Diesel Out

The TA guys are also railing against the purchase of new diesel buses in NYC on the grounds that their emissions “cause asthma and lung cancer.” Health studies have shown that high levels of ozone reduce mechanical lung function and need to be curbed for those effects, but not that they are associated with lung cancer. As for asthma, it does seem have been increasing over the past 20 or 30 years as a health problem in the US, but this has coincided with steadily declining outdoor pollution, which has led scientists to look to declining indoor air quality and allergies from indoor pollution (roaches etc) as the likely cause. The rise of asthma and other allergy-related disease coincides with tighter buildings as part of energy conservation, not with diesel particulates that have been decreasing. Cleaner diesel engines are the answer, not non-purchase of buses.

Have to agree with these guys though when they criticize the bizarre suggestion of Sen Frank Lautenberg (NJ) that tolls be suspended when traffic backs up at toll plazas. As they say it is logical to have higher toll charges when the roads are busiest, not to abandon tolls. But the senator’s concern that toll collection itself shouldn’t be itself a source of congestion is best addressed by modernizing the toll collection process, which is what E-ZPass is all about – and beyond that highway speed toll lanes.