car exhaust gives seniors pneumonia. h2!!!

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/12/23/pneumonia-traffic-pollution.html

I'm sure we all knew that in some general sense.

If only there was some alternative. There is, there will be.

We just lack the will.

Now: public transit lanes.

Then: H2 fuel.

Now I am not a zealot about hydrogen. The biggest boosters also tend to know the least.

Almost inevitably they have read "The Hydrogen Economy" - and nothing else.

It doesn't mention all the *man* problems.

Though my friend Ryan has managed a much more spirited defence of H2.

The usual first pointless observation of H2 is 'it produces no pollution'!!!

If you mix it with 02 instead of atmospheric air, sure.

But H2 has storage issues- see later.

'n carrying 2x more O2 to in turn mix with it is prohibitive by volume or mass or money.

So in practice, H2 DOES pollute- though much less than, say, gasoline.

I think other than 1/3 the Nox, all the other pollutants were pretty trace.

No particulates to speak of.

So we do come out wayyy ahead.

Even without pie-in-sky naivete.

Ryan countered my H2 storage criticism.

He pointed out all the systems that a car needs due to gasoline.

Initially gasoline (or diesel fuel) seems ideal, due to its compact nature and being liquid

at room temperature.

BUT. Once we factor in all the pollution scrubbing systems necessary, that changes.

Ryan crunched the numbers. Once we pull all those systems in an H2 car, the H2 storage unit is a mass-neutral prospect.

H2 is energy-intensive to make. In general, yes. Particularly if we use cryogenic liquid H2.

However, when solar or wind (or for that matter, idling generators that still consume most of the power to run them!) is not being used, we can store it as H2.

H2 or batteries. H2 is best thought of as a storage medium and not an energy source.

Since H2 is not very usefully available in nature in that form, we must 'process' it.

Mating wind/solar/et al with a H2 combustion generator would address a criticism of alternative power sources- that they are not reliable.

Wind comes and then goes. Solar is strictly daytime.

Whereas, presumably, coal is reliable.

And H2 could do so without needing to send energy long distance on power lines, complete with heat loss.

The loss is less with DC proposals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

The transit of our society has 2 aspects:

1) personal cars and

2) fuel source.

These lead to the costs of

1) many many accidents and

2) pollution health costs.

As rule of thumb

1) cars kill the young(er)

2) fuel kills the old(er).

Once we factor in the hidden costs, the ones ignored by market forces...

a) is mass public transit and carpooling etc. expensive?

b) are cleaner fuels?

All my earlier research suggests the gas tax should be at least twice as high as it is.

The user should pay.

Not the poor sod walking by on the sidewalk...

UK study: 40kph zones would reduce pedestrian deaths

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/12/091210193202.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 14, 2009) — Traffic speed zones with a limit of 20 miles per hour reduce casualties by 41.9% with the greatest reduction in child casualties, according to research published today in the British Medical Journal.

D: not surprisingly.

Every second of additional reaction time would 1/2 accidents.

But roads all made for full-width emergency vehicles 'feel' safe at higher speeds.

Without traffic enforcement or 'calming measures', that means folks will drive as fast as they feel safe.

I'd like to see smaller emergency vehicles. Suddenly tight narrow back streets with severe turn ogives on corners would take care of speeding.

You gonna do it if yer tire will clip the curb?

Wide lanes and gradual ogives allow hi-G non-stop turns.

cities with most pedestrian deaths - USA

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/AheadoftheCurve/top-10-dangerous-cities-pedestrians/story?id=9048748

The authors offer some solutions that parallel a national trend toward reconfiguring streets to make them safer and more appealing to pedestrians without adversely impacting traffic flow.

By using traffic calming techniques like reconfiguring road alignments and installing barriers like roundabouts to slow drivers, streets become more accessible. Expanding the Safe Routes to School program, which installs or improves crosswalks, signals and other features, would make walking and biking safer for children.

----

Many of the deaths occurred on streets that have few provisions for pedestrians, cyclists or those in wheelchairs. According to the report, of the 9,168 pedestrian fatalities in 2007-2008 where the location of the accident is known, more than 40 percent were killed in a spot where there was no crosswalk.

...states simply aren't spending enough to improve pedestrian safety and accessibility.

Less than 1.5 percent of total transportation funds are spent on such measures, even though pedestrians comprise 11.8 percent of all traffic deaths and nearly the same percentage of all trips taken.

---

D: Gee, do you suppose those 2 factoids are related?

In K-W town, I've seen a coupla improvements in the past year.

