Environment – Page 4 – ACCESS Magazine

Scrapping Old Cars

Jennifer Dill

Starting in 1968, rising federal standards have been reducing emissions from new automobiles. But all vehicles deteriorate over time; their pollution-control equipment breaks down and emissions rise as they age. So fleet turnover is crucial to reducing total vehicle emissions. However, over the past thirty years turnover has slowed, and the personal vehicle fleet has been aging, in part because cars just last longer. Also, households today own more cars than they did thirty years ago. Instead of trading in an old car for a new one, they are now more likely to just add another, letting a teenager drive the older one or perhaps keeping it as a back-up. In 1970 only three percent of the automobiles on the road were fifteen years old or older; in 2001 sixteen percent were fifteen or older.

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2017-05-30T22:44:38+00:00Categories: ACCESS 24, Spring 2004|Tags: Environment, Transportation Safety, Travel Behavior|

Comment: Transportation and the Environment

Elizabeth Deakin

Talk about transportation and the environment, and most engineers and planners will tick off a long list of concerns: air pollution, water pollution, noise, petroleum consumption, community disruption, habitat loss. Since the 1970s, a variety of federal and state laws has aimed to minimize harm done to the environment by transportation programs. The benefits have been significant. Probably the greatest success has been the reduction of air pollutants. Today’s cars produce only a small fraction of the pollutants their predecessors emitted. Almost all the reduction is due to legally mandated emissions control technologies on new cars. Even with massive growth in auto ownership and vehicle-miles traveled, most cities exceed pollution limits only a few days a year.

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2017-05-30T23:15:00+00:00Categories: ACCESS 19, Fall 2001|Tags: Environment|

A New CAFÉ

Charles Lave

Over the past six months, a National Academy of Sciences panel has been working intensively on a congressionally mandated evaluation of federal regulations on fuel economy in cars. The panel concluded that significant, cost-effective, safety-enhancing improvements were possible. Its report received extensive peer review and was published under the aegis of the National Research Council in a report titled “Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE ) Standards.” I was a member of that panel and in the following two essays, I want to review of some of the issues raised in its deliberations. The analytic material comes from the panel’s report; the opinions are my own.

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2017-05-30T23:15:09+00:00Categories: ACCESS 19, Fall 2001|Tags: Environment, Planning History, Tools of the Trade: Practice‚ Measuring‚ and Models|

Clean Diesel: Overcoming Noxious Fumes

Christie-Joy Brodrick, Daniel Sperling, and Harry A. Dwyer

What is the truth about diesel engines? Are they inherently dirty? Do they belch clouds of black soot? Are they unsuited to cars, as evidenced by 1980s class-action suits against GM’s diesel “lemons?” Do they make an unnecessary racket when idling and accelerating? Are their emissions toxic and a threat to human health? Many ask, in this age of ultra-clean transport, why do we still have diesel engines? The governor of Tokyo and air quality regulators in southern California have both launched campaigns to ban them. But there’s another side to the story of diesel engines. European regulators assert they are an answer to climate-change threats. Many automotive companies claim that new diesel engines are dramatically improved and as clean and quiet as gasoline engines. And freight companies rely almost exclusively on diesel engines for their trucks because they are durable and efficient. Indeed, diesel engines continue to increase their market share worldwide, now accounting for about forty percent of all roadway fuel consumed.

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2017-05-30T23:05:10+00:00Categories: ACCESS 19, Fall 2001|Tags: Environment, Freight & Commercial Transportation, Technology & Innovation|

A New Agenda

Daniel Sperling

The hot issues of the 1970s and 1980s - energy conservation and air quality - are still hot. But they've been transformed and narrowed. Now we debate climate change, new propulsion technologies, and particulate emissions. Energy independence no longer is compelling, and efforts to reduce travel are politically weak.

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2017-05-31T22:37:15+00:00Categories: ACCESS 11, Fall 1997|Tags: Environment|

Is Oxygen Enough?

Robert Harley

Recent amendments to the Clean Air Act require use of oxygenated gasoline during winter months in about forty urban areas across the United States. Generally, winter gasoline must contain 2.7 percent by weight of oxygen; California has been allowed to use a lower level, 2.0 percent. To determine the effectiveness of oxygenated gasoline in reducing carbon monoxide (CO) emissions, we designed a study to expand upon previous emission research by testing a large number of on-road vehicles.

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2022-09-29T21:01:07+00:00Categories: ACCESS 07, Fall 1995|Tags: Environment|

Introduction

Melvin M. Webber

Despite huge reductions of noxious emissions from factories and cars, Southern California's air is still terrible. It's so bad that the state is requiring that two percent of new cars sold in 1998 be zero polluters and ten percent by 2003. Many researchers here have become preoccupied with the foul air, and so are searching for ways of making cars less obnoxious and hence better servants.

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2017-05-19T22:58:05+00:00Categories: ACCESS 03, Fall 1993|Tags: Environment, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Clean for a Day: CA vs. the EPA’s Smog Check Mandates

Charles Lave

In the Spring of 1993 California and the EPA faced-off over the EPA's new mandates for checking auto emissions. The California Senate asked the University of California Transportation Center to provide a "blue ribbon" evaluation of the issues. This article tells what we discovered. The final picture is not clear enough to distinguish good guys from bad guys, but we can see well enough to know that the EPA's new national rules for smog checks are deeply flawed.

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2018-02-07T23:38:46+00:00Categories: ACCESS 03, Fall 1993|Tags: Environment, Technology & Innovation|

Preface

Melvin M. Webber

The first issue of ACCESS seems to have been well received, so we're pleased to continue these summaries of our research. Paralleling the spurt of work on new transportation technology, there's been renewed attention to institutional means for improving the nation's transport system. We focus here on several such fiscal and organizational tools for decreasing solo driving, increasing transit riding, and thereby reducing highway congestion, air pollution, and energy consumption.

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2017-05-19T22:58:06+00:00Categories: ACCESS 02, Spring 1993|Tags: Environment, Technology & Innovation, Transportation Policy & Planning|

Cars and Demographics

Charles Lave

Imagine that it’s January 1993. Our environmentalist coalition has swept all the national elections and is ready to declare war on the automobile. We shall make urban life in America as civilized as urban life in Europe. Our major legislative program is put forth, and passed: We triple the price of gasoline – to $4 per gallon. We build thousands of miles of rail transit. We radically increase the cost of downtown parking. We effectively restrict land use so that most of the suburban population moves back into the cities.

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2018-02-07T22:56:13+00:00Categories: ACCESS 01, Fall 1992|Tags: Environment, Planning History, Transportation Policy & Planning, Travel Behavior|