Paris Bans Half of All Cars On the Road 405
cartechboy writes "Pollution is becoming a very large issue in major cities due to the amount of vehicles on the road. To try and help this issue Paris just banned all vehicles on alternate odd and even license plates today and tomorrow. Of course, electric cars and hybrids are exempt from the new restrictions as they aren't part of the problem, rather they are seen as part of the solution. Naturally taxis, buses, emergency vehicles, and cars carrying three or more passengers (hooray for carpooling) are also exempt. High levels of particulate matter are blamed for all the various respiratory diseases, while higher oxides of nitrogen are a primary cause of smog. We'd have to say that this ban probably won't be the last one as traffic levels increase over time."
purchase time (Score:5, Funny)
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Or you could go the legal route and buy a cheap car for the days when your primary vehicle cant be driven. Odd or even days respectively.
Are they also going to ban all those bloody scooters in paris. Those things are cheap to drive and the exhaust is filthy.
Re:purchase time (Score:5, Informative)
Are they also going to ban all those bloody scooters in paris. Those things are cheap to drive and the exhaust is filthy.
Those things are serious polluters, both chemical and noise. There's nothing that ruins a nice stroll down the Seine like the grating buzz of a 2-stroke with CVT. And the way they just pile them on the sidewalks everywhere.. ugh.
Re:purchase time (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think he is talking about 50cc models, which are usually 2-stroke.
Because anyone older than 14 can drive one, even without a license, they are the most common type. (Note : a license is now required in certain cases, but the requirements are still much lower than with 125cc models).
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Re:purchase time (Score:5, Informative)
99% of the responses below (and above) are irrelevant because they ignore that very simple fact.
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No, because it's a ONE DAY BAN, and the first one since 1997. Even-numbered plates today, odd tomorrow. It's a specific measure for specific atmospheric conditions that made things smoggy in Paris at the moment.
99% of the responses below (and above) are irrelevant because they ignore that very simple fact.
Welcome to /.
If jumping to conclusions was an Olympic event, all the gold medallists would be here.
Re:Its silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Those don't cause smog in your own city, and transport represents over a quarter of all energy usage, so gotta call BS on the general "Drop in the bucket" principle you're pushing as well.
It's only true if you're ignoring both the context, and giving a lot of wiggle room for the phrase "drop in the bucket".
Re:Its silly (Score:5, Funny)
The bucket holds four drops.
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Paris can only control their environment, not the industrial policies of another country. Like it or not, they're doing what they can do.
They can make a stink about it in the EU, probably file a lawsuit somewhere.
You don't have to put up with pollution from your neighbor and neither does an entire country.
Re:Its silly (Score:5, Insightful)
The combined pollution of all the cars on the road in the entire country of France is a tiny drop in the bucket of pollution caused by industrial waste, mostly from poor countries struggling to get a foothold in the global economy.
They are plugging a leak in the wall while ignoring the torrent pouring out of the wide open window right next to it.
Talking about silly, you didn't read any of the article in question did you? They are addressing a local smog problem. Please elaborate on how limiting local pollution in the city of Paris is an ineffective way of reducing the local smog problem in the city of Paris?
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Which of the "poor countries" right next door to France are causing all the smog in Paris? This is specifically to reduce extreme air pollution in the city that has been peaking quite high recently.
They are not trying to solve all pollution with this measure, nor is it permanent.
Mexico City tried this... (Score:4, Interesting)
The found that people bought cheap older, less environment-friendly second vehicles so they could bypass the restrictions, making the problem worse.
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There's a 100+ points inspection every two years for all cars older than 4 years, including smog. It's not free.
Then again, if you can somehow afford to park a second car inside Paris (or any major euro/asia town) just for the rare day when pollution is an issue, you probably don't care about the cost of owning said car...
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A modern ULEV vehicle (which is most of the smaller imports available in America) has effectively no pollution, and certainly no particulate matter. The old joke was that driving a ULEV car through LA would actually clean the air (and that was likely true on a bad day).
Banning older vehicles solves a real problem. Imposing emissions standards on lawncare equipment solves a real problem. This is just feelgood nonsense.
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Imposing emissions standards on lawncare equipment solves a real problem.
