Take a look at their figure, especially in May 2020—the average appears lower, but, more significantly, there is much less variability in May 2020 compared to earlier years.
The authors' model quite strongly includes their preferred confound (secular decrease in PM2.5) but doesn't explore what other covariates could explain the differences between years.
It's fine to say that one should be skeptical, but one contrary report doesn't invalidate an antecedent report, and the structure of a linear model strongly influences an outcome.
Given the physical mechanisms involved it is implausible that pollution did not decline. And if you look at their data you see a marked drop in 2020 at day 70
This is March 10 or thereabouts, I think. And there are ZERO high pm 2.5 days for a 20 day stretch or so. This isn't seen in other years. The vast bulk of days are below the trend.
And then for the rest of the year there are some days above the trend line but no high pm 2.5 days.
This fits with people being extra cautious in the early days and then relaxing a bit as things went on.
Now, I'm eyeballing this so I could be incorrect. But:
1. The effect was found in other cities
2. The physical mechanism makes it highly expected that there would be a drop
The study was about the slope of the regression modal, but if you had scrambled the years I'm fairly confident I could have picked 2020 out of the set.
Popular truck route from Queens->Bronx was 59th st bridge, left onto 2nd then immediate left onto 59th, and another left onto 1st and take 1st all the way to Willis Ave bridge to beat the RFK bridge (formerly the Triborough) tolls.
It could also be the case that making it viable to drive personal vehicles at all inside a dense city comes with opportunity costs (parking, roads that cut through infrastructure, pollution, noise) that aren't worth it.
And I'd wager that it is the case.
We did this in Times Square and on Broadway, and it's honestly been great. I say this as someone who takes cars far more frequently than most New Yorkers and has a place I lived at full time for over a decade off one of those closed-off sections of Broadway.
[0]- Yes I'm well aware this is not an auction based system in this case.
Why? Fewer cars into Manhattan means fewer cars through the boroughs. And even if they all diverted, you’re still looking at less idling and less stop and start braking.
In the city stop and start is primarily determined by traffic lights, which are predictable, rather than the traffic itself.
Is that because of gridlock or because of the higher energies?
> In the city stop and start is primarily determined by traffic lights
Source? In my experience it's unexpected incursions, whether that be cars changing lanes, pedestrians stepping off the sidewalk or food-delivery bikers yeeting themselves into an intersection.
So while this was/is a common sentiment about congestion pricing, looks like it luckily didn't pan out.
Rich people now have a great way to continue driving their cars, everyone else is fucked?
A parking spot will cost you more than rent in some other cities.
The more money you have, more you benefit from this ruling. Now you can buy a service which was not possible before.
It wasn't possible to drive a car in NYC before congestion pricing? I find that… unlikely.
This is nonsense.
The poor of New York benefit from congestion pricing. It means more funding for the public transit they predominantly take. And for the minority who drive for a living it increases their revenues.
The opposition to congestion charges comes from principally outside New York, often from folks who have little to no familiarity with it.
Its the same principle with kindergarden and late fee; Without a late fee, people sometimes were late getting their kids, with late fees more people were late getting their kids. Now they were able to 'pay' for this.
You now can pay for having less traffic for you. Who can afford this? The rich/richer person.
This increases inequality.
The difference is that now they are paying for that service they were already using, and those funds are going to public transit which serves the majority of New Yorkers especially those with lower incomes.
They're already using them, and the results show. They could have done it cheaper. But the LIRR is operating at Swiss rail efficiecies since the recent electrification and signalling improvements.
Also, efficiency was already on the upswing for the LIRR long before congestion pricing funds[1].
[1] https://www.mta.info/press-release/icymi-governor-hochul-cel...
Expected revenue was used to budget quite a few projects; this caused a bit of a scare when Hochul put it on hold for a while. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/16/nyregion/congestion-prici...
That money you're talking about was money that was already spent to implement congestion pricing
Correct. But they’re being expanded. Early signs are there. And we have precedent to show that funding this work, and funding it sooner, works.
> efficiency was already on the upswing for the LIRR long before congestion pricing funds
Correct. Congestion funds accelerate that process.
I spoke an inarticulately, but the point was trying to make is that we have precedence for quality and efficiency improving capital spending by the MTA. The bonds the MTA issued earlier this year double down on that. The early signs of that spending show those capital deployments are helping in the way the preceding spending did.
> In June 2025, revenue from the congestion toll was used to increase service on more than a dozen bus lines citywide… In October 2025, the MTA sold $230 million worth of bonds to help fund the first projects that were being partially financed using congestion-toll revenue.
Because the poor don’t drive in New York, and to the extent they do, they likely qualify for an exemption.
This mechanism allows people with more money to enjoy driving in the city or is this congestion prcing based on your salary? no its not its based on the time in the city independent of what you make.
A person with their high end car and miillions now can buy himself a nice little drive into the city while everyone else can't.
This was already the case in NYC without congestion fees. (For example: https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/park-slope-parking-spo...)
Now they get to fund public transit a little bit while they do so.
Our C-suite and top quant traders at our firm take the train, bike, or walk to the office daily. I asked around my office - no one has ever driven regularly to our office in 20+ years.
The reason why is because driving objectively sucks in the city.
As long as the pricing is absolut and not relative to the owners salary, it is increase inequality.
Poor could also mean the middle class is more affected than the rich class (whatever you call the class above middle).
Have you ever talked to poor people in NYC?
Should i said poorer people who still need a car to drive in NYC to make it more understandable to the hn crowed Oo?!
My only point i'm making is, that this system increases inequality between financial richer people vs poorer ones.
And thats because its an absolut fee and not a relative one.
This does not exist. Parking in the congestion zone starts at $25 for an hour and regularly goes above $100 for an evening.
The whole issue with car dependency is that it is a massive barrier for participating in society.
Public transit is orders of magnitude cheaper, and very viable and often the better option in the New York area.
Even before congestion pricing this was the major factor. It's often quicker, more reliable, more pleasant, and has less variation in delays to ride the train/subway in NYC. Speaking from personal experience I could easily eat the congestion charge to daily commute into Manhattan, and I'd rather still take the train because I can do my mindless scrolling or read a book during that time.
The only time I've found that a car is better is during the weekends with a group larger than about 4 people. The train schedules are terrible, the commute time isn't bad, and the price per ticket (assuming you're coming from the outer suburbs) vs parking and tolls works out to be a wash.
https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/the-cost-of-killing-congest...
