zen_brassica
7d ago
Ok, I guess first it's worth establishing what we're comparing driving to. I think it's fair to say some mix of public transport like trains, buses, and subways, as well as walking and cycling. If you take public transport you have to typically walk a little bit, as it won't go directly to your destination.
Also, I'm not trying to argue that driving a car isn't desirable for the occupants. Of course it's convenient, private, and comfortable. And I don't disagree with Urquan that a lot of people choose cars because they prefer the risk of an accident to the risk of being a victim of crime.
So to start, let's compare the space requirements. Every bit of land in a city has a value -- if you use it for something transportation-related, you can't use it for something else. As a thought experiment, if you had to surround every building with a 50ft wide no-mans-land buffer, it would clearly make any city or town larger and therefore add time to every trip through it, without adding any value (with the exception perhaps reducing noise pollution if you live next to a club). Proximity creates value.
Walking often requires sidewalks -- one could imagine a city with no sidewalks, but typically we don't want roads inches away from front doors and storefronts anyway, so it doesn't really take up much extra space. That said, if your roads are narrow enough, you can leave these out (example of random residential Tokyo street).
Buses require depots to store them, as well as stops. Clicking around google maps for any major city with a good bus system shows that these take up minimal space, about as much as a Walmart + parking, if that.
Commuter trains probably require the biggest footprint of any public transport. 860,000 people commute into London on the train daily (2006 figure). If they all drove instead *and carpooled 2 people per car), assuming a 2.4m x 4.8m parking space (old, smaller standard), you'd need 4953600 m^2 of parking, or 2.2 km^2 of just parking spaces. And since a parking lot needs a substantial amount of space for the cars to drive around, it would probably be more like 3 or 4 km^2. For a train station footprint, let's take Waterloo station, (the biggest), which as far as I can estimate would be about 0.25 km across if it were compressed into a square, for 0.0625 km^2. There are 14 terminal train stations in London -- if they were all the same size, they would take up 0.875 km^2. But many are smaller, and a train station is not just bare warehouse for trains, it has shops and places to eat as well. There are also lots of smaller train stations which are just a blip on the train line that barely takes up more space than the train itself.
And finally, a subway takes up very little useful space, of course. For driving, the Big Dig in Boston would be comparable.
Now, when providing car parking, you can build up, or down! But since car parking takes up so much space per-user, parking structures often have to be paid in order for them to make economic sense, or they're subsidized by the city. I have little objection to car parking when the driver pays enough that it doesn't need subsidies. Often, though, planing laws just mandate that each business provides a certain number of parking spaces. We all pay for this both in the form of things being further apart, as discussed above, as well as businesses having to pay taxes on land area only used for cars, that they then pass on to us.
I want to emphasize -- I don't think cars are the devil. I do think that bending over backwards to accommodate driving at the expense of other forms of transportation, and the general livability of cities, is a problem.
Another externality is accident deaths. Cars kill more than other forms of transportation -- and not just the people in the car. If we take what the DOT estimated for the value of human life in 2023, $13.2 million, times 0.54 deaths per 100,000,000 million passenger miles for passenger vehicles from the previous link, that's $7.128 million per 100m passenger miles. We could cut that in half if we want to say that half the car deaths are due to the own fault of the driver and so shouldn't count as an externality. This is probably over-estimating because there are a lot of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities, but under-estimating in cases where there is more than 1 occupant of the car. (It's easy to get into the weeds quickly) This is $3.064 million per 100m passenger miles, or $0.03 per passenger mile. Every 33 mile trip statistically does around $1 in economic damage solely from the possibility of causing an accident. Just looking at the graph of accidents, the externality from other types of transit is less than 1/10 of that. As for walking and cycling, I'm assuming that deaths caused to others is generally negligible -- it would be hard to kill someone with a bike crash even if you were trying.
Other externalities, such as noise, are messier to compare. Obviously walking and cycling are very quiet, subways are too if you're not actually down near them. Trains and buses can make more noise than cars, but there's the factor that they're not on literally every street, and they're not constantly passing by. Train horns can carry a long way though. Subjectively, I've found cities with lots of cars to be substantially louder than cities that don't prioritize them.
Pollution is similar. For trains and buses, I'm not sure. Trains do probably generate a lot of brake dust, and diesel trains pollute. It may depend on electrification, etc. Electric cars are apparently about as bad as gas ones due to tire wear and braking though, so I imagine buses and trains may be the same, though electric trains aren't heavier than diesel ones since they get their power from overhead lines. Biking and walking create negligible pollution, unless you count the visual pollution of lycra-clad cyclists.
