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Battery operated garbage trucks don't sound like a great idea, at least for all day use. With the push for EV I am not sure why we aren't seeing a push for the

• jeffbee 4y ago
  NYC garbage trucks spend a very long time parked in front of the same building all night, crushing bags full of plastic coffee cups. Ask anyone who has ever tried to sleep in Manhattan. A completely reasonable solution that doesn't require a wholesale change in the way refuse is collected in that city would be to plug the truck in at the building where it is standing. That said, a wholesale change is what they need.
  • chitowneats 4y ago
    It never ceases to amaze me that the self styled "Greatest City on Earth" can't come up with a reasonable solution for its garbage.
    • jeffbee 4y ago
      They also call it "the city that never sleeps" but they misleadingly omit the reason.
      • chitowneats 4y ago
        That reason being what? Cocaine? Edit: oh, you must mean noisy garbage trucks
      • angry_octet 4y ago
        Except that it does sleep, and deeply... The bars close really early, cabs get very hard to find shortly after, the streets of Manhattan are deserted. The only thing that’s 24H is some rent a cop telling you not to sit on some park bench.
        • jen20 4y ago
          Have the bars stopped closing at 4am?
    • nickpp 4y ago
      Garbage is a difficult issue everywhere. Part of the entropy problem of the universe…
      • jaywalk 4y ago
        I can't think of another major city where there are piles of garbage bags on the sidewalks everywhere.
        • noselasd 4y ago
          Tokyo ? Business there place their garbage bags out on the sidewalk in the evenings, garbage trucks scoop them up early in the morning.
      • jonny_eh 4y ago
        > I can't think of another major city where there are piles of garbage bags on the sidewalks everywhere. Other cities have alleyways.
      • some_random 4y ago
        Garbage is absolutely not as big of a problem as it is in NYC though. You don't get to blame the fact garbage collection is awful on entropy when other cities very visibly do not have the same issues.
        • wolverine876 4y ago
          Do you live there? It seems pretty effective IME.
          • jrockway 4y ago
            HN's take on NYC is very confusing. Everyone has "obvious" answers to problems that residents don't even consider problematic, and oh by the way, they've never left their town of 600 people.
            • 4y ago
    • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > never ceases to amaze me that the self styled "Greatest City on Earth" can't come up with a reasonable solution for its garbage The status quo is sanitary and efficient. All things considered, New York’s garbage problem is on par with its snow problem. Well managed enough to work, but annoying enough around the edges to be fun to bicker about. If you live in low-density New York, your experience mirrors suburbia; high, and your trash disappears down a building chute. It’s only we who live in the middle density who have to haul garbage to the basement and hear the beeping trucks at night. Even then, it’s clean and works.
      • walrus01 4y ago
        > The status quo is sanitary and efficient. Are we talking about the same NYC? Visit Manhattan in mid July/August. Bags of garbage leaking juices and oil out onto the street into a huge greasy spot where the designated collection spot is near the curb. The whole city smells like a toaster oven roasted ballsack. Then combine that with all the cumulative liters of urine per day from dogs and humans all throughout the city.
        • dredmorbius 4y ago
          It could be worse, and was once: <https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urban-design-great-horse-manure-crisis-1894/ https://99percentinvisible.org/article/cities-paved-dung-urb...> Cleaning up after horses (including, often, the horses themselves) is a large part of why and how NYC's municipal waste system evolved to its present state.
      • vinaypai 4y ago
        What do you think happens to the trash after it "disappears down the chute"? You might not haul it to the curb yourself but the building as staff still has to unless you're in a building big enough to have a loading dock that can accommodate a truck to haul away a roll-on container. Most high rises don't even fall into that category. I live in a 20 story building with 157 units and the building staff has to drag the piles of trash out of the compactor room to the sidewalk on collection days.
    • burkaman 4y ago
      Doesn't basically every city call itself the greatest city on earth?
      • chitowneats 4y ago
        Not like NYC. Not even close. At least, I've never visited or lived in one that rivaled it.
      • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        I've never heard Red Deer, Alberta make that claim.
        • chitowneats 4y ago
          You don't even hear people from LA or SF boast the way they do in New Yawk.
          • JumpCrisscross 4y ago
            > don't even hear people from LA or SF boast the way they do in New Yawk Every borough except Staten Island is larger than San Francisco [1][2]. Manhattan together with Queens or Brooklyn is bigger than LA, the second-largest city in America. (Staten Island is about the size of Raleigh or Atlanta.) New York solves problems at a scale no other American city comes close to imagining. [1] https://www.nyc.gov/site/planning/planning-level/nyc-population/current-future-populations.page https://www.nyc.gov/site/planning/planning-level/nyc-populat... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities...
