22 ms·

Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I

• nerdponx 3y ago
  Do tires shed more dust at higher speeds? I wonder if this has always been a known but unstated problem, or if increasing highway speeds are causing it to get worse.
  • dietr1ch 3y ago
    They should as cornering and braking exerts a higher force on them, so they should wear faster.
  • Forbo 3y ago
    Great question, I have no idea. I wish the nationwide 55mph speed limit were reinstated, if only to reduce oil consumption. Added bonus that it might actually encourage more public transit and walkable cities. Nobody will take this idea seriously, the US is far too addicted to cars and lacks the density.
    • cscurmudgeon 3y ago
      > I wish the nationwide 55mph speed limit were reinstated In places like SF and LA, even existing traffic laws are not enforced due to "equity". https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Equity-in-Highway-Safety-Enforcement-and-Engagement21 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Equity-in-Highway-Safety-Enfo...
      • verve_rat 3y ago
        That link you posted says nothing of the sort.
    • whaleofatw2022 3y ago
      We don't even enforce truck speed limit. On top of being more inefficient/dangerous due to weight, it tears roads up faster.
  • burkaman 3y ago
    Seems like it from a couple studies, for example: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722008774 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004896972.... Vehicle weight is also a significant factor, so EVs will make this particular problem worse. Still worth the tradeoff, but obviously not using a car at all is the best option.
    • Etheryte 3y ago
      Are you sure about the tradeoff bit? If my memory doesn't fail me, there was an article on HN recently that covered how EVs are environmentally more friendly, but health wise worse exactly because they generate more tire particles.
      • burkaman 3y ago
        I'd be interested to see it, that's not an obvious conclusion to me. The health difference of an EV is a percentage increase in tire particles but a complete absence of tailpipe emissions. I would not expect tire particles to be the more significant factor, especially when the impacts of microplastics are so unknown. Tailpipe emissions are a significant problem (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab35fc https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab35fc), and I know this is an extreme example but you can literally kill yourself by just leaving a car running in an enclosed space. EV tailpipe emissions are not fully replaced by electricity generation emissions, even if you get your power from 100% coal (and you don't). Power plants are much more efficient than internal combustion engines.
        • Etheryte 3y ago
          I believe this [0] is the article (with discussion at [1]). To cherry-pick two quotes to contextualize what I recalled: > "Tires release 100 times the amount of volatile organic compounds as a modern tailpipe, says an analyst." > "Moreover, tire emissions from electric vehicles are 20 percent higher than those from fossil-fuel vehicles. EVs weigh more and have greater torque, which wears out tires faster." I'm not sure how all of this works out in the grand scheme of things, or how accurate those claims are, but I think those are issues that surely deserve more looking into. [0] https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemicals https://e360.yale.edu/features/tire-pollution-toxic-chemical... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37569137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37569137
• baggy_trough 3y ago
  The positive externalities are even more enormous, which is a problem for environmentalists.
  • whoknowsidont 3y ago
    >The positive externalities are even more enormous What do cars specifically positively provide? NOT including the positives that exists due to constructing infrastructure around that mode of transportation (artificial issues).
    • CharlieDigital 3y ago
      Mobility; unfortunately, the public transit infrastructure in the US isn't that great and the sprawl means that cars have become a necessity. Many areas simply can't be served efficiently by transit.
      • TaylorAlexander 3y ago
        But this is not an inherent property of cars. It is only true because we invested all our transit dollars in highways. Cars are not inherently better and roads are not free. If we invest more in public transit we can reduce our need for cars.
        • CharlieDigital 3y ago
          Agree, but there's no political will and even if there was, it would take decades.
          • TaylorAlexander 3y ago
            The first step is recognizing that cars are not ideal, and the second step is doing something about it. It’s not really a problem if it would take decades, as governments do tend to exist for decades and do plan accordingly. But what we cannot do is pretend that cars are inherently superior, ignoring the unprecedented investment we made in highways to make that happen. But it also isn’t the case that improvements will take decades. Maybe solving the problem completely would, but local governments can convert big dangerous streets in to walkable areas with safer bike transport in just a few years or less. Solving the whole problem would take decades but then, governments do tend to deal in decades long plans when needed. If they’re ever going to launch new national rail projects, they’re going to need the public to recognize the value of alternatives to cars.
• jdblair 3y ago
  I lived in West Oakland for 10 years. Not immediately adjacent to a freeway, but surrounded on 4 sides by a freeway within a half mile. All flat surfaces are eventually are covered in black grit unless it rains. I assume it was not just tire dust but also diesel soot.
  • micromacrofoot 3y ago
    also brake dust, which until fairly recently used to be asbestos
• beowulfey 3y ago
  Same experience. I probably took a few years off my life with my year by a freeway in LA. So much black crap on everything.
• badtension 3y ago
  That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly. We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.
  • dlahoda 3y ago
    EV bikes sure. price and weight of good EV bike dropped for last 5 years.
