Recent air pollution index readings from monitoring stations in Taipei City showed that air quality in the city during the first four days of the Chinese New Year holiday has been better than usual, an Environmental Protection Administration official said yesterday.
The official attributed the improvement to a significant decrease in vehicle exhaust fumes, as many commuters have either left the city to return to their hometowns in central and southern Taiwan for the New Year break, or simply stayed at home to enjoy the break.
From the environmental protecion department, New Taipei City, the chart is useful to get an idea of the cause of various pollutants. As expected NOx and CO emissions are mostly from vehicles. NOx is a proxy for ozone, ozone is seriously bad for your health at ground level. It does not show PM <2.5 . epd-en.ntpc.gov.tw/_file/187 … 352/D.html
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Gman, I lived in Taipei for almost 10 hears living in
multiple locations and I worked for a few different companies in that time. Not one provided free car parking to regular staff. None of the gongyu I stayed in had car parking available and local car parks were about 4-5k a month. This fact alone makes driving to work in Taipei City a prohibitive expense compared to taking public transport if your budget only stretches to driving a scooter previously
HH: You are exactly right! Yes [quote] This fact alone makes driving to work in Taipei City a prohibitive expense compared to taking public transport if your budget only stretches to driving a scooter previously.[/quote][/quote] Of course that the case! What I object to is your assumption that the only people using scooters in Taipei are those who fall into this income level. I am an example of a case where your assumption is wrong as are about another dozen or so people that I know here. We aren’t poor, we choose not to use automobiles because a scooter meets our neeeds.
You are also not including trips that don’t involve going to work. Costco has free parking, Malls have free parking, resteraunts have free parking, the list goes on. You’ve also ingored the point that many of these places where density is high and parking is expensive have excellent MRT (or other mass transit) service. Are you taking the position that those services are currently underutilized?? Have you been on the MRT during rush hour?
Even if I completely accepted your argument that, every scooter driver can’t afford an automobile so therefore none will switch from scooter to car because they can’t afford to. Doesn’t this raise the issue of fairness to you? Does it seem unfair that you want to put the cost of implimenting such a policy on the backs of the lower income segment of the population?? If you are going to do so, doesn’t it a least warrant carefull consideration inorder to make sure that the benefits of imposing that cost on those people will actually get realised to an appreciable degree???
My position on this is that as things stand as they are now banning scooters or adding punative costs to own them will cause some unintended consquences. Some which could end up mitigating the percieved benefits of doing so. For example (ONE EXAMPLE) some people who currently use scooters for transport could end up using automobiles instead. These effects should be examined before such a policies are introduced. I don’t have to prove these mitigating effects to justify their study. In fact having proof would render study into them moot. However anyone wishing to institute a ban on scooters or any policy restricting them has a responsilbility to give serious consideration to numerous factors beyond even some possible automobile substitution. So far the adovcates of such policies on this forum of been completely dismissive of the idea that they should consider such issues. They believe that they should just have their ban or restriction and let the chips fall where they may. In other words pretty much behave in exactly the same manner in terms of decision making processes that they’ve been complaining about the Taiwanese government doing to this point.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]
After all the hyperbole it’s time for people to give some links to keep the Gmans of this world happy . [/quote]
FINALLY!!!
Edit; Well on the right track the TT article just points out that scooter drivers are the most vulnerable. That would be the case on even a N. American road. If you’re on a road way you are going to suck fumes. I cetainly notice this when I’m behind a bus. I see you’ve got some other stuff posted though.
[quote]So far the adovcates of such policies on this forum of been completely dismissive of the idea that they should consider such issues. They believe that they should just have their ban or restriction and let the chips fall where they may. In other words pretty much behave in exactly the same manner in terms of decision making processes that they’ve been complaining about the Taiwanese government doing to this point[/quote].
How many people have actually said that? One?
I think the vast majority of people discussing this issue are well aware that policies need to be well thought out. I am also personally aware that economic hardship should not be unfairly placed on lowest income citizens, but the current situation of government subsidised pollution is not the best way. It suits exporters and the rich though as they don’t have to pay more taxes or pay their workers more money.
Recent air pollution index readings from monitoring stations in Taipei City showed that air quality in the city during the first four days of the Chinese New Year holiday has been better than usual, an Environmental Protection Administration official said yesterday.