            • chitowneats 4y ago
              This is exactly what I mean. You guys have no idea how silly you sound everywhere else. I also noticed your sleight of hand. "Greatest city in the world" includes Tokyo, Paris, Seoul. All far superior to NYC in almost every way, with similar issues of scale.
    • novok 4y ago
      They can sacrifice street parking spots systematically throughout the city for garbage dumpsters, as many others have suggested, but it's politically untenable to do so because americans love their cars, even in NYC. Another politically untenable solution is to do what Taiwan does and force people to put out their garbage in very tight time windows and otherwise store it privately in their houses and businesses, but that is a unproductive use of human time on net.
      • echlebek 4y ago
        The reality is that most other major cities have garbage collection figured out in a better way. For instance in my city, garbage is kept in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building, and on a scheduled day, it's picked up either right in the building or in the alley after the caretaker moves the dumpsters there. The fact that this is considered politically untenable in New York is frankly insane, glad I don't live there.
        • ars 4y ago
          > in a dedicated garage area in each apartment building NY has a lot of row houses, there's no room for a dedicated garbage area. And the alleys are not wide enough for a garbage truck. Before criticizing a place, at least understand it first.
          • brnt 4y ago
            People in row houses can't walk to the corner of the street? That's how it works in much of the Netherlands, underground bins spread over suburbia, which is like 90% row house. Works fine. I wish we had it here (still need to put my bin/bags out on the designated day).
            • jeffbee 4y ago
              This is also how they do it in Zürich. You walk your garbage down to the corner. Recycling is the same way. The only thing that gets picked up from houses is paper and cardboard. In NYC, in very dense areas like of Manhattan, I would expect it would make sense to put a container in the bottom of every building, but in rowhouse areas it is reasonable to expect the occupants to walk down to the corner. The main thing is like so many other aspects of American life we have no domestic examples of best practices. You have to visit foreign cities and pay attention, or invite their experts to come teach your city.
    • hericium 4y ago
      It was always handled efficiently by the mafia guys in movies.
    • MrMan 4y ago
      What are you talking about
  • jwagenet 4y ago
    I’m very much interested in this underground system (I don’t know if it is actually implemented): https://www.core77.com/posts/102208/Amsterdams-Smart-System-of-Underground-Garbage-Bins https://www.core77.com/posts/102208/Amsterdams-Smart-System-... It seems to me this sort of trash deposit system would greatly simplify trash collection.
    • apendleton 4y ago
      Roosevelt Island (which is a part of the Manhattan borough) actually has an underground, pneumatic trash collection system: https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islands-futuristic-pneumatic-tube-trash-system/ https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan... . I think it would be hard to retrofit such a thing onto the already-built-up parts of the city though.
      • chimeracoder 4y ago
        > I think it would be hard to retrofit such a thing onto the already-built-up parts of the city though. It would be prohibitively expensive, because there's no master record of which pipes/wires/cables/etc. exist in any given location. It's very expensive to dig in Manhattan[0], because you basically have to dig carefully and see what's actually there, rather than having some knowledge of "the gas pipes are in this spot, so we can dig around them". So much of the infrastructure was installed before detailed record-keeping was standard practice. As far as trash collection in NYC, the main thing that needs to happen is containerized trash collection. Right now, trash bags are just left on the sidewalks 3-5 times per week for 12 or more hours at a time, creating an absolute buffet for rodents. [0] This actually applies to most of the city, but Manhattan is a combination of the oldest-built and most-densly-built infrastructure, so it's particularly expensive there.
        • jeffbee 4y ago
          Many cities face the same problem and this is how they fix it: they make a plan to rework every pipe and wire in their city in a finite amount of time. They go block by block and tear it all up at once. They bring a shitload of guys and equipment instead of two idiots with jackhammers, so the whole thing is ripped out and replaced in a week instead of in 5 years.
• WWLink 4y ago
  I agree, what we need is to make them blow the blackest black diesel smoke possible.
  • brink 4y ago
    This isn't a one dimensional problem where diesel smoke is the only factor at play.
• tapoxi 4y ago
  Here in Massachusetts we just removed our streetcar power lines (MBTA 71 and 73 trolleybus) because the wires needed to be removed during construction. This might be a logistical issue for NYC. https://www.mbta.com/news/2022-01-27/beginning-march-2022-mbta-routes-71-and-73-trolley-buses-be-replaced-diesel-hybrid https://www.mbta.com/news/2022-01-27/beginning-march-2022-mb...