    • valianteffort 3y ago
      I don't know where you live but everything is too far apart in American suburbs. How you would fix that without tearing it all down? And it's totally impractical for transporting a family around. Road tripping. Visiting far away family. Day at the lake or beach. Going camping. How do you convince people to give all of that up and just be content with whatever is 15min away.
      • jacobolus 3y ago
        Residents of American suburbs should have to pay for their full costs (infrastructure and maintenance, environmental, healthcare, services, ...), and if many people can't afford it, we should do a universal cash subsidy to every resident at the federal level to make up the difference so the transition is not so damaging, then let people decide if they really want to spend that whole amount on paying the actual costs of their lifestyle or if they would prefer to move to a more efficient living arrangement and keep the cash to do something more productive with it. The USA subsidizes the suburbs to an absurd degree, pushing most of the costs into the future and making city dwellers pay more than their share for the rest. Living in a relatively large house in the suburbs should in principle cost several times more than living in a flat in the city, because it requires vastly more infrastructure and the amortized cost of services is much higher. But our broken economic system has flipped this around and made suburbs extremely artificially cheap, while making most of the building practices that make denser walkable neighborhoods possible illegal under building codes and local ordinances.
• bluedino 3y ago
  If you live next to a farm field, you get the same thing. And at certain times of the year, the "dust" smells like manure.
  • FrontierProject 3y ago
    That can't be from tires tho, a farm field won't have tires in it more than 3 or 4 times a year. And it probably smells like manure because pumping manure onto fields is one of the most common methods of fertilizing.
• dilyevsky 3y ago
  It’s probably mostly soot from the exhaust. I’m few blocks away to railroad (caltrain) and the windows facing the tracks have same black residue
  • goalieca 3y ago
    Cars have fairly clean tailpipes these days. Older Diesel train engines still in service are disgusting. Construction vehicles are also pretty bad. The worst are large ocean going vessels burning bunker fuel in port which is illegal but very cheap.
    • dilyevsky 3y ago
      Caltrain is diesel yes. They are replacing most with electric locomotives any year now
      • sagarm 3y ago
        Electric trains should start passenger service next year (originally this year). https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification https://www.caltrain.com/projects/electrification
        • dilyevsky 3y ago
          Originally it was 2019 and maybe even earlier
          • hedora 3y ago
            Various NIMBY groups kept blocking it, then covid hit. They’re worried about the wheel and wind noise, I think. If I lived near Caltrain, I’d be more worried about diesel exhaust and commute times (the new trains are faster).
            • dilyevsky 3y ago
              The atherton (aka rich asshole den) nimby lawsuit was settled back in 2016. Then it’s mostly your standard California mismanagement and cost overrun s until ultimate excuse - covid came along
• userbinator 3y ago
  That's more likely to be brake dust.
• downrightmike 3y ago
  The only real solution is mandating light and heavy rail. California was hit hard by the car companies that bought out the rail and got replaced it with roads. And now we have even more reason to use rail everywhere we can. Maybe after the nimby boomers die off, we can actually made things make sense.
  • brewdad 3y ago
    If we wait for the Boomers to die off to start making change, things might gain traction by the time GenZ runs things. We really have to start now because the gears of change grind slowly and reluctantly.
    • incompatible 3y ago
      GenZ and younger are the people doing burnouts down my street.
    • iancmceachern 3y ago
      But then we'll be the boomers...
  • rootusrootus 3y ago
    Why do you think younger property owners are actually going to be any more interested in giving up their land to the government to build more rail lines? I get that it's fun to blame the boomers for everything, but it sounds more like you're complaining about human nature.
    • downrightmike 3y ago
      Mostly because the younger generation wants the world to be habitable for the foreseeable future. But ultimately light rail and cars are not mutually exclusive. Property doesn't have to be lost to add it. Heavy rail can largely go parallel to current lines and we can add additional rail lines rather than yet another lane to highways. If you look around, rail + highways is already done and has been for decades, it is just poorly mismanaged to maximize RR profits. I posit that nearly none of the Semi trucks out there are only solving the last mile problem, most of it is interstate transit, which is best served by rail. In places that are upstream of water sources, they need to be heavily in rail to prevent the pollution we're talking about here.
• mushbino 3y ago
  I lived near 880 in Oakland and always had massive amounts of this super fine sticky dust. They call that 880 corridor cancer corridor. My friends who lived next door who I was renting from, their son got leukemia and they think that had something to do with it.
  • Ajedi32 3y ago
    That sounds like a really easy thing to study. (Does living near a highway significantly increase risk of cancer?) A single anecdote like that isn't very convincing.
    • mushbino 3y ago
      Here's a study done from 1990 to 2010. It shows a statistically significant increase in cancer. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4772211/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4772211/
• RGamma 3y ago
  I recently had the pleasure to vacation on a car-free island (few thousand inhabitants including tourists). Only motorized vehicles allowed are a handfull small electric transporters for logistics (and construction vehicles, ambulance). Turns out the space gained from lack of car infrastructure increases space efficiency by a lot (not that that wasn't obvious from theory). It really was bliss and it makes me despise the status quo so much more fervently. Paradise is so close and yet so far away...
