an EV. I am not under the mistaken impression that it’s zero emission (or even close).

It emits particulates locally and power-generation-related emissions at the fossil fuel plant that provides the majority of my grid power.

Is it better than an ICE? Probably. Is it “basically zero emission”? Nope.

Not everyone has to ride a bus or a train. They can stay home if they want.

I understand a large amount of car pollution these days is due to the tires.

Yet RTO is in full enforcement all over the place, sadly.

Like I said, litany of excuses.

If you really don’t like cars, you’ll find a way to minimize use of them.

If you really don’t mind cars that much you’ll make up stories about how if buses and trains and bike lanes were more attractive then people would use them more.

I guarantee that if every American city had an ideal bus and train system, people would still find excuses and reasons to justify driving their cars.

That's the myth. Streetcars were actually torn up because busses were much cheaper, there was no conspiracy. The streetcars were also old and cold and ppl hated them.

(I lived in a streetcar part of SF, and loved it, fwiw. But the only reason it's still there is a tunnel.)

The problem is that, among casualties, you create an environment that is hostile for families and disabled people.

We still have that danger. But the animals are homo sapiens and they are surrounded by 2 tonnes of metal. :)

It seems you want to ignore half the problem.

The improvement in air quality is overwhelmingly a result of banning diesel cars. It is, of course, possible to ban diesel cars rather than all cars.

The people who live in the city don't want cars because it's the people who can't afford to live in the city who need them to get there.

You clearly have a non-existent knowledge of French political life. This referendum had a participation rate of 4%, and only 62% of the voters voted yes. So around 2% of the total voters.

By the way, the French metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women.

So yeah, it's manageable for young people. But when a baby arrives, it's hell. Same if you are old. Or disabled.