Allowing employees to work remote.
https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/the-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing_in_New_York... says "By July 2025, there were 67,000 fewer daily vehicles in the congestion zone compared to before implementation. The same month, one study found that travel times within the congestion zone had decreased, and that delivery companies were opting to use smaller vehicles (which were charged lower tolls) in the toll zone".
Frankly, if they let me citizen report - I could likely cover my entire tax burden in 2-3 days. At $490/ticket, the ROI for enforcement seems obviously there.
> Some drivers can apply for Low-Income Discount or Low-Income Tax Credit for Residents.
> A 50% discount is available for low-income vehicle owners enrolled in the Low-Income Discount Plan (LIDP). This discount begins after the first 10 trips in a calendar month and applies to all peak period trips after that for the remainder of the calendar month.
The revenue also goes towards public transit, and the congestion charge applies mainly to the wealthiest part of the wealthiest borough.
FWIW, I like that there is a carveout for economically disadvantaged folks. Either way doesn't affect me since I'm not a NYer.
This "Distinctly American idea" you cite does not at all exist.
Tens of millions watch a news channel that openly stated we should euthanize homeless people. Millions more moved to a crazier channel because that one wasn't lying enough
They vote against free school lunch programs that cost very little.
They hate "welfare queens" with a passion, despite that being a lie, and still being a lie decades later.
Democrats had no qualms voting for the Crime Bill back in the 90s, and were willing to turn around and get aggressive about the border to win an election.
>This is how we end up with carveouts for every special interest group in every single policy
No, the reason we get so many special interest carve outs in the US is that special interest groups fund election campaigns. Fix campaign funding (IE, make it publicly funded and extremely time limited) and you make it significantly easier for people who eschew bribery to be and stay politicians.
Sure, HN has a strong "Not perfect should never be done" bias, because HN is full of turbonerds that crave validation for how smart they are and always need to pipe up with a nitpick to be heard. 95% of the time, the exact "complaint" someone on HN makes up was already noted and covered in the very article. We aren't allowed to sass people for not reading the article.
This is not the case off of HN and in reality. Conservatives are perfectly happy doing "Obvious and common sense" measures that actually have insane second order effects. They insist tariffs are a good policy the way they are being implemented. Democrats want all sorts of things that are not at all perfect and would be happy to have slightly fewer new problems than the same problems our grandparents had to fight about.
this seems awfully coy. Why not just say who cheerled the bill and who went on the TV circuit to explain how great it was because of "super predators" - nice euphemism.
[*] https://www.factcheck.org/2019/07/biden-on-the-1994-crime-bi...
[*] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlGM4TClIjA (Hillary apologizes for 1994 crime bill)
"Democrats" isn't some amorphous thing we can't tag to individual people. The last president of the USA and his sponsor (Bill Clinton) were adamant to get that bill passed. Biden spearheaded the legislation. This isn't just some "he voted yea on it!" sort of thing.
What’s your source for this?
Also, why would a goal matter more than results?
They have, for decades. https://nyc-business.nyc.gov/nycbusiness/description/idling-...
Most certainly regulated. There are people who make a living off of reporting idling trucks and collecting the bounty.
They do, in fact, regulate idling my dude- https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02222
> In New York City, vehicle idling is illegal if it lasts more than 3 minutes or more than 1 minute when adjacent to a school.
The first thing the State of NY did with congestion pricing was halt the plan (arguably illegally) before reintroducing it six months later with a price reduction to $9 down from $15: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/14/congestion-p...
Nobody in Idaho gets uppity about New Jersey's tolls. But they have strong, knowledge-free, almost identity-defining opinions about congestion charges.
Is it because it's a policy that's worked in Europe and Asia and is thus seen as foreign? Or because it's New York doing it, so it's branded as a tax, versus market-rate access or whatever we'd be calling it if this were done in Miami?
Had most people outside the tri-state area not heard and formed an opinion about congestion pricig before Trump brought it up?
The VAST majority of people I would see have conversations about this seem to want others to take transit so that traffic is better for them in their car.
I lived in the UK for 2 years without a car and it ultimately did not negatively impact me (other than needing to memorize local bus routes). I lived in towns as small as 10000 people (Newtown, Wales) and they had both a connected rail system and a couple of bus routes serving the town and connecting it to other towns.
Buses absolutely can work in even quiet rural locations, they just need to be properly funded and prioritized. They also need to be subsidized. The American notion that public transit needs to either run net zero or turn a profit is backwards and fundamentally stopping it from working well.
1) I wish we had better rail transit in the bay area and to the areas surrounding the bay
2) I have to own a car to get to places in Northern California
These don't seem like remotely contradictory positions.
Which, to be fair, people online have a habit of just arguing past each other.
And in most countries we wouldn't call multiple cities of 100k+ population 'nothing'.
HSR is the spine of the transportation network, that local and regional traffic docks to making a greater whole. It increases the reach and power of public transport as a whole.
For HSR to be successful, you need people using the in-between station for regional trips, not just end to end airplane like trips.
I've lived all over the world and in NYC for decades so it seems silly to me. Bust most Americans have never seen or ridden an effective form of public transport. So they view congestion pricing as an infringement on their rights and quality of life.
i hear this a lot and i also feel like this population is declining very significantly for a lot of reasons (cars that people care about are unaffordable, most cars on the road tend to fit into one of a very small number of categories, people find other ways to navigate depending on where they live, people don't do as many activities out of the home that require a vehicle, etc). at what point does the real population of car enthusiasts become small enough to be irrelevant in public policy and infrastructure decisions?
Especially considering that
* Congestion is an opportunity cost in itself already, which is paid in wasted time by all road users, impacting mostly those who spend a long time on the road, which is busses, taxis, professionals and delivery drivers, as they spend the most amount of time actually driving in congested roads
* Congestion pricing forces trips to self-select on cost/benefits in actual dollars, instead of time, so you optimize for wealthier trip takers, short stays or high value trips, where before you would favor long stays (which make looking for parking forever not so bad), and people who don't value their time very much
* Car use remains heavily subsidized, as motorists do not come close to paying the full costs associated with their road usage
Not sure how I managed that
Best they can do now is, “Well, we’re not New York.”