  • samspenc 4y ago
    Yeah having street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City, and I'm not surprised that cities that have them are slowly removing them. Don't get me wrong, I think they are a great solution electrically and for efficiency / sustainability, but require an enormous geographic footprint, central planning and a lot of overhead space which is difficult to find in dense cities.
    • wolverine876 4y ago
      > street car power lines can be a nightmare in densely crowded cities with a lot of pedestrian traffic and tightly packed buildings. It would be a nightmare to implement in a place like New York City They've been used in dense cities for generations. How hard can it be? > require an enormous geographic footprint What footprint is needed for additional overhead wires?
      • lostlogin 4y ago
        I wonder is it is more of less efficient for land use as they don’t need fuelling and the associated land that uses, but do need a pair of lamp posts every 10m.
        • bee_rider 4y ago
          One point in favor of running these lines — city already has lots of lamp posts.
• fencepost 4y ago
  Garbage trucks are probably one of the best places for it actually, because they stop so frequently. Unfortunately the article is about plow trucks instead which have a very different use case - New York just happens to use the same vehicles for both so they have a smaller fleet that's not as well suited to either task. For garbage trucks you have stop and go movement so EVs eliminate idling. Given the size of the trucks it's probably not a big deal to make sure they have adequate battery capacity. Plow trucks have a completely different use model where they're run at speed for long periods and one day of plowing could have the same distance traveled as weeks of trash collection. Hybrids would likely be an improvement in efficiency but the same way they do for other trucks - batteries support high demand periods while the generator is fine for the lower sustained loads. Edit: a drawback of the smaller fleet for snow management is that garbage trucks aren't as well suited for salt/sand/deicer distribution. Nobody designs their garbage trucks to spray. I hope. Edit2: garbage trucks also have a lot of additional mechanical systems that are probably already electrical, so among other things the ICE versions likely have an oversized alternator to power that.
  • makestuff 4y ago
    Seems like plug in hybrid is the best approach with current tech. Battery in the neighborhoods, and gas powered when you are hauling it back to the landfill.
    • fencepost 4y ago
      Maybe. Others have talked about the problems with hybrids and they might not make as much sense as simply expanding either the fleet as a whole or the parts of the fleet used for plowing. Also worth considering the city's whole vehicle fleet - use the garbage trucks as appropriate for mass response, but also use dump trucks, etc from public works. Eventually there may also be more options with battery swapping - that's a lot more feasible with a fleet within a relatively small geographic region.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • 4y ago
• SllX 4y ago
  The power lines that trolleybuses use don’t cover an entire city. They’re only installed on the routes the buses are scheduled to run on, and only for the parts of the streets buses will use. They’re like train tracks in that way, but hanging in the air instead of embedded in the ground. Garbage truck fleets are expected to cover every street and every block in their service area which adds up to more of a city than bus services cover since they don’t stop on every block at every house and building. The lines also require maintenance and you also need to train operators to re-establish the connections not if they drop but when they drop. Doesn’t seem worth it to me, at least not for New York.
  • jacquesm 4y ago
    They are also a maintenance headache, especially in icy conditions.
  • heavyset_go 4y ago
    In 1875, Philadelphia had electric street car lines going through every numbered street in the city, and through every cross street in central Philly[1]. [1] https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png
    • SllX 4y ago
      That's neat. Thanks for sharing!
      • heavyset_go 4y ago
        No problem. If you visit there, you can still see some of the rail lines in the streets.
        • weberer 4y ago
          They've paved over the rails in the 90's, but a few bus routes are still powered by the overhead lines. I forget the numbers, but one of them starts at the Frankford transportation center.
• dendrite9 4y ago
  I remember looking into this a little bit and the conclusion seemed to be that for most garbage truck uses the range was not the limiting factor. Pickup time was more important, and batteries are attractive given that most garbage pickup is stop-pickup-start-drive a short distance then stop again. In Seattle I believe I saw the longest route was less than 70 miles but I can't find a source. There was a purchase of battery garbage trucks with a range of 55 miles a few years ago. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/seattle-makes-history-with-electric-garbage-truck/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/05/seattle-makes-history-w... Caternary lines have always seemed like a good solution but there must be a good reason they aren't more popular. Also, garbage collection in NYC seems to be a weird mishmash of rules and providers. Again there must be a historical reason but from the outside it has never made sense to me. https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly-world-of-private-garbage-collection https://www.propublica.org/article/trashed-inside-the-deadly...
  • wolverine876 4y ago
    > Caternary lines have always seemed like a good solution but there must be a good reason they aren't more popular What reason?