Banning two stroke engines would do so much for our air quality. I have read that Briggs & Stratton have a lot of clout in Congress and have worked to shoot down multiple attempts at regulating small engines.
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They've failed. 2 stroke engines have a maximum allowed displacement which is progressing steadily down. Down to weedeaters today.
They will get my 2 stoke Toro lawnmower when they pull it from my cold dead fingers. Yamaha motor, it will likely outlive me.
Also note: Briggs & Stratton might once have had a lot of clout. Before they moved production to China. Today, not so much.
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The standards [wikipedia.org] keep getting better fast.
The old cars are weeded out by the other "safety" inspection points:
Broken light? fail!
Shoddy suspension? fail!
Leak on any fluid? fail!
You can fix it, until you realize that your old car is costing you two grand every other year, just to pass obscure inspection points. So you get a newer less polluting one, or take the Metro.
The cars and parts makers love it, except that people now only buy if they have to.
I don't understand how the US hasn't caught up with this yet. W
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So then you just buy a new second-hand car that has just passed the inspection.
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The standards [wikipedia.org] keep getting better fast.
The old cars are weeded out by the other "safety" inspection points: Broken light? fail! Shoddy suspension? fail! Leak on any fluid? fail! You can fix it, until you realize that your old car is costing you two grand every other year, just to pass obscure inspection points. So you get a newer less polluting one, or take the Metro. The cars and parts makers love it, except that people now only buy if they have to.
I don't understand how the US hasn't caught up with this yet. When you see the deathtraps on US roads, it would be easy to line up car maker pockets with "safety" maintenance requirements. To "protect the children" of course...
In Houston (and most medium to large cities in the US) we have similar standards and requirements. And in our house we have a 2007 Subaru, and a 1988 Toyota Pickup (Hi-Lux to the rest of the world) that we drive daily. Guess which one runs better, and costs less to maintain? Let me give you a hint... When it is time for a new car, the Subaru is going... And the "New" car may be more mature than you think.
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Even when I lived in Illinois, they checked my VIN. Which state has smog inspections where they only check the plates?
Why would I want two identical cars just so that one of them can freely fail the smog check?
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If Paris only does this once or twice, it can work. However, if this is done often, then people will buy vehicles just to have both types of plates.
Another way that this can be handled is to have the digit on the license plate be different each time for a ban. So, some cars might differ with the last digit, but the second digit may be the same, which would accomplish the objective.
Not saying the objective is helpful, but Paris is different from Mexico City because they tend to have more modes of transport
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America is a country. North America and South America are continents.
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America as in the continent, not the United States.
"The Americas" is the term you are looking for.
Re:Mexico City tried this... (Score:4, Informative)
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Ask someone parking in a US metropolis what they think of an 11 Euros fine, and they'll point at the nearest car park, which asks for more than that, sometimes twice, for the first half hour...
They've got room to raise the tickets, the Provinciaux will be amused at the outrage.
Carpooling (Score:3, Insightful)
So what happens when it's my day to drive the carpool, and I need to go pick up everyone? I'm the only person in the car when I set out.
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Yeah,(almost) anyone already living inside the city has enough public transit at their disposal that carpooling isn't going to be the sensible solution to this requirement.
Re:Carpooling (Score:4, Informative)
Carpooling typically covers only the city itself.
If you live in the city - then you normally take the mass transit.
If you live outside the city, then you pick up your carpooling friends outside the city.
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Re:Carpooling (Score:5, Funny)
Time to buy a few RealDolls.
No, really Mom! It's for the car pool!
Paris wasn't built for cars (Score:4, Insightful)
The traffic in Paris will collapse long before smog will become a problem on most days of the year. Like most old European cities, Paris just wasn't built for cars. A traffic jam of electric cars is not going to help.
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you can hear the symphony of horns a lot better with the pesky idling ICEs...
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like a lot of old european cities paris has an old part that's a tourist trap and a new modern part where most of the work and living gets done
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Misleading headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a new concept, still an interesting development.
But they didn't ban half of the cars, they banned half of the driving.
Is not going to work! (Score:5, Interesting)
In Bogota, Colombia (almost 8 millions of inhabitants) this measure is called "Pico y Placa". The natural answer from the people was buy a second car, so they will have two or more cars, some with even license plate and some with odd license plate. As a result, the number of cars nearly doubles itself making worst the solution than the original problem.
