Great news. Minimizing the amount of street-level pollution will make these walkable cities more pleasant for pedestrians. Reduced noise pollution is another side benefit. Hoping to see a similar effort in SF. Hate walking near NoPa/GGP with all the traffic passing by the Panhandle area.
Most emissions from modern vehicles these days comes from things like tire dust rather than tailpipe. What would be best for local street level pollution would probably be something like a lightweight rickshaw over a multiton EV.
The air really isn't that bad in LA most days, its improved substantially in recent decades but the meme of LA smog takes longer to die I guess. The geography of the place sometimes forms an inversion layer however, and on those days air quality is worse. Right now in particular, the air is almost perfect (1). It's still a farcry from living near a lot of industrialized agriculture in terms of aqi, or out in the great plains where you have ag then also west coast wildfire smoke tends to blow up and over the rockies and settle down. I can't speak for mexico city but I know they also have a similar inversion layer effect.
Depends on where you put the probe in LA honestly. Downwind of the airport or the port are a different story than against the coast where there's almost always a prevailing wind blowing stuff inland. There are also hillside neighborhoods high enough were you can end up above the inversion layer sometimes. You look at some of the top hits of that list you see Bakersfield, Fresno, and Sacramento, all a fraction of the size of LA but they get such bad air from all the agriculture happening in the central valley.
Those of course emit a lot more tailpipe emissions, but they aren't running rideshare either. If you have a consumer gas car with efi and a cat, the tailpipe is probably pretty benign compared to something from the 70s.
you really think this will make a different? Last time I was in NYC it didn't seem like all that many, and the worst offenders were not likely uber/lyft (such as large construction trucks/equipment, etc).
