It's annoying though that EV's need that extra Darth Vader on wheels sound to warn pedestrians, I'd prefer them to be as quiet as possible.
We don't all live in the city.
In some areas of London the ULEZ has been so successful that the measured NOx is now coming mostly from gas boilers used for heating, probably mostly old large commerical units.
So shifting from gas boilers to heat pumps and from gas ovens and stoves to electric/indusction is also beneficial.
Europe has quite a few cities where traffic is increasingly discouraged from going to the inner cities. Cities like Paris and London are much transformed from what they used to be and it shows in the health statistics.
It's not just the particulates but also nitrous oxides (nox) produced by combustion engines. Nox is correlated with lots of health issues. Take it away and you see lower rates of chronic lung issues, cancer, development issues with kids, etc.
But yes, tires are also an issue. But a fairly minor one to anything coming out of a combustion engine.
Mass transit indeed is nice in big cities. Removes the need for taking the car.
No shit Sherlock.
I guess they mean total non-exhaust particulates.
Regen braking means significantly less brake dust, especially at city speeds and with blended braking.
> Although…rail might solve those?
Trains still have brakes. Some can regen brake but because they usually don’t have batteries they need the rail or overhead gantry to support inputs.
But on a passenger-mile basis, I expect an electric train produces essentially no particulates compared to a car, even a light rail on tyres. I do not however have numbers.
It's much less wear and tear than friction brakes.
https://engineering.nyu.edu/news/subway-air-pollution-dispro...
But I expect it's much better in open-air rail systems.
For all that I did not care for them originally this is probably something full-height platform screen doors help with, assuming the trains themselves are also filtered that would keep the pollutants clear of drivers and users, although it does not exactly resolve the question of managing their presence in the tunnels themselves (and track / tunnel maintenance personnel should probably already be wearing respirators if not full breathing apparatus), and I could see things get pretty dire in case of breakdowns.
So yeah.
That said not clear to me about PM2.5 is I've never seen anything legit seeming that tries to characterize the harm based on the type/source. Though it seems agreed diesel is especially bad.