Re:Is not going to work! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah. It only works in the short term. In the long term what can be done is the same thing they do in Singapore. They have a limited number of license plates for driving all week and those are auctioned. Weekend only license plates have no such restrictions.
They dump the auction profits into the public transportation system.
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That almost sounds like cap-and-trade. Apparently such market-based solutions are too much for Americans these days, and they will call them communism.
Re:Is not going to work! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah. It only works in the short term. In the long term what can be done is the same thing they do in Singapore. They have a limited number of license plates for driving all week and those are auctioned. Weekend only license plates have no such restrictions.
They dump the auction profits into the public transportation system.
Singapore is a small, very connected city with a very good public transport system and extremely well regulated taxi system (which makes them incredibly cheap, I've never paid over SG$30 for a cab from any two points in SIN), in fact Singapore taxi's are so well regulated your average libertarian would die of fright (especially considering how cheap they are).
So limiting the number of cars works well in a place like Singapore, but it wouldn't work in many other cities including Paris
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But hey, it would solve the problem with the failing car industry, European countries have been trying for years to increase car sales, this could just be the solution!
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If you can afford the extra hundred thousand dollar(s) for the dedicated parking spot with your house in Paris, your taxes will cover any issues that come up from having a second car =P
(Disclaimer: I don't know if things work the same way on the other side of the ocean, but buying a second parking spot where I live would bring me down $100k)
Meh (Score:2)
That's a good thing, By t
environmental standards of 50 years ago (Score:2)
Smog and levels of particulate matter in large cities are generally a lot lower compared to before the 60s, when a lot of people still heated their houses with coal fires.
Surprisingly, standards for environmental conditions have improved in the last 50 years, particularly given the voluminous amount of evidence on how pollution negatively impacts public health, infrastructure, and nature.
Standard in São Paulo - Brazil, for years now (Score:4, Insightful)
São Paulo has had car circulation restrictions based on plate number for years now (more than a decade, too lazy to check exactly when). Mon-Fri, each day a couple different numbers aren't allowed on the streets.
The streets are still clogged, still polluted as hell. Government says it improved things. I can only imagine what it would be like without this restriction, then.
License Plate (Score:2)
Were I a Parisian I would have a custom tag comprised of only letters, thus avoiding the even / odd rule. "SMOG" would be a fitting choice. (yeah yeah, I'm sure custom license plates are mainly an American thing)
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they are. You can't get a custom plates in France I think. (Thought, you might be able to get plates from an other european country which might help you here)
Surprising (Score:2)
Florance Italy Been Doing this Since mid 90's (Score:2)
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Having driven in Florance (Firenza) was the fact that you couldn't find your way around! 10 minutes to get into the city center (to a parking lot) and 45 minutes to get back out. It's like a roach motel! At least the three times I've driven there it's always been crowded and sure the government cracks down on who's driving within the city but it's still an overcrowded mess with all the tourists. Yeah, me included in that.
Diesels are better? (Score:2)
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Europe has far more diesels in passenger car use than is typical in the US, the particulate and Nitrogen Oxides are not nearly as much a problem for gasoline engines as diesel.
Diesels with catalysts are just as clean as gassers. They produce more NOx but less of every other kind of emissions. We used to think that gassers didn't produce as much soot as diesels, but we found out that the test methodology was flawed and poor at detecting PM2.5s. So as it turns out, gassers produce just as much soot as diesels while making more CO and CO2 but less NOx. Further, diesel fuel is far more biodegradable than gasoline, and the consequences for a spill are less; it's also less volatile tha
My perception - (Score:2)
My perception in having visited Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Grenoble, Firenze is that a fair amount of the road pollution comes not from cars but from Vespas and similar scooters and small-engine motorcycles. Lots of people living within these cities rely on such vehicles, and just judging from my nose, they are big contributors to smog. I realize that it's often the most economical means of getting around for students and other younger people. Also for cities that were laid out before the internal combusti
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My perception in having visited Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Grenoble, Firenze is that a fair amount of the road pollution comes not from cars but from Vespas and similar scooters and small-engine motorcycles. Lots of people living within these cities rely on such vehicles, and just judging from my nose, they are big contributors to smog.