Anyway, that's my impression of the externalities of different modes of transport, back of the envelope. It makes sense to drive everywhere, if you don't count what driving does to everyone else. Just like it makes sense to catch as many fish as you want without considering if the stock can support it.
zen_brassica
8d ago
That's perfectly fine, and I totally get why some people choose to drive. What I object to is not some people choosing to drive, but the cost of that driving being borne by people who don't choose to drive -- and even by others who choose to drive. It's like a smoker complaining that not smoking is not as good as the law letting you smoke wherever you want.
I get that a lot of people don't like sharing space with strangers, when crime and harassment are factors. I do think it's something that also really needs addressing on its own, but especially to make non-car transportation more attractive.
zen_brassica
9d ago
Yeah, you're absolutely right -- I think this is the one reasonable objection to getting cars out of cities, and it's a doozy. I wish that liberals were more on the ball with this (though to be fair, a lot of liberals are perfectly happy with the damage cars do as long as they can virtue signal by buying the right kind of electric car or whatever).
Policing and crime is the other side of the coin.
zen_brassica
9d ago
What specifically about mass transit do you think makes it come anywhere close to private auto transport in terms of negative externalities?
zen_brassica
10d ago
The fact that there's a monopoly provider is one part of it, but there's also the part where the service being provided has substantial negative externalities. I don't know what price leads to maximum utility when that's taken into account, but I imagine it's closer to the price in a monopoly market than the price in a competitive market. Heck, it might even be higher than that. Depends on the demand curve, of course.
On the other hand, with something like the public transit system which has much less (though of course not zero) negative externalities, I think what you said applies a lot more. I think there's even an argument for pricing it somewhat below-market because it can pull commuters away from driving, if you don't have something like a congestion charge already.
zen_brassica
10d ago
I mean, I guess if you only count people who can afford cars in the first place, then yes. And ignore the fact that because we dedicate so much tax money to roads and not public transit, people who kinda can’t afford cars have to buy them anyway, and it takes up a big chunk of their income compared to more well-off folks. And that poor people often have to live next to the noisy, polluting traffic where rents are cheap, shouldering the brunt of the negative externalities.
I get that you’re not trying to make a rigorous argument here, but I really see it from a different perspective.
zen_brassica
10d ago
Aside from any legal issues, it drives me kinda nuts that they're trying to shut this program down, because I think our over-dependence on cars and excessive catering to drivers is a horrible thing that ruins our cities. The congestion pricing program in NYC has been a great success story, with the city getting less polluted, quieter, and even easier for drivers if you pay the charge. It's even safer on the subways, because of safety in numbers -- more riders means fewer situations where criminals and predators can find isolated victims. Consider the lives that will be saved due to better air quality for the 8 million people who live in NYC.
So I wish the FHWA would be bending over backwards to find a way to let this program continue and encourage it in more cities, instead of being dicks like this.
As for the legal objections, I'm not a lawyer, so of course take this as you will. But what does Duffy mean by "...the imposition of tolls under the CBDTP pilot project appears to be driven primarily by the need to raise revenue for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) System as opposed to the need to reduce congestion."? The letter is very vague about why they've concluded that, and I don't see how you couldn't conclude that of ANY congestion pricing program, if you were so inclined. Do they have to avoid talking about how much money it would raise when they're planning? Or would a congestion charge only be allowed if you planned to put all the money in a big pit and burn it?
The "cordon pricing" thing... I read an argument made that all the bridges from New Jersey into New York have tolls. Does that mean that NYC is legally required to build a toll-free bridge, or drop tolls on one of those bridges, as it's effectively cordoned?
I mean, sure, I imagine Trump/the FHWA has the authority to shut this down, if they want to. I don't see what actually requires them to pull this particular interpretation, though, and the whole thing seems like a petty "fuck you" to New York (as well as advanced car-brain virus), for a program that is very effective and pretty darn popular in NYC. It seems like the people who like it least are those who drive in from New Jersey, and even then, a lot of people are more frustrated that there isn't a good public transit option.
I apologize for my irritated tone, I just hate when there are such beneficial policies that have been tried and tested in lots of other places, that get shot down for stupid reasons in the US because they threaten our precious, innocent, angelic cars that have never hurt anybody and never would, how dare you.
zen_brassica
3mo ago
Likewise, I lived in London and took the train and tube for years until I started cycling to work. I had exactly one incident (on a bus) where some drunks threatened me after I politely asked them to turn their music down. That sucked, but overall the public transport felt very safe.
zen_brassica
5mo ago
If autonomous vehicles lead to people traveling more, that's good! It means more trips are now worth taking. People are visiting friends and relatives more often, working at jobs that are farther away but are a better fit for them, and in general doing more valuable things.