The official attributed the improvement to a significant decrease in vehicle exhaust fumes, as many commuters have either left the city to return to their hometowns in central and southern Taiwan for the New Year break, or simply stayed at home to enjoy the break. [/quote]
Well, this is interesting;
[i][b]Taipei’s gain, however, came at the expense of central and southern Taiwan, where the vehicles heading south contributed to pollution in those areas.
Central and southern Taiwan benefited from the closure of polluting factories for the holidays, but the added exhaust fumes have kept pollution readings in the area at pre-holiday levels, the official said.[/b][/i]
Nothing links this pollution to scooters alone. I don’t think the increase in central and souther Taiwan was because people from Taipei took their scooter to the central parts of the country. So this article would indicate that when people don’t have to work the air improves. I suppose you’ll want to ban jobs now?
[quote=“headhonchoII”]From the environmental protecion department, New Taipei City, the chart is useful to get an idea of the cause of various pollutants. As expected NOx and CO emissions are mostly from vehicles. NOx is a proxy for ozone, ozone is seriously bad for your health at ground level. It does not show PM <2.5 .
This is true and motorcycles and scooters do emit far more of these pollutants than cars but so do trucks. The question how much of the total smog is due to scooters. I saw a report that indicated that 45% of NOx smog was due to vechicle exhaust in Taiwan (year 2000). One question is how much of that is due to scooters and how much due to trucks.
Scooters and motorcycles bettter for the environment…wrong! (as mentioned earlier most do not have catalytic converters) latimes.com/classified/autom … ?track=rss[/quote]
The title of this article is misleading. The article it’s self is factual but it focuses only on smog producing emissions and ingores all other environmental impacts such as GHG emissions and impacts associated with factors other than merely driving. Regardless per litre of gas burned motorcycles and scooter produce far more NOx (not that it was ever a matter of dispute).
I think the focus here is on the local air pollution that directly affects health and not on CO2 emissions or how the electricity might be generated by a coal power plant located far outside the city.
[quote=“headhonchoII”][quote]So far the adovcates of such policies on this forum of been completely dismissive of the idea that they should consider such issues. They believe that they should just have their ban or restriction and let the chips fall where they may. In other words pretty much behave in exactly the same manner in terms of decision making processes that they’ve been complaining about the Taiwanese government doing to this point[/quote].
How many people have actually said that? One?
I think the vast majority of people discussing this issue are well aware that policies need to be well thought out. I am also personally aware that economic hardship should not be unfairly placed on lowest income citizens, but the current situation of government subsidised pollution is not the best way. It suits exporters and the rich though as they don’t have to pay more taxes or pay their workers more money.[/quote]
There are 3 people that have been the main proponents of this scooter ban that have I have seen on this forum. I would place 2 of them in the dismissive category.
Your last point about suiting the rich. Do scooter makers get tax breaks or recieve subsidies here? I had no idea that was the case, and I’m against this as well as I am against all forms of subsidy. If you did make it more expensive for exporters here wouldn’t that result in production being moved to Vietnam or China?? Isn’t Taiwan an export economy? Wouldn’t this result in massive job losses?
But NOT having millions of scooters works everywhere else in the world. There’s no obvious reason why it wouldn’t work in Taiwan, even though we all know it’s oh-so-special. Scooter use is totally incongruous to the “greenificaction” policies so far implemented in Taiwan’s major cities. Go take a look at Kaohsiung’s MRT. Nobody uses it. The only way that smart, clean and efficient public transport can work is if the scooters are forcefully taken away.
Well that’s a common practice here. Changing the context or focus of the discussion. Some on this forum have talked about a nationwide policy and some (like you) have talked about strictly within the context of Taipei city. If you want, we can agree to where we want to draw the box on this issue and confine the discussion to within those boundries. I’m fine with that but, I haven’t seen any real consensus on that. Even so, isn’t setting policy based on a narrow focus rather shortsighted?
LOL, a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.
Yikes another demonstration of the stunningly abmissmayl reading comprehension skills here. It’s actually run on compressed air not hot air. Actually I don’t think you really can’t comprehend written English well. I think this is just a good demostration of a habit of distorting facts or information to support a goal. In this case, a lame insult.
[quote=“monkey”]
But NOT having millions of scooters works everywhere else in the world. [/quote]
Where? Name 10 places in the world where the lack of air pollution is directly attributable to the absense of scooters. What about the places that have air pollution but no scooters?
