Urban Life

200-Year Old Houses in New York State

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I was playing around with the NYS GIS / Tax Map Feature Service, and realized it was pretty easy to query any building that was built in the state prior to 1820. The trick is keep the query narrow enough so you don't request too many points -- the feature server is limited to something like 1,000 points per request, although your browser will crash before then.

Smoggy Volkswagons

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It should be noted that the illegally polluting Volkswagen TDI produce as much NOx as a model year 1998-2004 Tier 1 (0.3 g/mi). Which is much higher then the current Tier II Bin 5 standard of 0.02 g/mi, which they are accused of violating, but far below historic pre-controlled cars of the 1960s, that put out 3.0-3.5 g/mi.

So if you have a 10-year old car, it is likely putting out as much NOx as the new Volkswagon TDI. But that’s not an excuse — if everybody has to follow the law for current model year cars — so should Volkswagon. 10-year old cars are becoming rarer on the road, and will mostly be scrapped within the next few years.