But that's a real argument. They're not a $1.3tn economy ($1tn of which is Manhattan alone) [1] with fewer than one car per household (0.26 in Manhattan) [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City
[2] https://www.hunterurban.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Car-L...
There will be a stop and balance struck everywhere, but this sort of thing really does make people that deal in the car industry nervous.
I'd gladly ditch my car tomorrow if I could catch a bus within walking distance.
I'm unfortunately 5 miles from the nearest bus stop.
The answer to which in many American cities being because there isn’t enough density.
Outside America’s 4 to six largest cities, ditching cars probably doesn’t work.
One problem that faces my city, as an example, is that we have a community that is being built out in a mountain area. There is a 2 lane highway going up there and, as you can imagine, it gets absolutely jam packed. On a clear day you can do the trip in 10 minutes, during rush-hour it can take over and hour.
This is the perfect place for something like a toll and a park and ride location within the community.
But instead we are maybe going to spend 10s (or maybe hundreds) of millions of dollars expanding the road.
This concept works great for airport's economy lots. It's a bit crazy that it doesn't seem to work for anywhere but the top 6 largest cities in the US.
I've heard that from San Jose to San Francisco, the major towns (San Mateo, Palo Alto) are spaced about a day's laden carriage ride apart.
"We should toll roads". This will reliably produce "we should all contribute through tax to the maintenance of roads and they should be considered a public good".
"We should have land value taxes". This will reliably produce "we should not have to pay rent to the government for something that we own".
A simple self-interest model will capture all participants in this discussion. This is why economically optimal policies have such opposition. People don't want to pay the price for their actions. They're ideally hoping to have someone else pay it. It is just as common for a position like funding for SF's Muni.
Propositions J and K made it clear. One said "let's raise Muni spending". The other said "if we raise sales tax, that will go to Muni spending. If we don't, the Muni spending proposition dies". People voted for the first and against the second. Pretty straightforward position: "We should spend more money but from a place that is not me".
The way welfare is organized in the US also shows this. Welfare is the largest sector of the US federal budget, and the ideal is to tax all productive capacity to pay for the aged. This aligns with the increased vote share from the aged. The classic two wolves and a sheep at dinner.
That's a very hard sell when people all around the country are feeling continuous downward pressure on their lifestyle and financial security while billionaires are seen getting massive tax breaks and pillaging everything they want while escaping accountability for the harms they cause everyone else. Taking a basic task like driving into the city, something many people are forced to do for work, and punishing them for it while once again giving the wealthy a pass was certain to upset people. in fact, by forcing more of the peasant class off the roads it makes driving into the city much more pleasant for the people with enough money to not care about the extra expense. Taking from the poor to improve things for the wealthy resonates with a lot of people.
It also doesn't help that in other contexts, congestion pricing has already hit people's wallets and is seen as an exploitative business model designed to extract as much money from the public as possible. The last thing most people want is seeing congestion pricing and other price-fuckery infesting another aspect of their daily lives, which is why the pushback against wendy's implementing it was so swift and severe that the company had to backpedal even after spending a small fortune on the digital menu boards they needed to enable it.
> Taking a basic task like driving into the city, something many people are forced to do for work
That is simply not the case in NYC. Very, very few people must drive into the center of Manhattan to work. It was already unaffordable to do so anyway because parking is incredibly expensive. People take the subway. Car ownership is already disproportionately preserved for the rich.
NYC is different from much of the country. I'm not going to make an argument that it's any better or any worse, but it is different. NYC congestion pricing as a national debate is missing the forest for the trees.
The original seems to have disappeared.
I assure you that Manhattan is filled with many employees and service workers.
> It was already unaffordable to do so anyway
Yes, it was a massive strain on the budgets of many people, and it's the people who managed to sacrifice enough to show up for work or get where they needed to go anyway even though it was difficult for them who were most impacted by congestion pricing.
> People take the subway.
Many do. When it's an option for them and at the expense of time/convenience. If this were an acceptable excuse we might as well just shut the roads into Manhattan down entirely.
This article proves that people have been being priced out of driving into the city and I promise you that isn't the millionaires who are suddenly navigating the subway system and waiting for the trains in filthy stations.
It's also important to note that nationally, nobody knows or cares about the specific differences in NYC compared to their own cities. The vast majority of the people outside of NYC complaining about it have never even been to the state. They just know that once again, it's the small guy who is getting screwed over and that they don't want the success of congestion pricing in New York (however that is measured) to cause it to appear where they drive, and who can blame them for that?
That is not a meaningful response to "Very, very few people must drive into the center of Manhattan to work.", the two statements do not contradict each other. Those employees and service workers take the subway.
> When it's an option for them and at the expense of time/convince
The subway is both faster and cheaper than driving in NYC at peak hours. Traffic has historically been awful, hence the congestion charge! Trading money to gain time/convenience is what the rich do. The "small guy" didn't have the money for the bridges, tunnels and parking before the congestion charge even arrived.
> It's also important to note that nationally, nobody knows or cares about the specific differences in NYC compared to their own cities.
Yes, that is literally my point about why conversations like this one are fruitless.
> They just know that the small guy is getting screwed over
Right but that isn't true. They are mistaken in what they "know" because, as you said, they don't know or care about the specific differences in NYC compared to their own cities.
Not the ones who need to bring service vehicles with them. Not anyone who has to enter or return with heavy items or any number of the other many many reasons people choose to drive and not take the subway. The fact of the matter is that the subway has always been an option for many people, but not all people and it comes with costs of its own. The people driving into the city, as obnoxious as that trip is, were making the decision to put up with the traffic and parking for a reason. Now many of those people, enough to make measurable differences in pollution levels, have been priced out of that choice. "It's only a few poors, why are people bitching about it?" isn't going to make people across the country worry any less about it spreading to them.
> The subway is both faster and cheaper than driving in NYC at peak hours.
And also not an option at all for many and a less attractive option for many, as noted by the number of people who were driving. It's not as if the subway is a well kept secret.
> Right but that isn't true.
Just because you say it isn't doesn't make it true. Show me that millionaires are taking the subway because of the increased fines at the same rate as the hourly workers and I'll concede that the impact is being equally felt.
The question was "How has congestion pricing become a national issue" and the answer isn't "the nation hasn't read this one study". For what it's worth though the study linked in the article does show a reduction in cars entering the zone. (ctrl-F "car" to find that)
Only 2% of lower income outer borough residents (around 5,000 people) drive a car into the city:
https://www.cssny.org/news/entry/congestion-pricing-outer-bo...
