Sanchez questions truck traffic impacts of Local Laws 145 and 199
Sanchez asks about truck traffic effects in designated districts and about Local Laws 145 and 199. Anderson says DSNY cannot measure actual truck traffic yet but modeling predicted reductions, and that Local Law 145 emissions retrofits and commercial waste zones are expected to reduce vehicle miles traveled.
What were the law effects on truck traffic in the designated commercial districts?
Community districts?
Commercial districts.
What a day.
Community districts.
And did we see truck traffic decrease?
I know you spoke about it earlier, but if you could go into a little more detail.
So I don't think we're able to measure the actual decrease in truck traffic because we don't have data on how many trucks there are and where until commercial waste zones is fully implemented.
We did quite a bit of modeling as a part of the environmental assessment that was done prior to the passage of Local Law 152.
And what we...
anticipated as part of that environmental assessment was a substantial decrease in truck traffic in those districts.
We have seen that actual throughput has decreased by about the amount we expected in that environmental review.
So I would think that the truck traffic reduction has been approximately what we expected.
Even though we can't answer about
the waste equity law.
I'm curious if you've done any research or insight if local law 199 of 2019 had any impact on truck traffic thus far.
And what about local law 145, if that had any impact on the waste equity laws implementation with truck emissions?
Sure.
So for local law 145, which goes back to 2013, that was the law that required emissions retrofits for all waste hauling vehicles.
That law has been fully implemented.
The last of the waivers under that law expired several years ago.
So I think that has had a real impact on the particulate matter emissions from those commercial waste hauling vehicles.
I don't have a rigorous analysis of that in front of me, but that's something that I think just the implementation of that law over several thousand vehicles has had a real impact.
For local law 199,
We are and we do publish to the like decimal point the amount of
vehicle miles traveled associated with commercial waste zones operations.
Because we only have six zones fully implemented at the end of the fiscal year, and some of those commercial waste zones were implemented partially throughout the fiscal year,
what we're able to do is model out based on those first six zones where we expect to be at the end of the full 20 zone implementation.
And we are pretty much on track for that 18 million vehicle miles traveled reduction that we anticipated in 2018.