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Hanoi Plan To Ban Motorbikes By 2030 To Combat Pollution (bbc.com)
Hanoi -- a city of five million motorbikes -- is planning to ban the popular two-wheeled transport by 2030. From a report: The city council voted for the ban almost unanimously, hoping to unclog roads and reduce soaring levels of pollution. The council has also promised to increase public transport so that half the population are using it by 2030, instead of the current 12 percent. But some residents think it very unlikely the bikes will go for good. Council officials decided to put "immediate management measures" in place after a report found the number of motorbikes in Hanoi was set to grow at an "alarming" rate. Some studies suggest there are already as many as 2,500 motorbikes per kilometre. According to the non-governmental group GreenID, the city recorded 282 days of "excessive" levels of PM2.5, which is harmful to human health, last year.
It's the trucks and cars. Encourage motorcycles and scooters, they are much more environmentally friendly, you can pack 6 of them on the road compared to every car, and are extremely low cost so they promote upward mobility of most workers, since they can now commute a fair distance to jobs (not just stuck in their own little village or district).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Thing one: Government plans to convert people to mass transit often, historically, fall well short of expectation. Thing two: Banning motorcycles will cause an inevitable upsurge in car ownership. It won't be 1:1 of course, but people and things gotta move and life finds a way. The most probable result will be an increase in pollution and even more packed roads.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Cars aren't necessarily the largest polluters. CO2 production and production of other nasty substances aren't always related. Running a two-stroke leaf-blower for a half hour can easily exceed several days worth of NOx and CO emissions from a passenger car. If a lot of the motorbikes are two-stroke, replacing those may be the best bang for the buck.
Horrible idea. Who wants to sit around waiting for coal shoveling?!
Nuclear is the future. Just replace these coal engines with clean nuclear reactors and be done with it.
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"I won't be able to drive my bike in 2030? That's hanoi-ing."
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I thought that getting a motorcycle would mean a savings in fuel too but I looked at how much fuel a motorcycle would take compared to a small car and the savings is not that great. I don't remember the exact vehicles being compared so you could argue I was looking at the wrong kind of vehicles.
Here's the thing. I calculated that I'm already putting myself at risk in getting a motorcycle over that of a cage on wheels. I'm not going to put myself at further risk by getting one so under powered that it cannot out maneuver the people in their protective cages. Add to that I cannot simply get rid of my cage on wheels since a two wheeled vehicle is worthless in any weather beyond a gentle rain. Then there are costs like insurance, licensing, the legally required protective gear, and perhaps more. The article even says that imposing safety rules on motorcycle riders has failed due to rampant violation of the rules. You can tell a poor person that they have to buy a helmet but those cost money and are likely to get stolen or lost.
Even in tropical places like Vietnam where a little shit box on wheels could be light, cheap, and therefore a practical alternative, the savings on fuel with a motorcycle can't be that great. Motorcycles aren't that aerodynamic so they eat a lot of fuel at high speed. When idle in stop and go traffic the small air cooled engines burn just as much fuel as a larger water cooled one, or at least burn more cleanly for the fuel they do burn.
From what I've seen motorcycles just don't have the savings on fuel and pollution that many claim. I'm sure a motorcycle can be made that is cleaner than a car but I suspect it'd cost as much as a car with all the extra doo-dads like water cooling, catalytic converter, and the extra engine power to carry the extra weight that would add. In a nation where people don't have the income to buy a car I expect any ban on the continued use of cheap motorcycles to be just as openly violated as their helmet laws. What are police going to do about it? Destroy any motorcycle they see in violation? That's going to get ugly real quick.
I offer no citations, only my little thought experiment and personal experience. Feel free to rip me apart with evidence.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
It seems to me this one has a very simple solution.
Offer a significant tax incentive to exchange or refit your two-stroke or older four-stroke scooter/motorcycle to electric.
Electric scooters are awesome. They're reliable, cheap, and in some cases, less polluting than simply walking to your destination (assuming a Western diet, anyway).
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Motorbites/cycles use less energy than cars so if reducing pollution was really the goal, start with cars, which are the largest offenders.
Using less energy does not mean less pollution. Take a litre of petrol, pour it on the ground and light it on fire. The emissions will be 100 times worse than pouring that litre of petrol in a car and driving it 20km.
That's where bicycles are. Very low emissions standard requirements, very inefficient engines that don't burn cleanly and put only the bare minimum into environmental controls. The NOx emissions can be 16x worse on a motorbike than a car. CO emissions 80x worse. Particulates? Well idling a warm motorbike engine produces more particulates than cold starting a modern diesel and flooring it.