I'm not sure about this, but I think those vehicles burn oil by design [howstuffworks.com] as part of their operation. The lubricating oil is mixed with the gasoline before it enters the piston.
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Scooters and small motorcycles have been moving to 4-strokes for while now. There used to be pre-mix stations for 2-stroke mopeds when I was a kid, i can't say I have seen one in the last two decades.
People don't like having to mix their oil, the remaining two-strokes are a dying breed.
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I've seen that too - you should have seen traffic at the freeway between Singapore and Malaysia - on each side there's a toll booth with one side for mopeds and motorbikes, and another side for cars. Since all the cars had catalytic converters, the air was clean. On the side with the mopeds, a thick bluish-gray smog obscured visibilty for hundreds of meters.
Cars (Score:2)
Particularly, all white Fiat Unos (Score:2)
Delivery Vehicles? (Score:2)
What about delivery vehicles? They normally have one driver so they don't get the three people exemption. Guess you won't be getting your food.
How does the carpooling thing work? (Score:2)
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The goal is to ban them, with some exceptions, not to allow them, with some exceptions.
If you have a big family, or if people can take the subway to your place and you're all going to the same mall, it works. Otherwise, tough.
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Most people that drive in paris do not live in paris. They typically live in the suburbs (which are different towns) and drive to paris.
OLD NEWS (Score:5, Insightful)
This is already done in Mexico City. The net result has been to INCREASE pollution. While air quality in the city did not change at all, residents simply kept their old car when they bought another one. Now they had 2 cars and could drive every day of the week because they had different plates. As a result they kept older cars that might have been salvaged running longer, producing more pollutants over the long run and also forcing the poor that could only afford one car to be the only group in compliance with the spirit of the law. Car purchases in Mexico city sky rocketed while new car production remained stagnant, meaning people were buying older used cars. Basically this law caused Mexico city to suck in every 20 year old jalopy from every neighboring city and town just so residents could get to work on time.
There have been many studies done on this. Here's just the first that popped up in Google.
Citation:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~in... [rutgers.edu]
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See my comment far above about the cost of keeping an old car legal...
A better plan... (Score:2)
...would be to internalize the full cost of burning fuel into the price of the fuel, then use that revenue to pay the external cost [wikipedia.org] of burning fuel. Then people would drive less and the people who get respiratory illnesses would have their health care and lost work days paid for. (In single-payer countries, the revenue to the government should be offset by lower tax rates.)
This is a better plan if you believe that a market-based solution to the economic problem [wikipedia.org] is better than rationing, and if you believe t
Re:Paris had cars? (Score:5, Informative)
You built your cities so that biking, walking or taking the train isn't an option. That's that difference. Many people in Europe, most even, use cars daily, but they're not used for everything by everyone. If people want to take the train or ride a bicycle, they can, because the infrastructure exists. Imagine the traffic jams and the smog if these people also drove their cars everywhere.
Think you miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)
You built your cities so that biking, walking or taking the train isn't an option. That's that difference.
But read again what he is saying. That despite the fact that yes, european cities are often built to be more friendly to bikes/walking/mass transit, they still have a LOT of cars. So how much did it really help to design a city to facilitate this when they still have vast pollution issues from cars?
In a small counterpoint, I'm not sure Paris is really a city that embraces bikes to the same extent places like Amsterdam or Copenhagen do... and I think you are making an overly blanket statement about U.S. cities, I don't know if you know but there are quite a few large U.S. cities where you can get around very well via mass transit or bike. I found it nearly as easy to bike around San Francisco (even with the hills!) as in Amsterdam.
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Insightful)
NYC is the largest city on our continent, and also one of the oldest. Infrastructure design isn't the reason for most Americans using cars. It's the fact that most of our cities have very separate housing and business districts, and there's no practical way to transport everyone 30+ miles each way every day to work, especially when the residential areas are evenly distributed in a circle around the business districts. If there were a functioning light rail/bus/subway system, it would take an additional hour or so of your day to use it, since there would have to be several interchanges to make it reasonable. NYC is the exception to this, since it was built before fast transportation existed, and hence the residential areas were mingled with the business districts.
