My home country is living proof that newer cars =/= less emissions. Due to certain factors, 20+ year old cars are rare and 25+ year old cars are almost nonexistent in major towns, yet, according to a survey, our country has the 3rd most polluting car fleet in EU. Why? Because if you don't have a German luxury SUV or sports sedan, you will be considered seriously uncool here. People spend a lot of money on cars here, living in €20K flat and driving €50K car is pretty common.
I had to use the bus and trains the last couple days as my car was in service. The bus system is horriffic as the times wich sayd the bus comes werent true and for my normal commuting route i now need 1 hour and 30 minutes were i normally only have half an hour i also have to waök over a kilometer to get from one bis to the other and if i miss it i habe to wait another hour i cant wait till tommorow when i get my car back
But not the specific London 'T-charge' (as they're calling it). Not atleast acording to their website. It does mention something about an 'ultra low emission zone' though. Which sounds like a lot of fun... (Insert sarcastic react here)
Meanwhile, I finally got started fixing some damage from my slight offroad excursion last weekend. It turns out that while my Legacy can keep up with an Outback on a slightly muddy rutted path, it really shouldn't. The driver side front fender lining got torn out, and the undertray is FUBAR. I at least got the fender lining back in today, but the undertray is looking to be a $100 part unless I can find one in a junkyard or pick-and-pull. This was the only picture I took. We were trying to get to one of the stages for the Lake Superior Performance Rally, and the road/trail got pretty nasty. We turned around after we hit a huge mud puddle that we weren't going to get across. The worst part of this whole thing was that I originally turned around to not go down the road, but then the guy in the Green Outback showed up and I got stupid and thought: "What the hell, we've got two cars, this should be fine" No clue who's truck that was, this was just where the green Outback and I ran into another Outback and the Ford Escape with him. After I got out of the trail. This doesn't do justice for how dirty the wagon got.
The thing in London is just an honest to god old fashioned scam, gives the government a load of money while also incentivising many new cars purchases and to top it all off simultaneously fixing nothing at all. Its some A+ work from the guys who come up with the money making schemes though.
They run out every winter without fail Have any of you guys even been to London, for little rural me the air is intolerable, a few times last year some spots exceeded Beijing pollution levels. Burns the lungs. Seriously screw whether or not global warming is real or not though I think you're an idiot if you buy into it being fake, the smog at street level is more than unpleasant, it's inhumane
Never been to a city as big as London, but I can imagine it's bad. I've lived in and around cities with about 2 to 3 million people for most of my life, so I've mostly acclimated to it (by which I mean it doesn't bother me), but there's still a noticeable difference when compared to the country. As for climate change, not "believing" in it is one of the few things that will genuinely make me angry at a person.
Improve public transportation and make the city more bike-friendly. That is going to help. Replacing 90's economy cars with modern fullsize SUVs will not. By the way, these "scrap your old polluting clunker and buy a new car" schemes benefit ONLY car manufacturers, and, I suspect, are sometimes funded by them. If they sell 10 cars to you every 30 years they will make more money than if they sell only one.
Quite possibly. Haven't been and haven't seen numbers for. London isn't as big as new York but European tighter narrow winding streets tend to trap smog in on the street level which somewhat offsets for that.
Yeah it basically that also you know what they say about Global Warming they say we're (country folk) the problem.
If the tight city streets trap smog at street level, then there is one thing that could be surprisingly effective at mitigating it - go crazy with the decorative flora on sidewalks and buildings. First - you know plants eat CO2 and give off oxygen. Second - it will help to mitigate the "concrete canyon" effect and make the city less drab overall. Third - some types, depending on how they're placed and how thick their leaves get, might help to mitigate noise pollution as well, helping to reduce the stress and anger large cities are known for. Above street level, rooftop gardens might also help, and if they're fruit/vegetable gardens, could give the people in the building a source of fresh, local food as well. It's a win/win situation. Mankind just plain was designed to live in a garden, not a city. Thus, the more you can disguise a city as a garden, the more livable it'll be, in multiple ways.
First time in awhile I can't help but fully agree, but the issue with that is space, again these are old tight twisty cities and there's limited room for expanding in this way, though it should certainly be done where possible
That is exactly what things like this are intended to do. Reduce the number of cars going through the city centre to incentivise other forms of transport. This is just a "softer" way of doing it than other cities which are banning anything not electric. Its just another way of expanding pedestrian only zones which are already popular. However as cleaner electric cars become more common, local pollution is less of an issue. Hence people will likely start to drive through again as normal. The issue there is that it would be insanely expensive to maintain. Plus installation would be insanely expensive to prevent plant life from damaging buildings. Then there is also the issue of fire safety, I presume there are safe ways that you could achieve it, but there was a tower fire in London recently, where it is suggested that many of the deaths may have been due to the exterior cladding not functioning as it should have. So covering buildings in plants might not be a solution that people will feel confident in either. However I should add that I am somewhat of the opinion that cars shouldn't be prevalent in inner city area's. With public transport systems, walking and cycling forming the main transport methods within the city. IMO Electric Vehicles are an improvement, but are still a bodge, because they still have all of the other issues that are associated with cars within cities. Similar to the Barcelona superblocks system, where you replace most of the roads with pavement and leave some for car traffic to pass through. However the issue is that much of the US is stuffed in this respect, since it was built around the idea of commuting in cars. Therefore some serious mass transit would be required to get people from suburbs into the city etc. And even then the streets are often very wide making them less walkable even if entirely paved. Guided buses are a cool solution though, I have used them in Cambridge before and they work pretty well. Bus joins busway rout at 17mins in. That route forms part of the "park and ride" system, allowing people to park outside of the city and get the bus to the centre.
Also in America a lot of people (mostly liberals) blame country folk for Globe Warming I mean I can see what they're talking about because us rednecks do use large American trucks but in a town at best you would find 20 pickups now in the city where Japanese Hatches and Sedans reigns supreme they are like millions there and I'm pretty sure those Hatches and Sedans are doing more harm to the world just because they're like x10^5 more than Trucks are and those Hatches and Sedans are less useful I know they're some people who own a truck and don't use it for work but they are 20 more people using trucks for work while those Hatchbacks they are there to get you to point A to B
I think the issue that is normally raised is the impact per person. City living is actually quite eco friendly, since things are closer and require less transport in general. However the issue currently is that the density means that pollution issues arise because everything is packed into a small area. But as I said, once you divide the total pollution by the number of humans, things are pretty good. Suburban living generally gets a bad reputation for many reasons though. Since you have to drive to get anywhere due to the sprawling nature, making walking and cycling almost impossible, then there are the other lifestyle aspects. For example you can look at the concept of cul-de-sac kids, it is often argued that since their parents view the cul-de-sac as the only "safe area" and prohibit their kids from leaving it, the kids are robbed of their childhood and the ability to integrate better with society. Whereas in the countryside they generally get more freedom, same goes for inner city children too.
