Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Trains
Trains.
Trains
Planes
And Automobiles!
NO.
Autonomous pods!
NO.
Title: “Quora User Re-invents Trains” 🚲 + 🚆
Lots of things contribute to this. Vehicle weight (extra stress on the tires), wheel alignment (toe-in/out causes scrubbing which causes more wear), unmaintained suspensions (worn out shocks, struts and bushings causing the above), burnouts (obviously, but, even in winter being the guy doing a burnout on summer tires while trying to get up an icy hill or across the intersection still counts), tire compound, road design, and driving style. If we had more cargo trains doing logi instead of long haul trucks we could probably cut down on a lot of pollution both in exhaust particles and tire particles.
Yet another problem not solved by EVs
It’s actually made a little worse by EVs because of battery weight.
But the manufacturer and my government said they were eco-friendly, what do you means my 6000 pounds of steel and plastic isn’t good for the planet?
they will do anything but build proper transit infrastructure. can’t have transport market owned by the government, it would hurt profits of too many owners.
fuck you peasants!
Not with that attitude.
If only there was a highly efficient mode of transporting people that didn’t use tires. Ah well, nothing can be done I guess.
Yes, imagine if there was a fast and safe way of transport. Something like made to run on steel bars in order to reduce friction. I don’t know. I’m just imagining, I watch too much science fiction.
My city’s metro system uses rubber tyres, :(
I imagine it’s still orders of magnitudes better than everyone driving their own car in.
Same with busses. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good
Technically, a subway would be easier to build a microplastic containment solution than applying the same to endless miles of roadway. Using metal wheels is probably still the better option though
subways are only economical in big cities though.
No one is building a subway in my town, would be waaaaay to expensive. they couldnt even keep a tram system going
I was agreeing with your sentiment that rubber subway tires are still magnitudes better than cars, realistically, buses are probably less microplastics per person moved as well if the route has decent ridership.
Brisbane? Their metro is literally a bus 😂 the council are so proud of it too.
Our public transport in Vic leaves much to be desired but at least we have a well developed tram system that reduces the number of tyres in the collective fleet.
We did just outlaw e-scooters which was necessary because the infrastructure and community education wasn’t there and it was dangerous. But long term e-scooters do serve a place in a less car reliant community. Bike infrastructure investment is decades behind what it needs to be.
Much like everywhere, the oversized nature of “yank tanks” seems to be a large factor in every single thing wrong with cars and car infrastructure these days.
Smaller, lighter cars don’t wear through their tyres as fast 🤷
To be fair, the most efficient mode of transportation is cycling by far. I wonder if bike tires also contribute to this.
I’m sure they do but it will be way less.
The wear rate should be proportional to the weight of the system (car plus cargo and passsengers, bike plus cargo and riders), maybe with some correction factors for things that affect wear rate like knobbiness.
Since bikes weigh a couple orders of magnitude less on average, the amount of tire wear material should also be a couple orders of magnitude less.
Edit: other lemmyer said wear is proportional to weight to the 4th power and that may be correct. I vaguely recall that from school now that they mentioned it.
should be proportional to the weight of the system
It’s that really true? Wear to the roads is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight so I would never have predicted a linear relationship.
Exponential relationships are still proportional.
No they are not. That’s not what it means.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportionality_(mathematics)
Doesn’t speed/acceleration affect it? If that is the case, that’s another pro for bikes.
Assuming the material properties and physical design of the two tire types is identical, maybe
Bikes cause thousands of times less damage to streets so I wouldn’t be surprised if they also wear less.
Good point! Also much less weight.
And the size of bike tires is way less than a car tire.
They do