When the congestion pricing rollout was paused, only 32% of lower income voters supported the move, compared to 55% of those earning more than $100,000:
https://www.amny.com/nyc-transit/congestion-pricing-pause-ho...
(AFAIK there isn't direct polling on a yes/no support question by income, this was as close as I could find)
The overwhelming majority of poor people in New York City take transit and stand to benefit from the funding congestion pricing brings. Highlighting that 2% of the population and ignoring the 98% is a fundamentally dishonest position to take, especially when you're not even in the group yourself.
Someone on the other side of the country is only going to see the way this will impact the lives of people like them. They aren't going to say "Clearly this policy has impacted the household budget of NYC plumber Mitchell Tnenski" They don't know Mitchell. They know that congestion pricing coming to their city would hurt them in very real ways. They also know that rich people don't give a shit about a couple extra bucks in fines for getting where they want to go by car. That's why this issue has resonated nationally.
But why should they even care to begin with? Just because the news and media made them aware of congestion pricing? This is the whole problem, that local issues are made mainstream news media specifically to cultivate fear and anger in people that literally have no skin in the game and a completely different lifestyle.
Why should they care about something that they feel will hurt them financially when they're already struggling and restrict their freedom on top of that? Why wouldn't they care?
> Just because the news and media made them aware of congestion pricing?
Uber's "surge" pricing was what first introduced many of them to a world where the price of something they depend on changes from moment to moment. Dynamic/discriminatory pricing schemes have been worrying people for a long time now. People don't like it, they consider it scammy, and they don't want it to spread.
I think that if NYC had just jacked up the toll price all the time it wouldn't have set off as many alarms, but ultimately people in other places aren't really worried about congestion pricing in New York, their worry is that it will come to where they drive and they can't afford people taking more money from them. They're struggling to keep food on the table and are drowning in record high levels of household debt. Of course they're scared of congestion pricing catching on.
Mind you, while some of their fears are reasonable, not all of them are. I've seen some of the more conspiratorial people talking about it as a way to control and restrict the movement of poor people (something shared with criticisms of 15-minute cities). The core of the problem though is that their standard of living is declining, their trust/confidence in government is bottoming out, they know that they're getting screwed over by the wealthy and they're on edge. They see NYC using some scammy pricing scheme to take more money from people like them while the wealthy are unaffected and it hits a nerve.
They'll have plenty of skin in the game if congestion pricing spreads (and its success makes that increasingly likely) and that skin is already stretched thin which is making them feel highly skeptical of government, suspicious of people's motives, and angry over being asked to make their lives worse for the convenience of the wealthy. They worry about driving where they need to go becoming a luxury they can be priced out of, and as bad as NYC's public transportation is (compared to what's seen in other countries) most of them don't have anything even close to it in their own cities. That's what I'm seeing in discussions surrounding this issue both online and offline anyway.
Everything you're saying has zero impact on 93-97% of the US population (New York State is 6% of the US population, NYC is 3%). None of these people have real skin in the game, because this literally has no effect on them. New Yorkers don't vote in other states.
Why is a single student's grade in OSU national news? Why is congestion pricing national news? Why is a library in the middle of nowhere California news?
None of these things are actually related to why people are stretched thin and getting screwed by the system. In fact they're exactly unrelated which is why we're blasted with this stuff on the news 24/7. You're worried about a slippery slope argument when most of us are already being fleeced by current, real policies from government and corporations.
Congestion pricing is not the thing screwing over American families, it's the thing they're pointing at so you don't look at the actual thing.
Because in all likelihood this isn't going to be limited to Manhattan, and I'd argue (like many others) that it probably shouldn't be. The fact that it's been so successful makes it all but inevitable that the practice will spread. Why would people wait until they're forced to choose between driving to work and affording groceries before they speak out against it?
> None of these things are actually related to why people are stretched thin and getting screwed by the system
I think a lot of people would argue that dynamic pricing schemes and governments taking increasing amounts of money from their pockets is, at least in part, why they are stretched thin. In any case, regardless of the cause of their struggles they are struggling. If they were feeling financially secure they might grumble at the increasing likelihood of paying fines to drive where they want to, but they wouldn't be panicking over it like they have been.
Congestion pricing isn't seen as something that's screwing them over right now, but it is seen as the latest scheme cooked up by government that will be screwing them over if they can't put a stop to it.
I think we'd agree that congestion pricing isn't the biggest issue impacting the struggling American family right now, but I can understand why it's being seen as a concern and as something they want to keep out of their own cities. For some that means putting a stop to the practice before it spreads.
People say they hate socialism, but drivers love car-socialism.
Writing this from mid-town Manhattan. There are a lot of strong feelings about congestion pricing. It was a common topic in the local media. The stronger voices tend to be those who drive and are affected by it. For Manhattan that is a relatively low percent of the population.
There are some people who are pro-congestion pricing, but as often has with these things the benefits are distributed whereas the costs are concentrated, leading to certain behavior.
That and right-wing politics where anything that harms the car as a religious symbol is seen as a 'values' based attack.
I get that no one likes highways running through their communities, but when you decommission historical arteries while aggressively adopting anti-car transportation policies throughout the rest of the hub, it's somewhat inevitable that the network get snarled.
Maybe congestion pricing is the way to go -- it can certainly work for major European cities built inland, and surrounded by ring roads. For NYC / SF (surrounded by water), I'm less convinced. Sure, I'll 'just take public transport' to go downtown, but the options significantly diminish if I want to travel from North Bay to South Bay to see my parents, or Jersey to South Brooklyn to visit my inlaws.
There are no highway arteries running through the congestion zone. Building one would require hundreds of billions of dollars of eminent domain.
Manhattan has a $1tn GDP [1], on par with Switzerlad [2]. Its economy is larger than all but 6 states (between Pennsylvaia and Ohio) [3]. More than all of New Jersey. If it crossed the pond it would be the fifth-largest member of the EU, between the Netherlands and Poland [4].
It's a tremendously productive jewel that towers–literally–over the economies of its neighbors. Sacrificing Manhattan to save a few bucks on a trucker who doesn't want to take a highway through the Bronx is absolutely mental from a social, economic and environmental perspective.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_New_York_City $939bn in 2023
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_European_Union
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
You can see some of these same dynamics playing out in SF with the decommissioning of the 'Great Highway' on the west side, which led to a recent recall of the local council member. Why does the majority vote of a city of 800k people get to unilaterally dictate the transportation options for a region upwards of 7MM?
