The Monday Roundup: Cities without cars, The Paris Way, headwind cycling, and more

I hate it too. Sounds cheap and lazy. And for people who get excited by bus lanes, I feel sorry for you.

Yeah, the problem with things like incinerating garbage (including “recyclables”) is that the Green (note this useage is a noun, not an adjective) Movement doesn’t want to know about environmental impact studies that scientifically demonstrate (and are subject to peer review) that incinerating garbage and nuclear fission to generate electrical energy and district heating have much lower environmental impacts that many of the Green Movement’s preferred options. Right now, any benefit we get from recycling is more than offset by the fact that we ship it to recycling plants in Asia or Africa using container ships burning barely enriched crude oil.

Bicycling, even on electric pedal assist bikes, is better for the environment as long as you keep your bike for a long time and actually ride it instead of driving. Buying a bicycle is not the same as using it for daily transport.

I would be ecstatic if PM pollution from tires and brakes were the only thing I had to worry about out there. Electric cars will not solve all of our problems, but they are a step in the right direction.

I didn’t pay the $36 to read the entire article, so maybe you have a better picture of where the “non-emissions” particulates are coming from. From the summary, it isn’t clear whether we are talking about manufacturing emissions (which, I would imagine might be similar per pound for a steel/plastic/rubber manufacturing process, whether it be for an SUV or a bike), or an ongoing re-fueling (charging) process. If we stipulate that bicycles are just as bad as electric SUVs for manufacturing emissions (a HUGE leap), then the remainder of non-emissions particulates would be emitted by dirty electricity generation to charge electric vehicles. Comparing an EV to a conventional bicycle, the difference is obvious. Comparing an EV to an eBike, we can conclude from the article summary that the amount of electricity needed to maintain a usable charge for an eAutomobile would be much higher than that needed to keep an eBike charged.

In comparison to ICE vehicles, it sounded like emissions reductions were attenuated by the fact that even though they don’t emit while in use, the amount of raw energy needing to be provided to power an EV is higher than that needed for an ICE-powered vehicle due to the higher weight of an EV. Sounded like the conclusion would be that when it comes to EV vs. ICE, we’re just deciding when we want to create the particulates: before or after the “fuel” is in the “tank”.

The abstract was quite thin on any detail, specifically what a non-emission particulate matter actually was – brake dust, tire particles, motor oil drips/evaporation or even more abstract like the actual wear on asphalt or other road surfaces each vehicle causes. It would be no surprise that the average electric car weighing 24% more would wear out brakes and tires faster and in addition could also have the unintended consequence of rapid increase in wear of infrastructure, especially as heavier vehicles like delivery trucks and even freight trucks (Tesla anyone?) transition to electric. Yet another data point that humanity loves to latch onto another lazy, “quick fix” and discovers literally down the road it’s a much more complicated system.

Here is an interesting HuffPost article from a year ago that looks into how bad tire rubber particulate in the environment is, and how EVs are worse in that regard (TLDR, pretty bad). https://www.huffpost.com/entry/air-pollution-cars-tire-waste_n_5a6896e3e4b0dc592a0e6f8e

While bike tires and bike disc and rim brake pads obviously wear too, their physical mass is so much less and they are carrying and stopping so much less weight. The average passenger car tire weight is 21lbs (9550 grams) and a 32c Gatorskin commuter bike tire is 460 grams. So the bike tire is 21 times lighter. Interestingly a 180lb bike and rider is also about 1/20th the average 3,500 lb weight of an average car or small SUV. How many bicycles would it take to equal the wear emissions of a single car? I’d guess at least several hundred if not thousands.

This REVIEW OF LITERATURE, this is not a study of its own…”

The fact that this study included a review of the literature on PM emissions is hardly a weakness. Relying on one particular set of data for a comparison would be a weakness, on the other hand.

…focuses on “non-exhaust particulate matter” ONLY.

One of the main points of this study was to determine whether EVs emitted less PM2.5 given that 15% ofPM2.5 in ICE vehicles comes from exhaust. Surprisingly, the authors found that EVs emitted about the same amount of PM2.5 as ICE vehicles. Claiming that the authors only focused on “non exhaust particulate manner” is nonsense.

Let my quote from section 4 of the results section of the manuscript:

“By using the data from Simons (2013) on the effect of weight on emissions and the average exhaust and non-exhaust emission from the various emission inventories, we can compare the total PM emissions from EVs with those from gasoline and diesel cars.”

“If you pareto the problem with cars”

This is unintelligible. Please explain what you mean here.

“It would not surprise me to learn that BICYCLES have WORSE “non-exhaust particulate matter” emissions BY WEIGHT than cars.”

I have absolutely no idea what you are saying here. Can you explain this?

American Ghent? Perhaps only NYC. Perhaps 2 Davis CA way back but not the last time I looked…going off my memory.

And as for EV cars…as I have said before…they are a great urban tool for mobility that uses less oil or coal (in the NW yes, but not in Hawaii and other places) BUT they will likely make our built environment and land use MORE car centric, not less as they decouple the emissions restrictions use of SOVs and the fuel cost per mile drops.