  • johnloeber 3y ago
    Where was this island? Would love to go!
    • illirik 3y ago
      Mackinac island is one, absolutely beautiful place. Although I think it has a lower population than where GP went
    • RGamma 3y ago
      Spiekeroog
    • TrapLord_Rhodo 3y ago
      Catalina Island right off the coast of california
  • Gigachad 3y ago
    It's always this circular logic where "I need my car because the supermarket is an hour walk" but the supermarket is an hour walk because everyone drives. It's mind boggling how much resources get poured in to cars and car infrastructure only to provide a slower, inefficient, more expensive, and toxic system. Feels like the next generation is seeing this now and things are slowly starting to change in some countries. Not sure how fast we can undo decades of damage and corporate brainwashing though.
    • koolba 3y ago
• artursapek 3y ago
  I used to live half a block from the BQE in Brooklyn. Window sill always covered in layer of black dust. Never again.
• titzer 3y ago
  Can confirm; lived about 300 yards away from the 10 freeway in Culver City for several years. The balcony would get coated in fine black dust in just a couple weeks' time. Literally no one would grow vegetables outside--that would be madness. I knew then it was brake dust and tires. Disappointing that this stuff turns out to be even more toxic than I thought.
  • fuzzfactor 3y ago
    In Nederland, Texas you're in a small community right in the middle between Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, Texas, which are known as the "Golden Triangle". These have been major refining and petro-chemical centers dating back to the wild oil gusher known as Spindletop over 100 years ago which really made Texas known as an oil producing state. Now each of the towns' refineries and chemical plants have grown in response to consumer demand for automotive fuel, but these are not really big cities and they don't have the number of cars you get in Dallas or Houston. But you still get some fine particulates that build up after a while, like when you wake up and find a layer on your car after you just washed it the day before. Even when it was black it wasn't tire dust, and sometimes there would be brown, white, grey, or yellow. You never knew what you were going to get and when. Depending on the wind it could be a discharge from Mobil in Beaumont, Texaco in Port Arthur, or DuPont in Orange. This is what you get before the fuel even makes it into your tank, so that everyone can spread their tire dust all over the rest of the country. I've also spent time near the 10 freeway, in Texas. A major cross-country thoroughfare for 18-wheelers.
• incompatible 3y ago
  Local hoons like to make clouds of tire smoke doing burnouts, I think that would count. I haven't noticed coatings of black sediments though.
• acjohnson55 3y ago
  I used to live on a busy parkway in Brooklyn and the grime that would collect on our 4th floor window sill was gnarly. I'm guessing each floor downward would have been worse. I'm also guessing that simply walking around the city and being in the subway is also pretty bad. Separating the tracks from the platform with doors would probably help with that.
• camgunz 3y ago
  There is no such thing as a sustainable future that centers around automobiles. The US might not internalize this for a generation or two, but it's true. It doesn't matter if they're electric or ICE, or if they're driven by humans or AI, they just don't fit in a sustainable future. There are 278m cars in the US, roughly 83% of the population. To scale to the world, that means 6.7b cars. That's completely absurd and wildly unsustainable, even at half the scale. Here's what's unsustainable: - sourcing rare earth materials needed for batteries and computer components - powering them - handling the waste cars when owners upgrade or crash them - putting tires on them - the space needed to operate and store them - the amount of time people spend in them - the amount of labor required to build and maintain them - the amount of labor required to maintain roads for them (maintenance, snow removal, etc.) Doing any of this arguably involves human rights or ecological disasters. But that aside, barring widespread fusion reactor deployments, it is impossible. This above all else is why I just can't agree that Tesla will save the world or that self-driving cars are the future. They simply can't be, unless the future is absolutely terrible. The western world is due for a reckoning. If we flatten out living standards across the world, GDP per capita is $12,414. If you want to be extraordinarily generous/cruel and leave out everyone except the US, Canada, Europe, India, and China it only goes up to $17k. That doesn't leave room for things like car ownership, air travel, Macbooks, college, eating out, child care, health care, etc. etc. It also doesn't help (to put it lightly) that the overwhelming majority of population growth is going to occur in poorer parts of the world. The simple truth is either the western world figures out how to make do with far, far less than it currently does (and notably its elite essentially learn to be poor) or we suffer a prolonged period of intense violence while everyone else either quietly suffers/dies or loudly makes us pay for hoarding. There's a sliver of a chance where we figure out how to generate enough clean energy to raise everyone's living standards enough to pacify them, but it seems inevitable that the inequality that characterizes the current arrangement will apply to that as well, i.e. 1% to Africa 99% to Europe. It's possible they're just used to it and won't complain, but my guess is that climate change will force the issue.
• igravious 3y ago
  poison? demonic? spare us the histrionics
• leereeves 3y ago
  I used to live four houses from a freeway and never saw any black dust, probably because of the twenty foot high wall around the freeway. It's possible to build them better.