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While I've admittedly never been to New York, all of my colleagues from NYC purchased cars after they moved away. The city streets are almost exclusively used by taxis and public transportation. Most people apparently use the subway to get around.
To add to this, my sister, upon moving to NYC, sold her car after a month. 2 years down the line, not having a car is still not an issue for her.
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Informative)
NYC is not the largest city on the continent, Mexico City is bigger.
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
It's more about the use than the age. After all, NYC isn't any older than Boston, but it has a very different development history.
NYC is an island: when people say "NYC" they mean "Manhattan". It was a manufacturing hub all through the 19th century, having access to both materials and markets through its ports. There were bridges, but they could only carry so many people per day, and labor tended to concentrate on the island itself.
Further, it was a major port of entry for foreign arrivals, many of whom found homes in the Manhattan slums, which had very high density. They proceeded to work for those factories, most famously as sweatshops.
That concentration became self-affirming: the wealth and need for capital made it a financial center in the 20th century, and the limited land made it build up instead of out. It did develop suburbs in Brooklyn and Queens and Staten Island, and they look a lot like suburbs elsewhere, but they're not what people think of when they say "New York City".
Boston was also based around its harbor, but its geography meant that the manufacturing moved out of the city proper. They built up famous manufacturing suburbs like Lowell, where the land was cheaper. The city is more spread out; it's more akin to European cities than most in America but it still doesn't have the intensive concentration of NYC.
NYC still spread out fast enough that it needed a public transportation system, and farsighted city planners built it one of the best subways in the world. These helped connect what became (in later decades) the skyscraper boom. That makes NYC very different from European cities, which were designed around walkability between relatively low buildings from centuries past.
Er... hadn't meant to launch into a dissertation. Thanks for reading this far...
NYC (Score:5, Informative)
My experience is that people who live outside of NYC think that NYC == "Manhattan" while people who live inside NYC think that NYC == {Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, Queens}. The latter is the official definition, but apart from that all the boroughs are strongly connected by subway (or ferry/subway in the case of Staten Island), sNYC taxis & busses, NYC income tax, NYC schools, a single mayor and government, and a number of cultural factors (walking culture, bodegas, etc.).
Which isn't to say that we're all one big happy family--people have strong allegiances to their borough, but I think most people in NYC feel like we are one city.
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In Napoleonic times, Paris widened the streets and created these wide boulevards in order to stop rioters from blocking off the streets whenever taxes went up. That also helped the flow off horse-drawn traffic in those days. But it also meant the republic could send down troops rapidly whenever there was trouble. Then the car came along to replace the horse-drawn carriages.
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Can you say the old cities of Europe were designed to facilitate biking? Nor were they designed for cars, as cities like Los Angeles were. Most of them weren't "designed" for anything but the glory of the monarchy.
If people are biking in Europe, it's most likely despite the city's design, not because of it.
Here in the US, we had cities that were so choked with smog that it caused respira
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Re:Think you miss the point (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me way-in on that.
I grew up in Paris and the problem there is that the city is way too big for its own good. Every single mode of transportation is overcrowded: the subway, the trains, the streets, the circular belt ("peripherique"), the buses, the pedestrian/biking ways, the tramways.
This overcrowding comes from decades of political will to centralize everything in the country in Paris. The city was never designed to take that kind of traffic. The last major redesign of the city was by haussmann at the end of the 19th century. Since then, only minor adjustment has been make: subways, tramways, "les quais", circular belt. But they all contribute to bring more people in.
The only solution for Paris (and for French efficiency) is to push people, administration, businesses into other cities.
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I'm not sure Amsterdam and San Francisco are representative cities for either the US or Europe.
It's like saying : "Take 2 average girls, say, Natalie Portman and Kate Middleton"
Re:Think you miss the point (Score:4, Funny)
... naked and petrified?
Pouring hot grits down pants now...