A pair of thought experiments. The tri-state area is depopulated and turned into a nature reserve. Everywhere except for New York City. How does it do?
Now, New York City is leveled and turned into a nature preserve. How does this affect those states’ non-urban populations? (Hint: economic collapse. Budget cuts. Unemployment.)
Cities suck resources from outside. But by and large, they also distribute largesse to their proximities and subsidize life for everyone around them.
> led to a recent recall of the local council member. Why does the majority vote of a city of 800k people get to unilaterally dictate the transportation options for a region upwards of 7MM?
New York City has a population of 8.5mm [1]. That’s almost half of the metropolitan area’s population [2]. Include New York State and the non-voting population effect is a minority. Congestion charging isn’t a tyranny of the minority.
As for why, self determination.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_metropolitan_area
Is this happening in/around NYC?
> Sure, I'll 'just take public transport' to go downtown, but the options significantly diminish if I want to travel from North Bay to South Bay to see my parents, or Jersey to South Brooklyn to visit my inlaws.
The are the same, you just have to pay the fee.
Also, for like 90% of NJ you'd be going the southern route into Brooklyn anyway, no congestion pricing involved.
This is a fixable problem. I'm still waiting on someone to do it though. NY is mostly interested in corruption from their preferred interests. (which is why they are working on a law to require a conductor on all subways instead of working to eliminate all that extra labor, instead of fixing their system so it is fast and reliable and then covers more area)
Highways running straight through the middle of major cities is stupid, unnecessary, and harmful. Going to the major cities is fine, but there's no good reason they need to go all the way through them. They should just go around/near the cities instead.
https://ny.curbed.com/2017/4/19/15358234/times-square-snohet...
> “Bowtie” bounded by Broadway and Seventh Avenue between 42nd and 47th Streets.
EWR is in New Jersey, so... not technically the NYC Subway. But taking the subway to Penn Station, then hopping on NJ Transit is pretty easy
LGA is the only one that straight up has no subway/train option.
Yet it’s good if the city does it but bad if a Corp does it?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65127-x
Now we can get back to our regularly scheduled global warming, without all those pesky clouds in the way.
lkbm•21h ago
Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff.
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s44407-025-00037-2
throwawaypath•21h ago
kyleee•21h ago
HPsquared•20h ago
ceejayoz•20h ago
For example, I have Michelin's CrossClimate tires, which are all-weather tires that do better in snow but don't break down as fast as dedicated winter tires do in warm weather.
selimthegrim•19h ago
ceejayoz•19h ago
selimthegrim•17h ago
HPsquared•17h ago
ceejayoz•16h ago
mrguyorama•16h ago
Modern tires are works of material science miracle, working with dirt cheap inputs.
Even iron dust from steel on steel friction like with trains is bad for your health.
The human lungs just have bad filtration.
HPsquared•14h ago
jgeada•21h ago
Angostura•21h ago
ceejayoz•21h ago
Same trick with solar farms: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1154867064/solar-power-misinf...
And wind: https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-oil-and-gas-ind...
bpt3•20h ago
If you're claiming that the oil and gas lobby is facilitating their criticism of any automobile, I hope you're right because that would be hilarious.
ceejayoz•20h ago
That's not shocking to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_the_Earth_(US)
> Friends of the Earth U.S. was founded in California in 1969 by environmentalist David Brower after he left the Sierra Club. The organization was launched with the help of Donald Aitken, Jerry Mander and a $200,000 donation from the personal funds of Robert O. Anderson. One of its first major campaigns was the protest of nuclear power, particularly in California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Orville_Anderson
> Robert Orville Anderson (April 12, 1917 – December 2, 2007) was an American businessman, art collector, and philanthropist who founded [the United States' sixth-largest oil company] Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO).
Spivak•20h ago
Just the cost to get my garage outfitted with a charging port is about to be in the thousands because it requires me to replace the entire breaker panel. Now this is a me problem because that panel is ancient but it does add to the total cost of "doing this" and going EV.
jibe•20h ago
fullstop•20h ago
eunoia•20h ago
I have a much better time in my EV than my ICE car but to each their own.
fullstop•20h ago
You likely don't need to replace the panel, as load management options exist. Wallbox, in particular, has an option where you can add a modbus doo-dad (carlo gavazzi energy management module) to your panel and it will monitor the overall usage and drop the EVSE current to keep it at a safe level.
It's more expensive than if you had a modern panel, but less expensive than replacing the panel itself.
Spivak•19h ago
fullstop•19h ago
And when you say that your panel is old, just how old are we talking?
theluketaylor•16h ago
80% of 15A x 120V = 1.4 kW
80% of 20A x 240V = 3.8 kW
Just going from a standard 15A outlet to a 20A/240V nearly triples the amount of power, and many homes that would need a new panel for a 50A charger have room for one more 20A circuit. Cars typically spend 8-16 hrs per day stationary in their own driveway, so 3.8 kW translates into tons of range.
While 40A or 50A is nice to have, it's far from necessary.
mikestew•20h ago
Says the person who has never owned an EV. Fifteen years of EV ownership, I’m never going back. Environmental factors aside, an EV is the overall better vehicle. You can keep your rattling ICE vehicles that need special fluid from specific vendors.
Spivak•19h ago
mikestew•18h ago
I plug it in when I get home, and when I get in it again the "tank" is always full. I think about the EV a lot less than I do our ICE car, which seems to need gas at the most inconvenient times. You might have an argument for road trips, but even that's almost a no-brainer these days. Sure, I can't just get off at some random exit in the Utah desert and expect to find a charger, but my experience says this whole "charging on a road trip" is way overblown, as if even the slightest bit of look-ahead planning is just too much for people to handle.
duskdozer•1h ago
fullstop•18h ago
kevstev•19h ago
Depending on your commute length, you may be able to just use your regular plug to top up over night. Infra upgrades to support the future are unfortunate, but it should be a one and done kind of thing. It was probably time to update the panel and get 200 Amp service- you will recoup a portion of that if you ever sell the house.