What wouldn’t work? a ban? and what do you mean by ‘work’? A 50% reduction in smog only? 10%? define work. That’s the problem here people are advocating instituting a very socially disrupting policy here without taking the responsibility to examine what the final quantifiable benifit is or what the cost to groups of or, individauls citizens of this country might be. One possible consequence will be thousands of people having their daily commute disrupted and the closest I’ve seen anyone come to considration of that fact is ‘Some vauge Meh they can take transit or something.’ No evidence that they’ve examined the actual number of additional transit riders that would result or consideration as to whether the mass transit has the capacity to meet that additional need and if not what it would take to get there. Yes I know that transit is expanding in the future but that’s the future, by then maybe we’ll all be driving HH’s compressed air scooters by then.
I don’t know anything about Kaohsiung. I have to assume that if this is the case than the design of the MRT has failed to meet the needs of the population in a manner that offers them enough incentive to give up their scooters and take the MRT.
Yet, in Taipei nobody has had their scooter taken away and the MRT here is widely used.
Before you embarass yourself I’m going to let you think about or look up information concerning what the actual temperature of the air in a compressed air tank actually is at; cough cough ambient cough cough.
Unless of course, you believe that you can protect yourself from hypothermia in indefinatelly in the Artic wearing nothing but a garment made of of compressed gas canisters. After all, surrounded by all that hot gas contained in steel (more insulation properties) canisters should keep you warm an toasty!
Right so air doesn’t heat up when compressed, are you rewriting the laws of physics? Who studied science here? There are well known equations relating pressure, temperature and volume that were worked out in the 19th century.
You are thinking of adiabatic compression - where the compression happens faster than heat can be transferred out of the gas, as for example in an IC engine cylinder. AFAIK when air is compressed for use in (experimental) vehicles, a large amount of energy is wasted because heat is allowed to radiate off from the cylinder during compression, ie., an isothermal process. Otherwise, you would need an incredibly complex thermal insulation arrangement keeping the gas cylinder at hundreds of degrees; or, preferably, another (solid/liquid) storage medium that can return the heat to the gas upon decompression.
[quote=“headhonchoII”]Right so air doesn’t heat up when compressed, are you rewriting the laws of physics? Who studied science here? There are well known equations relating pressure, temperature and volume that were worked out in the 19th century.
Wow, you have no idea what you are talking about. Yet you just keep your head down and barrel on. You are providing an excellent illustration of the google and wikipedia fueled age of instant experts that have infested any informed discussion of a topic. It’s one thing to parrot information it is completely another to actually understand it. You want to claim I’m rewriting the laws of physics while you trample another set of those very laws (heat transfer).
Yes I did study science, maybe you should keep that in mind before continuing with this topic.
And what is the reason for all this effort of yours? It’s to try distort scientific fact all some lame ass insult will be backed up by the article you’ve based it on. :loco:
Maybe someone can invent a bullshit powered motor. You’d be the new Exxon.
Finely; you are right but in this case it actually doesn’t matter how the gas is compressed or wether it was super hot at the time of compression. By the time the gas in the metal canisters gets to the point of use it will have reached the temperature of it surroundings.
There are more efficient ways to commute than cars and present scooters on the drawing board.
How about this type of new vehicle. Imagine replacing the gyroscope with a flywheel that has some leeway to take an extra charge for some more miles to go.
The flywheel would take the function of the gyroscope and deliver power alongside a modern battery pack. A flywheel can be charged within minutes. It also can take all the electricity produced through regenerative braking.
[quote=“Hamletintaiwan”]There are more efficient ways to commute than cars and present scooters on the drawing board.
How about this type of new vehicle. Imagine replacing the gyroscope with a flywheel that has some leeway to take an extra charge for some more miles to go.
The flywheel would take the function of the gyroscope and deliver power alongside a modern battery pack. A flywheel can be charged within minutes. It also can take all the electricity produced through regenerative braking. [/quote]
I’ve got a patent in substantive examination that proposes exactly that. You can’t actually store much energy in a gyro (at least not without making it way too expensive) but it is a useful method of regeneration. I don’t believe this type of vehicle is practical as a direct replacement for the car, but its time has definitely come.
Incidentally, this isn’t new at all. The first ones were made back in the 1920s and the concept has been resurrected periodically, notably during the 1960s as a (proposed) monorail vehicle.
. [/quote]
they can take transit or something.’ No evidence that they’ve examined the actual number of additional transit riders that would result or consideration as to whether the mass transit has the capacity to meet that additional need and if not what it would take to get there. Yes I know that transit is expanding in the future but that’s the future, by then maybe we’ll all be driving HH’s compressed air scooters by then.