http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1578035 Can't drive 55? Maybe you won't have to Agency proposes new speed limits By TONY FREEMANTLE Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle Environment Writer This may be of interest only to those few motorists who still pay attention to the much-maligned 55 mph speed limit, or to heavy-duty truck drivers. But state environmental regulators on Monday changed their minds yet again about what freeway speed will help clean the air and at the same time appease aggrieved drivers in the Houston/Galveston area. The new proposal from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality calls for suspending the so-called environmental speed limit of 55 mph on all freeways in an eight-county area around Houston. Where the speed limit used to be 70 mph, it would be 65; where it used to be 65, it would be 60. And that would apply to all vehicles -- cars, light trucks, heavy trucks and everything in between. But don't get too excited just yet. The new proposal still must be considered by the state's three-member environmental commission at its meeting on Sept. 25. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency must then approve what amounts to a change in the clean air plan for the Houston area. Once that occurs, the Texas Transportation Commission must give the nod before state transportation officials can start, once again, changing signs. And that could take at least four months. In the meantime the speed limit remains 55. The saga of the area's speed limit, at least as far as motorists are concerned, goes back to early this year when the Texas Department of Transportation began taking down the 70 and 65 mph signs and replacing them with the dreaded 55. State environmental officials, relying on a federal scientific model measuring how much pollution comes out of a car at different speeds, included the 55 mph limit in the comprehensive plan to clean the air in the Houston/Galveston area, which does not meet air quality standards prescribed by the federal Clean Air Act. Later modeling suggested, however, that the reductions in pollution -- mostly nitrogen oxides -- from the lower speed limit were not as great as once thought, and certainly not enough to justify the political heat the agency and state politicians were getting from frustrated drivers. In June, barely before the paint on the new signs was dry, the environmental commission voted to suspend the 55 mph limit for cars and small trucks, but kept it for vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds. Jeff Saitas, the outgoing executive director of the agency, said Monday that issues arose almost immediately on the proposal, focusing on how safe it was to have dual speed limits on the freeways, and on whether the transportation agency had the legal authority to impose them. "There was a real safety issue," Saitas said. "I couldn't in my heart sit down and recommend a proposal where it was possible somebody could get hurt because of a differentiated speed limit. I wouldn't want that to be on my conscience." For the solution, Saitas said the agency looked to limits imposed in the Dallas/Fort Worth region, another metropolitan area that does not meet federal air quality standards and is under federal orders to clean the air. That region has the same limits now proposed for Houston. "It seemed to work in Dallas," Saitas said. "And it seems to work without the huge public outcry we saw in Houston." Putting up the 55 mph signs in the Houston region cost taxpayers about $1 million. There is unlikely to be much public outrage at the cost of changing them yet again, said Randall Dillard, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Transportation. And, he said, the cost shouldn't be as high as last time. The new limit would affect about 2,800 signs on about 1,600 miles of highway, he said. Workers would paste decals with the new limits over the old signs, rather then replacing the whole sign. The procedure cannot begin until the proposal is approved by the EPA and will take about four months to complete after it is authorized, Dillard said. It will be phased in corridor by corridor, and until it is completed the signage could be contradictory. Until then, the best advice is to drive at the posted speed. END OF ARTICLE What I don't understand is this. If the 55 MPH speed limit isn't cleaning the air, why is it going to 65 instead of 70? It doesn't really matter much to me...I'm just curious.
Aren't the larger industrial polluters, who also contribute tons of campaign money state and federally, the real issue here? Then again, I live around both LA and Riverside county, two of the top counties in breaking Clean Air Regulations...
The problem is that most of the older companies are grandfathered in so that they don't have to comply with the new pollution laws. BTW...I love LA...fantastic place.
That's a tough issue. And no one's really itching to make new federal regulations either. These grandfather clauses are like shower drains clogged up by hair and grime. No one really wants to reach down and clean it up... LA's a nice city, but Houstonians are much more down to earth.
NO, NO, NO, and NO....I've repeated this a number of times, and I guess I have to repeat it again. Ground level ozone is produced by a combination of Nitrogen oxides (NOx), volatile organic compounds (VOC) and heat. You can't just eliminate ozone, you have to eliminate the ingredients (NOx and VOC). That being said, let's look at where the NOx is coming from: As you can see, automobiles produce almost half of the NOx in the air. Quit blaming the industies!!
So why exactly did the TNRCC opine a few months ago that passenger vehicles going 55mph will only eliminate less than 2.5% of the emissions (or some ridiculously low number close to 2.5%)?