I think it's it's just that, car travel has pretty large negative externalities in terms of pollution, parking spaces that need to be allocated, and injuries / deaths due to accidents, compared to other modes of travel. So while more people getting to travel where they want to go is good, many of those trips are outweighed by these negative externalities, and essentially make life worse overall. Other forms of travel also have negative externalities, but they're much less severe than car travel.
zen_brassica
6mo ago
I'm sure there are a ton of exceptions and caveats, but this is the rough shape of things in my mind: If you're concerned about building more, then the two major parties may have opposite effects depending on whether you're talking about the local level or higher levels. Locally, conservatives who favor less regulation and more individual freedom will tend to lead toward allowing more building. But we also have a problem of most municipal governments already being overly restrictive with their zoning codes and regulations, and progressives seem to be more willing to use power at the state and national levels to incentivize/force municipal governments to allow more building.
zen_brassica
10mo ago
Now bring the grand canyon back into existence and allow that air to fall. What happens? As it falls, gravity compresses it, and thus heats it up. By the time it reaches the ground it will be hotter. On its way down, this falling air will displace the air further below it, causing that air below to rise and, due to the lower pressure, expand and cool on its way back up. Thus you have a circulating effect, with the equilibrium temperature increasing with depth.
It doesn't violate thermodynamics as gravity is doing work on the gas, converting potential energy to kinetic energy and increasing its temperature on the way down, while via buoyancy pushing the lower, warmer air up. With no further energy inputs the whole column of air would gradually cool (and eventually freeze and fall out of the sky), but the sun provides the "seed" energy by warming the surface which then warms the air via conduction & convection.
Here's an interesting question: How would it gradually cool? If the greenhouse effect is not a thing, how can air lose energy to space? Convection and conduction require molecules to impact each other to transfer energy -- but there's nothing in space for the molecules to bounce off of. Are you claiming that first the earth would have to radiate energy to space through a long-wave-transparent atmosphere, then the atmosphere would cool down by losing energy when molecules bounce and impart energy to the cooler earth?
If what you are saying is true, then wouldn't we see that the surface actually cools down faster than the air at night?
zen_brassica
10mo ago
With regards to the atmosphere, the proposed greenhouse effect mechanism is thus that you have a, say, -18ºC surface in an atmosphere without any GHGs. Now, by adding CO2 to this atmosphere and thus doing nothing but changing the atmosphere's absorption and emission properties, the colder body (the atmosphere) results in a warming of the hotter body (the surface), in a tight feedback loop that essentially doubles the surface's energy level (as well as increasing the atmosphere's in the process).
To which I say: well that is not quite in direct accordance with the above sources on thermodynamics. I understand diagrams and graphs can be drawn and that the resulting steady-state is one in which the surface is still hotter than the atmosphere. But drawing a diagram does not make it so. All the laws of physics thus far have been determined experimentally, including the laws of thermodynamics.
Ok, so in the absence of any other energy flows, yes, this would violate the laws of physics. Heat can't flow from a colder to a hotter. But the sun is constantly adding energy to the surface in the form of radiation at a frequency that passes through CO2 without being absorbed, sort of "skipping past" the atmosphere, while the long-wave radiation given off by the earths surface (because it's at a much lower temperature than the sun) does get absorbed/re-released by CO2. So the heat is all starting at the VERY HOT sun, flowing to the medium hot earth, then out to the slightly colder atmosphere and cold of outer space.
So the energy flows, simplified, are:
(without atmosphere) Sun -> earth earth -> space
(with atmosphere) Sun -> earth earth -> atmosphere atmosphere -> earth and also atmosphere -> space
The proof that the GHE works can only reside in an experiment demonstrating the phenomenon. There are none. There have been none since the mechanism was first proposed two centuries ago by Fourier. Do you really think the climate alarmists would not have done one by now if they could have? Rather than do so, they have simply stopped trying (if they ever did) and merely started asserting that the science is settled. Yet they skipped over that crucial experimental step! This is not science, it is ideology, beliefs, and politics.
I mean, if you think that you can demonstrate, via experiment, that the greenhouse effect does not exist, nobody's stopping you. You could get millions of dollars from oil companies to prove that fossil fuels don't cause climate change. I don't want to be rude, but I think you are just misunderstanding the way that the energy flows and what that does.
zen_brassica
1yr ago
Sure. The grand canyon is a good starting point. The temperature at the bottom of the canyon is hotter than at the top. Why is that? It's not due to the greenhouse effect. It's due to earth's adiabatic lapse rate.