A coupla bike lane 'pinch points' have been fixed at intersections.

Caroline St. behind uptown Waterloo's mall, for example, at William St.

cost of traffic jams

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/11/10/oecd-traffic.html

"The OECD estimates a loss of $3.3 billion in lost productivity annually because of traffic congestion on streets and highways, coupled with the growth problems associated with Toronto's public transit system.
...

The report estimates that 71 per cent of commuters are still dependent on the car.

To reduce the congestion the report suggests toll lanes and congestion charges, as well as fuel and parking taxes."

-----------

D: as usual, no mention of car pooling.
Bus-only lanes and roads.
Et al.

In other words, more of the same.
Cuz, you know, the same has worked sooo well to date...
Yes, that was sarcasm.

article, century-long plot by GM to destroy public transit

http://www.ejnet.org/rachel/rehw439.htm

D: Dunno if I buy it, but it does make an interesting story...

"Beginning in the 1920s, General Motors began investing in mass transit systems. According to historian Marty Jezer (and Congressional hearings held in 1974), between 1920 and 1955, General Motors bought up more than 100 electric mass transit systems in 45 cities, allowed them to deteriorate, and then replaced them with rubber-tired, diesel-powered buses. [1] Buses are more expensive, less efficient, and much dirtier than electric/rail systems. (And of course automobiles are even less efficient than buses, by far.) In 1949, General Motors, Firestone Rubber, and Standard Oil of California were convicted by a federal jury of criminally conspiring to replace electric mass transit with GM-manufactured diesel buses..."

D: my mother thinks the loss of viable train systems was subject to a similar conspiracy.
At any rate, vested interests and alotta money backing corporate interests clearly will not serve the public good.

See my earlier entries on why "E-cars" won't solve our present problems.
Rare earth metals for hybrids, platinum for fuel cells, whatever.
Supply and demand and finite resources says "an e-car for every gargage" is doomed to failure.

As an aside, indium has increased in price due to finite supply.
This material, presently needed for better solar cells, is being used up in... television sets.
And we don't even consistently recycle this e-trash...

why a hybrid car in every driveway cannot happen

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/goodbye-fossil-fuel-dependence-hello-rare-earth-dependence.php

D: supply already matches demand.

"A typical hybrid car, such as a Toyota Prius, contains around 25 pounds of rare earth metals -- mostly lanthanum in its rechargeable battery and neodymium in its drive motor."

D: plus the platinum in the fuel-cell dream is subject to similar market pressures on price.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16275-platinumfree-fuel-cell-promises-cheap-green-power.html

"Platinum has so far been the metal of choice because the membranes used in fuel cells create a very acidic environment, and the metal is stable in such corrosive conditions."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg17924123.600-platinum-crisis.html

"But even if only 1 million fuel cell cars were built per year, each with between 70 and 140 grams of platinum, the worldwide supply of platinum would be insufficient."

D: Various nations are experimenting with no-car residential zones.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/car-free-suburb-planned-for-melbourne-australia.php

Barring a scenario with 95%+ of people in the world suddenly vanishing, we just cannot give every home a sedan of their own...

impact on health of 10% reduction in gas use

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2009/05/27/biofuels-and-human-health/

Nonetheless, McKone and Lobscheid were able to prepare an LCIA for reduced gasoline use based on the damage to human health that emissions from gasoline burning can cause. For a baseline, they used a 10-percent reduction in gasoline use. In assessing the impact of these emissions on human health they looked at “disability adjusted life years or “DALYs,” which is a combination of two common damage factors in LCIAs - years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLLs) and the equivalent years of life lost due to disability (YLDs). One DALY is equal to one lost year of “healthy” life. To put this into perspective, the total annual disease burden in the United States is about 30 million DALYs.

“We found that for the vehicle operation phase of our LCIA, the annual health damages avoided in the U.S. with 10-percent less gasoline-run motor vehicle emissions ranges from about 5,000 to 20,000 DALY, with most of the damage resulting from primary fine particle emissions,” said McKone. “While county-specific damages range over nine orders of magnitude across all U.S. counties most of the damage, as you would expect, is concentrated in urban populations with the highest impact in the Los Angeles, New York and Chicago regions.”
Large urban regions also suffered disproportionate health damage as a result of benzene emissions at service stations and during the transporting by truck of gasoline to service stations - approximately 930 DALYs.

D: note that the health costs are borne by the nearby populations, not the purchaser of gasoline.

Again, gas ought to be 2x the price, if negative externalities were incorporated...