I suspect that a ban on cars would hurt a lot more economic interests.
I suspect you have never seen Hanoi, a country widely known to be to Motorcycles as the Netherlands are to Bicycles. There are over 5million motorbikes in Hanoi (more than there are homes) with only slightly above half a million cars. They also have the worst air pollution in the world. Stew on that for a moment.
I know this story is from India but I suspect that this is also true in many other parts of the world, like Hanoi.
In India the primary means to cook food is by kerosene stoves. It seems this is even true in many large cities since electricity is either expensive and/or unreliable. People need to eat or they riot so the government subsidizes kerosene. The government wants to discourage use of motorcycles and auto-rickshaws, so they tax fuel for these highly. Do you see where this is going yet?
People that want to run their vehicles on the cheap will mix the gasoline with kerosene and get something that kind of burns and runs the engine but blue smoke and soot is produced. This is highly illegal but very difficult to enforce. Now imagine millions of these things on the road, all producing this thick smoke.
People that have the money to buy a car will want to keep it running, so they don't typically burn kerosene in them. It's also much easier to collect a fine or bribe from someone that actually has money than some poor auto-rickshaw driver that's making deliveries for pennies.
I see a solution here but I'm sure it's not popular, tax gasoline like kerosene. I don't mean raise kerosene taxes to the level of gasoline, that will lead to riots. Tax gasoline like kerosene.
I suspect that two-cycle engines can run on kerosene better than a four cycle engine. Lower taxes would lower costs. More money in the pockets of the public mean they can afford more cars and newer motorcycles. Cleaner air from lower gas taxes.
Since this requires lowering taxes this means it's not going to happen.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Someone should tell India this.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
They should see what is happening in China first. Many Chinese cities had a very high usage rate of electric scooters. Very practical transport for flat cities that provide lanes for them and a potential pollution free option. Interestingly there is a movement there away from scooters to cars. When the weather is ok the scooters are a more practical solution being cheaper and faster, but in the case of China the movement to using cars is a status thing, not about what is best but what impresses others more. As a result some cities that had free flowing traffic 5 years ago are now gridlocked much of the day.
Translate that to the Hanoi situation and try and imaging 2500 cars per km! Of course Hanoi is not China and I suspect few people will be able to afford the cost step from a motorcycle to a car. Regardless it is a trend in the wrong direction. The better option would be to ban the new sales of 2 stroke motorcycles now then force the transition from petrol to electric over a period of time. The irony here is the bulk of commuters will likely switch from petrol to electric, simply because of the advantages, over the next few years. For example a few years ago in China I could buy an electric scooter for USD $400 (500W) or a 125cc motorcycle (5KW) for $1200. For the average commuter in a Chinese city it makes little difference. Now in China I have found you can buy more conventional electric motorcycle (1.2KW) for $1000. In my book that means for city commuters electric motorcycles are close to parity with petrol ones in cost and performance today.
No need for a well intentioned but short sighted law change.
Someone should tell India this.
Precisely. I heard this story of people putting kerosene in gasoline engines from someone that lived in India and saw it being done. It took me seconds of a Google search to see plenty of evidence of people doing this, usually accidentally, and the engine still ran with little to no ill effects, save the blue smoke from the tailpipe. Starting a gasoline engine on pure kerosene is difficult but once it is hot it will burn kerosene. Mix some gasoline with it to thin it out a bit and it will start the engine too.
What some people will do to "convert" a gasoline engine to kerosene is hook up a second tank with a valve to switch between the gas and kerosene. Start the engine on the gas, warm up the engine, switch to kerosene, and keep going with blue smoke trailing behind. Switch to gas for a bit before turning off the engine and it will start up quickly the next time.
Doing this conversion in India is just asking for trouble since it is evidence of avoiding the gasoline taxes. A blue trail behind you though could just mean the engine is burning some oil. So people keep mixing kerosene with the gas and law enforcement turn a blind eye because they don't want trouble and they probably do it too.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I lived there a year, and left due to traffic, and traffic noise. Pollution is bad, not not much worse than most other asian cities. The biggest problem for me is the slash and burn agriculture which puts a haze over the entire region.
The bikes are almost exclusively 4 stroke, Honda Dream, Honda Wave, 100-110cc over 175 cc you get a special 200% tax, yes the big bikes then cost 3x as much! Some Suzikis and yamahas, but many parts are interchangable. There is the odd old Russian Minsk, and those are foul.. but those are mostly used in the mountains and by dumb-ass tourists.. Sometimes an old Honda Chaly mini-bike with a 50 cc but really, 99% 4 STROKE.
Post after post after post, THEY ARE 4 STROKE!
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.