The best part is batteries get signficantly (for some values of signficant) cheaper and better each year. Gen 1 Nissan Leaf owners can now actually replace their batteries for about 1/5th the initial pack cost and increase their range.
lkbm•19h ago
aeronaut80•19h ago
doug_durham•19h ago
colechristensen•20h ago
nonethewiser•20h ago
hamdingers•20h ago
The auto industry has positioned EVs as that solution, even though it's mostly not.
throwawaypath•20h ago
KptMarchewa•19h ago
scottyah•19h ago
ceejayoz•18h ago
Even https://www.tesla.com/modely uses the term "Electric Midsize SUV"
scottyah•7h ago
SoftTalker•19h ago
doug_durham•19h ago
kjkjadksj•17h ago
lkbm•21h ago
EVs do also have higher torque, so that may increase tire-based particles, but you're right that it avoids the brake pads for the most part.
Fewer cars in general is the win from congestion pricing, though.
tart-lemonade•20h ago
And lower VMTs (vehicle miles traveled) is also a win for the planet, it's probably the best weapon the average person has access to in the fight against climate change. Transit usage begets transit usage; more fares paid to the agency enables better frequencies and more routes, leading to more people opting to take transit instead of driving... In a well-run system, it's a positive feedback loop (and the inverse, where people stop taking transit, can also lead to a death spiral, as happened across America in the mid-20th century).
oasisbob•20h ago
treyd•20h ago
bluGill•19h ago
sokoloff•20h ago
If you substitute with “don’t travel far [or at all]”, it’s a big savings. If you substitute flying 1000 miles on an airliner with “drive 1000 miles instead”, or flying US to Europe with a cruise ship trip to Europe, you’ve probably made it worse; in that regards, it’s less the mode of travel and more the total distance in these trades.
oasisbob•7h ago
The distribution of air-travel emissions, to me, seem pretty gross when juxtaposed with the number of people who are doing this travel. The incentives for business travel, in particular, seem misaligned.
sokoloff•2h ago
The reason you get asked whether your USPS parcel contains hazardous substances X, Y, and Z and why the fines for violations are so stiff is partly because of passenger airline safety concerns.
pqtyw•18h ago
littlestymaar•20h ago
nabla9•20h ago
a_paddy•20h ago
The high torque of EVs results in frequent wheel slippage for those eager to pull away from traffic lights quickly. Just like with high BHP ICE vehincles, smooth and gentle acceleration/deceleration will result in long tire life.
PunchyHamster•20h ago
Brake dust is mostly some iron, carbon, silica. Not great to ingest but very much recyclable by the environment, unlike rubber.
And possibly much easier to greatly reduce (just build some shielding around the brake to catch most of the dust) than the tyre
coryrc•19h ago
But tire dust is definitely now the worst of the two, by far. 6-PPD alone.
bryanlarsen•20h ago
https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle...
non-exhaust emissions on an ICE vehicle are roughly 1/3 brake dust, 1/3 tire dust and 1/3 road dust. EV's have almost no impact on road dust, 83% lest brake dust and 20% more tire dust.
mikestew•20h ago
I guess those narratives aren’t going to support themselves.
biophysboy•21h ago
nabla9•20h ago
ceejayoz•20h ago
entropicdrifter•20h ago
Which, as an EV owner, feels like an "oh no, my steak is too buttery" kind of problem to have.
ceejayoz•20h ago
Aurornis•20h ago
Aurornis•20h ago
Not relevant for normal driving. The tires aren’t spinning appreciably due to acceleration except in brief moments with aggressive driving.
EVs can actually have higher acceleration related tire wear because they weigh more and have more instant torque on demand.
A lot of consumer EVs have filtered throttle pedal inputs to reduce the torque spikes though.
mikepurvis•19h ago
There's also the regular deformation of wheel just in the course of regular rotation, which is where the majority of highway wear dust comes from.
sandworm101•20h ago
conception•20h ago
micromacrofoot•20h ago
stewarts•19h ago
I would not doubt I use my breaks 1/20th of the amount that our X5 or Silverado use theirs.
micromacrofoot•18h ago
fullstop•18h ago
They are active in reverse, to ensure that they are used and so that any rust gets cleared from the rotors. They also activate if you slam on the brakes or if the battery is at 100% charge and the kinetic energy can not be used.
I have about 12,000 miles on the car over the last year and the rotors and pads look the same as when I got them. The first annual inspection showed no measurable wear.
axpy•18h ago
fullstop•19h ago
nonethewiser•20h ago
LogicFailsMe•20h ago
TLDR regenerative braking reduces this significantly, nut getting the raw numbers is always fraught with today's horrific AI-addled search engines.
Also seems like a wonderful opportunity for the materials science people to print money coming up with better brake materials here. And if anyone here who can say "clean coal" with a straight face disagrees, point and laugh at them.
Edit: Uh Oh! Facts...
scottyah•19h ago
https://www.truecar.com/compare/tesla-model-3_standard-vs-to...
jansper39•18h ago
MSFT_Edging•20h ago
lonelyasacloud•20h ago
Similar to with tire wear what's important to emissions is the amount of force that has to be applied to decelerate and how often it occurs. At highway speeds it's far less of an issue, but in slow speed urban environments with lots of stop start driving and high vehicle densities it's a real problem.
See for instance https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/assets/documents/reports/cat09/1...
biophysboy•19h ago
oersted•21h ago
cenamus•20h ago
maerF0x0•20h ago
hamdingers•20h ago
maerF0x0•19h ago
Also for what it's worth you have no idea if it's good or bad faith.
hamdingers•18h ago
maerF0x0•17h ago
hamdingers•17h ago
https://railroads.dot.gov/railroad-safety/divisions/crossing...
driverdan•19h ago
ceejayoz•18h ago
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Level_crossings_...
State/local governments can also declare a quiet zone. https://railroads.dot.gov/railroad-safety/divisions/crossing...
hamdingers•18h ago
toomuchtodo•20h ago
Premature mortality related to United States cross-state air pollution - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1983-8 | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-1983-8
throw-qqqqq•20h ago
While that is true, PM2.5 is still a major cause of lung cancer in non smokers, see e.g.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11729863/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11969995/
oersted•20h ago
CalRobert•20h ago
aurareturn•21h ago
lkbm•20h ago
Two-stroke engines are terrible, classic automobiles are terrible, cars with no emission regulations will tend to be terrible. Cars in NYC will have catalytic converters and other technologies to reduce tailpipe emissions.
fsckboy•20h ago
fullstop•20h ago
lkbm•19h ago
The good news is that I believe Ho Chi Minh City is about to start, so hopefully they'll have much cleaner air in a couple years.
macNchz•20h ago
lkbm•19h ago
kccqzy•20h ago
And oh also the small engines powering street food carts.
aurareturn•6h ago
mc32•20h ago
fortran77•20h ago
lkbm•20h ago
theurerjohn3•20h ago
Are Yale's media releases typically done by the people who do the study?
acdha•20h ago
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44407-025-00037-2
scythe•20h ago
Also, I thought tire particles tend to be larger.