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The big difference is because of how the cities were designed, this is even an option. In most American cities, there is simply no way you could ever even consider doing this because there is very limited public transportation. That is where the design comes in handy. I live in Cincinnati, OH. If you banned half the cars from the city, that would mean half the people couldn't come to work because the only thing we have is a crappy bus system that only takes people to the downtown area. It just isn't possibl
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I think it's cigarettes. The French do love their cigarettes. [bloomberg.com]
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Re:Paris had cars? (Score:4, Insightful)
NYC has like 10 million people that take the train in daily
LA, Boston and others also have millions that take the train to work
a lot of the cities in the US have less than a million people which isn't enough to pay for a train system
and even with NYC traffic, there is no smog here. i remember when i grew up there was lots of smog. but with the new cars being clean and all you can look at manhattan and there is no more smog hanging over it. the sky over NYC is clearer than parts of colorado ive been to
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Ok LA just got their Trains back and didn't have subway system up until a few years ago. So. Cal. Did have the Pacific Electric Red Cars, the extensive street car system, until Firestone and GM conspired to get rid of it. [moderntransit.org] After being born and raised in So. Cal, the only way around was on the highways and that meant by cars or buses being stuck with all the other folks in the jam.
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The Pacific Electric Streetcars went out of business because they were slow, expensive, and unprofitable. The stretch from downtown LA to Santa Monica averaged 13 mph. That was good compared to your options in 1905. By the 1930s, it was horribly slow.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/551/did-general-motors-destroy-the-la-mass-transit-system
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a lot of the cities in the US have less than a million people which isn't enough to pay for a train system
Some metro areas with more than a million in population are also finding it hard to afford to install rail. The Denver metro area, which is approaching 3 million, is one exampleis having trouble funding the light rail northern extensions towards Boulder and Longmont, which will have to make due with increased bus service. Of course, it doesn't help that the Regional Transportation District seems to think that everyone must only want to go into Denver and back...
Re:Paris had cars? (Score:4, Informative)
Yet, [Houston doesn't] have the pollution problem of Paris, LA, Mexico City, or Beijing.
Are you sure we don't? I looked at some EPA data [epa.gov], and it seems like on our bad days (in August) we're up in the particulate range that Paris is in now. We also have a lot of trouble with ozone. I'm pretty sure LA's air quality is better than ours now, or at least was for several years.
I don't think comparing Houston to Mexico City or Beijing makes sense. They have a lot more people crammed into a smaller space with worse cars.
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No we didn't, that would imply that there was actually some sort of planning going on. Here we have developers who buy a parcel of land and build whatever they want on it. It doesn't matter that they might throw up 1000 houses without any consideration of infrastructure or schools, they'll do it and it'll be up to the local governments to decide what should be done about infrastructure. Hence when some poor schmuck buys his dream home he suddenly realizes that there's no planning for transit and he has t
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Also those little boats with the guy pushing it with a big stick in Venice. I bet they use that all the time.
Re:Paris had cars? (Score:4, Informative)
Don't the that American ass. Poor you, Europeans are meanies and you totally don't deserve anything they say about you :(
According to the World Bank [worldbank.org] (who's not known to be particularly anti-American), the per-capita oil consumption in the US in 2010 was 1,108 kilograms (clearly they are, in fact, anti-american for not using gallons). France sits at a whopping 113. UK 241. Germany 223. So yes, please, tell me more about the poor Americans who are not sucking up all the oil.
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This will unfairly effect those with one car, persons with two or more cars will be likely able to circumvent this.
Carpooling will only go so far as everyone will have to get out at the same place or risk the driver receiving a ticket.
Real Solution: Move out of ancient, crowded, poorly-maintained city.
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The 50% not working: reducing pollution. statistics in the city where I live showed that the reduction was way below targets. people organized, and most of the people commuting had already organized before, using trains, metro and the like (they were pissed at the limitation nonetheless)
The 50% working: the powers that be decided that it was a huge success, and that it was a matter of scale (i.e., too few days of alternate plates), and anyway it
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Or just shoot you!
Hey, if you want to go libertarian, at least go all the way!
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I've heard that the diesel emissions are a large contributer to this smog, particularly NOx.
You could have no diesels on the road and you'd still have just about as much smog. We discussed here on slashdot a little while ago about how the emissions tests were flawed in that they were poor at detecting PM2.5, the finest particles accounted for in such tests. These particles are the most harmful to health, because they are too small to be expelled from the lungs by cilia. You have to wait until they get mixed into some sputum and expelled from the lungs. They're also dandy for the formation of fog p