The truck was a fully electric Smith Newton model, and its lack of sonic impact was especially noticeable when it crept almost silently away from a stoplight.
Meanwhile, two busses and a gas-powered delivery van on the street ground through gears noisily and it made us think: How long will it be before we can put all this transportation-related noise pollution in the past?
Of course, living in a city with more than 8 million people things are bound to get noisy, but with recent advancement in electric vehicle manufacturing, it makes sense for the city to implement a determined push to eliminate the menace of truck noise from our streets once and for all, and to do it sooner rather than later.
Along with the problem of noise pollution, air pollution attributable to the trucking industry in the city is staggering. Late last year, Congress passed the Clean Ports Act of 2013, which states that all vehicles making port pickups and deliveries must meet EPA standards.
A study completed to show the need for the legislation found that many of the roughly 110,000 vehicles in the Port Authority fleet fail to meet those standards. The legislation has great intentions, but offers little in the way of oversight and enforcement. One way to ensure that all port vehicles meet EPA standards would be to ditch the diesel and go electric wherever possible.
This might just be a (tail)pipe dream, but with climate change now widely accepted as scientific fact, it is a dream worth dreaming and one worth making into reality.