MLgulabio•20h ago
Nothing i would breath in a garage. Nothing i like to breath in while i'm driving.
Aurornis•20h ago
Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles.
The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me.
PM2.5 is also a broad category of particulates that come from many sources. The PM2.5 levels in the air depend on many sources, with wind being a major factor in changing PM2.5 levels. It’s hard to draw conclusions when a number depends on the weather and a lot of other inputs.
stetrain•20h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal
When you remove the cheating and give adequate weight to those emissions, diesel for passenger vehicles makes a lot less sense.
cool_dude85•20h ago
stetrain•20h ago
The focus has more recently shifted to reducing overall emissions of CO2 and other harmful gases and particulates, which makes diesel much less appealing.
SECProto•19h ago
saalweachter•19h ago
andruby•18h ago
SECProto•16h ago
quasse•19h ago
I suspect that modern (last five years) turbocharged gasoline engines are probably approaching diesel thermal efficiency, but I don't think that it's correct to say that they generally surpass it. The gasoline Ford EcoBoost is 33% thermally efficient while a BMW N47 turbo-diesel is 42% thermally efficient, as an example [2].
[1] https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/properties [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake-specific_fuel_consumptio...
potato3732842•57m ago
dghlsakjg•18h ago
People that buy cars almost exclusively care about cost of fuel to move between A and B.
rdm_blackhole•20h ago
That's why before EVs started to show up on the market en masse if you walked into a dealership they would always recommend that you pick the diesel engine if you wanted to save money of fuel costs.
That was actually the reason why the Yellow vest protests started in 2018 when the French government announced that the taxation gap between diesel and regular gasoline was going to disappear gradually.
Small edit to add to the context:
By that point, when the protests started in 2018, the governments(right and left) of France and the many French automakers had been pushing diesel engines as THE solution to alleviate rising fuel costs and so justifiably, the protesters thought that someone had just pulled the rug from underneath them.
Also this measure was in direct contradiction to Macron's campaign promise which was that he was going to reduce the tax burden or at least not increase it on the middle class, especially the rural middle-class that basically cannot get a job without having a car as public transport is almost non-existent in rural France.
That and many other things which I won't get into since it is not relevant for this discussion really riled people up.
mikepurvis•20h ago
Based on this, I've always thought of diesel as "more expensive", like you better get 15% more power/miles out of it if it's going to cost more! However, I suspect that most people purchasing diesel vehicles have as their other choice a car that would slurp premium, so for those buyers perhaps diesel is still a discount, even in Canada.
efaref•20h ago
awongh•20h ago
And turns out the whole thing was a lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
It's unfortunate that so much rhetoric around environmentalism is based on faulty claims. It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general.
The latest one is AI data center water use- the extreme numbers like 5 liters of water per ChatGPT image just makes me feel sad that we can't have a civil discussion based on the facts. Everything is so polarized.
wiether•20h ago
You link an article that talks about how manufacturers lied on their emission figures.
But later you seem to imply that the actual lie was about how bad emissions are for humans/environment?
awongh•15h ago
Best effort is not enough to guarantee a good outcome- for example, this car is diesel and has lower emissions, therefore I will buy it and I will be reducing my own emissions turns out to not be true all the time.
Just like congestion pricing might or might not actually affect pollution in the way that it's claimed. The obvious point being that the city loves the new revenue, no matter what the level of impact it actually has.
I'm actually in favor of congestion pricing in principle (whether or not pm2.5 is reduced or not). I'm just sad that often times it's impossible to figure out what's true.
pixl97•19h ago
What does that even mean?
Honestly whatever it means it sounds like you would be the kind of person that would fall for the firehose of falsehood rather than look for the truth behind the actual claims.
afthonos•19h ago
cycomanic•18h ago
mrguyorama•16h ago
Someone incorrectly conveys a simple science concept, and people blame the scientist, not the communicator.
Like, News says "New revolutionary battery" and people roll their eyes and say "Oh but this will never make it to prod" and decide that scientists are liars and conveniently ignore that lithium battery density has like doubled over the past 20 years or so.
The person who was wrong was the unaware journalist taking a PR person's claims at face value, and having no context to smell test such a claim, and having no time or interest to treat the claim with skepticism anyway because "Batteries slightly improve" never sold newspapers.
But they blame science!
pixl97•18h ago
Why? There are massive incentives for people to lie in a great many cases, especially where profits exist. Car manufactures, as we know, gladly lie and fake evidence. Even when there are massive fines involved, the fines are generally less than what they make in profit from the lies.
What's even better is you can play both sides to confuse the issue. Create 3rd party groups on the other side of your claims and have them make up the stupidest claims "Just looking at a car will give you cancer". Flood the zone with false information, bullshit asymmetry. Lobby the shit out of politicians so they don't care about the issues, only the money it brings in.
The confused regulars in the middle are so propagandized to they no longer know up from down and billionaires laugh all the way to the bank.
GuB-42•20h ago
The idea is that diesel is the "work" fuel, for shipping, construction, etc... While gasoline is the "consumer" fuel, for personal use, motorsports, etc... Make the former expensive and it will affect the entire economy, everything will become more expensive and less competitive. Making gasoline more expensive will not have the same impact.
So, put high taxes on gasoline. The result was an increase in popularity of diesel cars, that cost less to run because of taxes.
Now, the situation is changing. Diesel, at least the one that is legal to use on the road is taxed at a level closer to gasoline. Diesel cars are also becoming less and less welcome with regards to low emission zones and green taxes, so many people are going back to gasoline.
rdm_blackhole•19h ago
SoftTalker•20h ago
niemandhier•19h ago
bumby•19h ago
Tade0•19h ago
That's a thing of the past as as early as in 2023 diesels were already a smaller percentage of new cars than non-hybrid EVs:
https://www.acea.auto/figure/fuel-types-of-new-passenger-car...