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Ugly, expensive, maintenance headache. What's not to like... They are however more environmentally friendly than diesel engines and it works well if you only have a few well trafficked routes. But you can't do this for a whole city, and garbage trucks and snowplows need to go into every street, not just the main boulevards.
      • wolverine876 4y ago
        Agreed on all points, though I notice everyone says they are so expensive and hard to maintain, but nobody cites anything (not a criticism - I have no idea myself). However, you don't need availability on every street, just enough to charge the vehicles sufficiently for the smaller streets.
• RC_ITR 4y ago
  This, This, This. We think "Well gas cars transport their own energy source, so electric cars must too" and that will probably be one of the things future generations laugh at us for (in the same way older generations thought flapping wing costumes could generate heavier-than-air flight). Hydrocarbons are an extreme outlier in terms of energy density (vs. weight) and the fact that we are trying to replicate that model with other non-outlier materials is crazy. Cars travel on roads almost exclusively. In the US, 90%+ passenger miles are on roads that already have some amount of power infrastructure (lightposts) and if we just made it so that our vehicles could plug into electricity at all points of their journey, then EVs are basically solved. The sad part of Elon being so successful is that all he does is see places where we used to do things well (we electrified the whole country very quickly, built an advanced space program in 2-3 decades, etc.), notices we lack the will to keep doing those things (even I understand the overhead wires thing is a moonshot), and comes up with the pragmatic "OK but not really great" solution. Seriously, if you had said in 1960 "the richest man in 2020 will focus on cars, low-earth-orbit rockets, and tunnel boring machines" people would be extremely bummed by the lack of progress.
  • trog 4y ago
    > and if we just made it so that our vehicles could plug into electricity at all points of their journey, then EVs are basically solved. One thing I have often wondered is how often they'd need access to electricity if they had a small battery to cover for the times they're not connected. i.e., do they need to be connected at /all/ points of their journey? Or just often enough that they can get enough of a charge to make it to the next point? e.g. if there was induction charging at stop signs or traffic lights, would that be enough for a majority of trips? This seems like it should just be a bit of a game of statistical coverage of charging points, time spent at them, speed of charging, and so on.
  • dragonwriter 4y ago
    > Cars travel on roads almost exclusively. In the US, 90%+ passenger miles are on roads that already have some amount of power infrastructure (lightposts) and if we just made it so that our vehicles could plug into electricity at all points of their journey, then EVs are basically solved. So, your solution for EVs is overheard wires or third rails for every lane of every roadway?
• heavyset_go 4y ago
  Philadelphia used to have electric street car lines that ran down almost every street[1]. [1] https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png https://i.redd.it/zidqa2mbmav31.png
• vinaypai 4y ago
  You would need to install power lines on every single street for that to work. Streetcars for transportation can just electrify a few routes.
  • RC_ITR 4y ago
    Would you believe that every house requires power lines to be run to it too? It only seems like a daunting problem on roads because we don't already do it.
    • jcrawfordor 4y ago
      A much bigger problem than the lines are the switches. Switching of trolley buses at intersections is not really all that well solved of a problem as is, and the solutions available right now (up to the most sophisticated based on radio signaling) are a primary failure point, maintenance intensive, and expensive and complex enough that the cost of a four-way intersection set up for four-way electric travel is going to be pretty formidable. Further, electric lines exist mostly on shared poles. For safety reasons, shared poles require a buffer space between MV and distribution voltage power lines and communications lines. This means that the typically 600 VDC trolley bus power cannot be added at the level of communications lines (well, can be with some work, but in practice it is expensive and complex) without compromising this safety buffer, requiring deenergization when communications utility work is underway. In many cases they cannot be near communications cables even if communications work is prohibited when the system is energized, because of the risk of inadvertent contact putting 600VDC on coaxial or telephone lines which could create fatal situations. Additional expense is required to mitigate this problem. Trolley lines also have more complex physical loading requirements than power lines because they must cope with the lateral forces of vehicles, so they usually need to be anchored to both sides of the street on crosswires, to poles that were engineered for that use. Most of the time attaching trolley lines to existing poles will not be feasible for these reasons and they will need to either go on dedicated supports, be attached to buildings (the engineering and real estate paperwork for this is complex), or have existing poles replaced with ones engineered to support trolley lines as well.
• Our_Benefactors 4y ago
  > I am not sure why we aren't seeing a push for the installation of streetcar power lines, these already exist and are used for busses They’re ugly eyesores. They only exist in a handful of cities in the USA to begin with. They limit your driving speed. They create additional noise. They can detach fairly easily, impeding traffic. Much bigger issue if this could potentially happen to every vehicle.