From: Rick_Donnelly@taligent.com (Rick Donnelly)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Environmental cost of transportation (was Re: SFO rail transit setback?)
Date: 12 Dec 92 04:24:15 GMT
Distribution: ba
Organization: Taligent, Inc.

In article <4853@wet.UUCP>, editor@wet.UUCP (Eric Swanson) writes:

> Regardless what people do, "environmental cost" is a very
> real cost that you blithely ignore.  Our auto-dependent
> society creates a lot of waste -- carbon monoxide and
> particulate emissions from fossil fuel combustion, and
> various wastes from the steel, rubber, and paint industries
> -- and _somebody_ has to clean that up.  In the case of
> industrial wastes from vehicle manufacturing, waste disposal
> is usually trackable enough that government can ensure that
> the industry responsible for creating the waste clean it up.
> These costs are to a certain degree already included in auto
> prices.
> 
> Combustion emissions, however, happen everywhere.  Who can
> clean these up?  Two choices:
>   a) nobody
>   b) government
> Under choice a), our world goes to hell -- not an option in
> my book.
> 
> But if the government is going to try to deal with air
> pollution, I'll be damned if I (a 6-mile-a-day transit
> commuter) am going to pay the same amount as some
> 100-mile-a-day Livermore-to-Marin auto commuter.
> 
> The actual money it takes to attempt to clean up the air (by
> whatever means necessary -- I don't think anyone's going to
> invent automatica air-scrubbers in the next couple years, so
> creative solutions are called for) should come from the
> people who pollute it.  Period.

In large measure, it already is.

Who pays for catalytic converters?  EGR valves?  Smog inspections?
Tune-ups?  Oxygenated fuel?

The car owners/drivers, that's who.  (As they should be.)

Most pollution from cars comes from a relatively small number of cars --
namely, older cars that lack pollution control equipment and cars that are
out of tune.

Public transit is not entirely free of blame for pollution either.

When I was at Sequoia Nat'l Park this summer, I saw a display that said
that 60% of ozone-producing emissions from vehicles came from diesel trucks
and buses, _not_ cars!  Most public transit in the Bay Area is provided by
diesel buses.  To the best of my knowledge, none of the Bay Area transit
agencies even have _pilot_ programs in place to replace these diesel-
belching bus engines with engines that burn cleaner fuels, like methanol
or compressed natural gas (or even gasoline!).  The conversion cost is not
that great. (Denver RTD was ordered by the Colorado AIR Board to replace
_all_ its diesels with methanol-powered buses within 10 years or so, and
RTD didn't complain about the cost. They started the replacement right away,
and started bragging publicly about the resulting air quality benefits.)

Does anyone know why the transit agencies in the Bay Area aren't doing
anything like this??  Does anyone have suggestions on ways to get them
to start converting to cleaner fuels?  (I've already complained about
this to the BAAQMD, but I got the impression that my complaint fell on
deaf ears.)

Rick Donnelly                            My opinions, not Taligent's.
Rick_Donnelly@taligent.com
Newsgroups: ba.transportation,sci.environment,ca.environment