I think they should find another way to regulate the air instead of lowering the speed limit. Nobody is following that 55 mph CRAP... And I HOPE they don't do that same **** in Dallas!!!
Drive Clean Across Texas has a lot of the answers you need. An excerpt: Drive Clean Across Texas is the nation’s first statewide public outreach and public education campaign designed to improve air quality. Initial funding for the campaign comes from the Federal Highway Administration. Although industrial activities contribute significantly to air pollution, cars and trucks create most of the harmful emissions, so the initial focus of the campaign is on mobile source pollution.
Behad - do regular cars/trucks contribute as much as 18-wheelers and other heavy vehicles? I swear the big trucks cause 80% of the pollution from automobiles.
Again, from the site I listed above: Q It seems like the campaign is targeting drivers of personal vehicles. What about the smoke stacks and big diesel trucks all over my area? Don't they contribute to the problem? A We need to reduce emissions from all sources. Parts of Texas currently operate under a state implementation plan (SIP), which is that area's roadmap toward cleaner air. SIPs address both mobile emissions and industrial emissions. New standards for heavy-duty diesel engines go into effect in 2004. In addition, even more stringent heavy-duty diesel engine standards will be enforced in 2007. The regulation of industrial emissions is already underway, and the good news for Texas is that smoke stack emissions are down and will continue to decrease under the SIP. The Drive Clean Across Texas campaign provides information to the general public so individual drivers can make good decisions.
So you are saying that confirms what I think? This seems to say that heavy trucks are a problem that they are cleaning up, not really how much they contribute to the automobiles overall emission levels.
I'm still trying to find hard numbers, but it would seem to me that although trucks do emit a much higher amount of NOx, the sheer number of passenger cars over trucks would equal the amount trucks are emmitting.
Behad, what would the percentage contributions be if we had the same number of cars on but they were all stopped and idling? In other words, what effect does the speed at which personal vehicles travel have on emissions? I can understand that you might want to eliminate cars from the road altogether to reduce emissions, but keeping the same number of cars and making them move slower wouldn't have nearly as much effect because of the base cost of having the engine on in the first place.
How does it help lower the NOx in the air if they post 55mph signs and people still drive 70-80mph? It doesn't. It does raise revenue for the city through speeding violations though.
I can answer that one When at idle the emissions coming out of the pipe is higher than at speed(2500rpm). At higher speeds, newer computer controlled engines have a tendency to run with a leaner mixture, which if I remember correctly is lower in Nox It's been awhile since I did emission inspections, but I think I'm remembering right. Behad, Maybe I'm swayed by working in industrial areas, but the sheer amount of big trucks on the road these days is as much as 50% of the car traffic. ( at least around here) If they want to cut down on emissions and "greenhouse" gases, maybe its time to implement a program to cut back on big trucks. If we really wanted to do something, pressure the gov to actually encourage cleaner air vehicles(ie..Hydrogen,Electric/Gas Hybrids) ... of course then.. if we were prepared to do that, we wouldn't be whining about having to go slower.
JuanValdez and Sonny, I wish I could give you more precise answers, but I just do not know. All I can do is refer you to the following pages. They are the sources I use: http://www.epa.gov/air/urbanair/nox/index.html http://www.drivecleanacrosstexas.org/about/
R2K has the right answer: QUIT RELYING ON FOSSEL FUELS! Of course, I'd be out of a job if that happens.
If that's the case, than idle isn't a good comparison. Perhaps we'd just have to compare 55 to 70. Behad, my point was that showing the percentage contributions from each major pollutant it statistically a bit misleading because it tells you nothing about the effect of vehicular speed on pollution. Half our pollution comes from the 8 billion cars we have on our roads. But, those cars will remain regardless of the speed limit. I think a better statistic would be the one that was quoted at 2.5% which was the percentage decrease in emissions the new speed limit will have. Personally, I think we need better public transit to really fix this problem. But, we're in a bit of a bind in that regard because Houston has grown in such a way as to make efficient public transport nearly impossible. As a result, the clean air requirements have set a standard we simply cannot meet without causing some very very serious economic damage. The best solution is probably to start another town a little ways over with some logical city planning (including transit) and then we can all start moving over. We can call it Juantown. Or maybe Valdezburg. We'll vote on the name; I can't quite choose between them.
And my point of getting into this thread was to stop people from saying "What about the refineries? Why don't we make them stop polluting instead of picking on us drivers? Oh, of course, because big business has the politicians in their pocket!" That statement is not accurate. I operate four boilers, all of which tie into a common stack. I am serevely regulated on the amount of NOx I emit, and can be fined or imprisoned if I willfully exceed that limit. It's the cars, not the refineries, doing most of the damage.