To add to what others said: diesels always had a reputation of reliability. The cast-iron TDI 1.9 is legendary but even Italian cars fitted with the JTD line would just work and not require maintenance. I recall making light of a friend who was driving an Alfa Romeo until he mentioned that actually it's been more reliable than anything else he's driven - at least in terms of powertrain issues.
Angostura•19h ago
potato3732842•59m ago
It's expressly incentivized by their tax system.
Imagine the year is 1988 and you're some snooty jerk in Europe about to buy a Mercedes. Why on earth would you go with the noisy, smelly diesel option if not to save A TON of money over the life of the vehicle?
Jon_Lowtek•20h ago
It is different in Africa, where catalytic converters are harvested for precious metals and cars are driven without them.
bryanlarsen•20h ago
It also assumes they're using the same tires. EV owners put on EV tires, which are formulated to have a lower rolling resistance, quieter and last longer. All 3 of those correlate with lower dust.
awongh•20h ago
bryanlarsen•20h ago
Also, cars designed as pure EV's are a lot lighter than EV's built on an ICE chassis.
A Telsa 3 is about 2% heavier than a BMW 3 whereas a Ford Lightning is 20% heavier than the comparable F-150.
Jon_Lowtek•19h ago
Table 2 in the paper lists which cars where compared, and that 24% numbers is an average from comparing models where manufacturers offer EV and ICE variants.
fullstop•19h ago
It's the same problem as giant phones. They make them this way in order to fit a bigger battery in.
ericbarrett•19h ago
bluGill•19h ago
donkyrf•19h ago
bryanlarsen•20h ago
The order is:
1. brake dust 2. road dust 3. engine emissions 4. tire dust
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00456...
https://electrek.co/2025/05/27/another-way-electric-cars-cle...
somewhereoutth•19h ago
thmsths•19h ago
iambateman•19h ago
pif•19h ago
That's why your choice of tires on online sites gets so smaller as soon as you tuck the "electric/hybrid vehicle" case!
t_tsonev•18h ago
l1tany11•17h ago
But they do care about tire wear a lot, they know the acceptable wear life for the class. A couple years ago I bought a set of Pirelli tires that were ~50% off because they were an older version; hoping I’d get some benefit. Unfortunately they had half the life and were a bit worse in every way than the newer tires I had before and after.
bob1029•2h ago
If you have something like really high performance tires, I recommend just using them. The grip is always there and you are always paying for it. As long as you aren't losing traction constantly, the difference is negligible in my experience.
rconti•19h ago
bryanlarsen•19h ago
coryrc•19h ago
coryrc•19h ago
fsckboy•15h ago
brailsafe•14h ago
If an equivalent car wore down its tires 20% slower, and those tire particles contributed 2x the intensity of pollution than other types of wear-based pollution, than the increase in produced pollution from that source seems like it would be ~16%, not 40%.
If one car drives 100 km and produces 2 units of pollution per km, that would be 200 units. Another car wearing 20% more would produce 240 units, or roughly ~16% more.
yunwal•9h ago
This is some Fermat’s Last Theorem shit
coryrc•6h ago
rcpt•19h ago
coryrc•19h ago
There was a "study" going around claiming otherwise, which sampled air captured by passing vehicles with a trash bag on a busy road, claiming EVs did not reduce brake dust, but even my brief summary here makes it extremely obvious how flawed this "measurement" is.
margalabargala•6h ago
EVs unfortunately do increase tire particulate, as well. Fairly significantly. It's not obvious to me that the decrease in brake dust isn't made up by the increase in tire dust.
The removal of the tailpipe emissions is really where EVs shine from a pollution standpoint. If you turn on your car in your garage, you don't die anymore.
coryrc•6h ago
> EVs unfortunately do increase tire particulate, Fairly significantly
In the USA, mass of EV is not significantly different than the alternative choice. EVs do not have increased tire particulate. If in Europe extremely lightweight tiny cars are actually a likely substitution for nicer, heavier EVs, then it seems reasonable that tire wear will increase proportionally. There's a lot riding on that "if" though.
margalabargala•2h ago
barnabee•1h ago
This does not seem correct...
- Air resistance slows the car without putting anything extra through the tyres (the friction is between car and air rather than between tyre and road)
- Regenerative braking channels energy into the battery, and also heat, that would otherwise be dissipated by heating and ablating the brake pads and discs, but regardless or whether it's brakes or the the motor acting as a dynamo that puts resistance on the rolling of the wheels, for a given amount of braking you will have the same forces between the tyres and the road and the same tyre wear.
So I'd expect it's only any additional weight that contributes to increase tyre particulates from electric care. Perhaps a tiny contribution from lower air resistance (on average at least) for electric cars, as there's often quite an effort to reduce the drag coefficient for range reasons, but I wouldn't expect this to be substantial as air resistance is not huge part of braking.
kjkjadksj•17h ago
shayief•9h ago
kjkjadksj•8h ago
bob1029•2h ago
earlyreturns•15h ago
bryanlarsen•15h ago
An electric car can use its engines to bring a vehicle to a complete stop. It can also use the motor to hold the car in place, even on a fairly steep incline. You can't do either with a standard transmission ICE vehicle.
There are people with electric cars that have their brakes rust out because they're never used. A standard piece of advice to EV owners is "make sure to use your brakes at least once a month".
zeristor•19h ago
rconti•19h ago
cosmic_cheese•18h ago
A better solution would probably be radar-based speed signs with printed threats of fines, though.
recursive•18h ago
I don't think people respond to those as much as they do to "traffic calming" like speed bumps, roundabouts, and narrow choke points.
cosmic_cheese•18h ago
To be clear, I'm all in favor of reworking neighborhood roads to be more friendly to pedestrians, but I think things like signs have a significantly better chance of actually being implemented in most circumstances.
rconti•8h ago
fullstop•18h ago
The EVs passing by are nice, though!
There were a number of accidents which prompted the 4 way stop.
cameronh90•18h ago
I've been wondering whether, theoretically, if self driving cars become widely usable and deployed in cities, will they be able to safely operate with harder tyre compounds and harder road surfaces that shed less but don't grip as well?
If nothing else, less aggressive driving should lead to less shedding.
seg_lol•17h ago