Essentially, gravity pulls air in the atmosphere downwards, doing work to compress it, which increases its pressure and temperature. The hotter air then starts expanding and rising (being displaced by the cooler air being brought down), which causes it to cool and decrease in pressure. This is an ongoing process. Notably, it has nothing to do with any radiative properties of the atmosphere (i.e. the greenhouse effect). It can be calculated from basic values of the mass of air and gravity:
This doesn't make any sense to me. The adiabatic lapse rate describes how the temperature would change if you took a parcel of air, did not allow it to exchange heat (that's the adiabatic part, right?) and moved it up or down so it expands or contracts. As pressure increases or decreases, so does temperature.
But in the Grand Canyon, if gravity is pulling cooler, denser air down, and letting warmer, less dense air rise (as must happen), that's going to result in a cooling effect, not a warming effect. Yes, the cooler air may get a bit more compressed as it falls, and thus rise a little in temperature, but you're also losing warm air that was even warmer when it was at the same altitude, so air circulation would result in a net loss of heat. If you have two regions of air at the same altitude and one is warmer, it will have a rising force compared to the other. Gravity can't make it fall relative to the other one. (To be precise, they could both be rising or falling, just that the cooler one will always fall relative to the warmer one, unless there's momentum of air coming in from outside the system and interacting with the geometry of the landscape, like winds blowing across the canyon).
Gravity is not pulling air downward in a thermodynamics-violating way. If we started out with an atmosphere that was not in steady state, where it was a lot more diffuse and bigger than it should be, then yes, as gravity pulled it down and compressed it, it would get warmer. But that would only happen once (or rather it would oscillate like a spring for a while but eventually settle down).
So yeah, I don't get this at all. I don't know if the temperature gradient at the Grand Canyon is completely due to the greenhouse effect, but I'm pretty sure it's not anything to do with what you're saying, unless I'm misunderstanding you.
zen_brassica
1yr ago
Right, because the activists (the people who matter) have more important goals than cutting emissions.
As a counterpoint, one of the biggest, most effective climate change activism groups (Citizens Climate Lobby) focuses almost exclusively on practical policy to cut emissions, mainly a revenue-neutral carbon tax.
Going back to the root though, with things like geoengineering -- I'm not 100% against it, but I'm much more in favor of addressing the root cause, rather than trying to put a band-aid on it. First issue, and maybe the biggest, is the moral hazard -- if you start geoengineering, that means countries won't try as hard to reduce emissions, immediately negating some of the benefit of geoengineering. Second, specifically for putting sulfur into the atmosphere to reduce solar irradiance, you don't get to control where that goes. It wanders all over the place, changing weather patterns, possibly causing storms or droughts. Third, cooling the earth but leaving CO2 levels higher doesn't solve ocean acidification.
I suspect that we'll need to do it at some point, but I think it is best to push hard on reducing emissions first and foremost. And maybe I partly believe this because I think that practically speaking, we can do it without a substantial reduction in living standards, if we start using carbon taxes effectively, and streamline nuclear regulations to the point where it's actually viable again.
zen_brassica
1yr ago
I came here to post something similar. The short version is, while the article author says:
In normal sensate reality, heat only flows from hot to cold, but the greenhouse effect appears to involve an inverted heat flow within this system.
Heat DOES flow from cold to hot, it just must be less than the heat flowing from hot to cold, and that is what the referenced diagram shows.
zen_brassica
1yr ago
Many climate activists are very much in favor of nuclear power, myself included. Sometimes it's a matter of going with the flow and allocating your advocacy resources where you think the'll make the most difference. Nuclear is a hard sell for a lot of people, and getting new plants open will take a long time mainly due to regulatory barriers -- which have to change before you can even start constructing. Solar and wind are seeing a lot of growth right now, and while they don't solve the baseline load problem, will make a dent in the issue in the meantime.
I don't disagree that many people who label themselves "climate activists" are irrationally fearful of nuclear, but they are not as representative of the entire group as the article.
I wouldn't object to calling it something else, for example the "fuck cars charge" (kidding!). But also, we do things all the time with names that aren't exactly literal -- and in politics especially. "Sin tax", "Right-to-work laws", the PATRIOT Act, for example. I think "congestion charge" is somewhat accurate, easy to remember, and rolls off the tongue. I'm not sure how you'd capture the full intent of the policy in a concise name... "Private vehicle harm reduction and congestion reduction tax for MTA funding"? People would end up using an abbreviated name anyway. And it's not like you can split this into multiple policies -- the single charge does all these things simultaneously.
Or another way to put it -- I think you need to look at all side benefits when evaluating a policy, just like you need include negative side effects. It doesn't matter if they're intended or not, effects are effects. The minimum wage is well known to cause unemployment--it's still popular with the political left because they ignore that part (or refuse to believe it) and only look at the intended effects.
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