Recently started looking at daycares in San Diego. All the good ones near me are within a couple hundred feet of a major freeway. I can't believe people send their kids to something like that.

Intuitively, I don't mind the ones 0.5 mi away from the freeway, especially if the prevailing winds place them up-wind. I have no idea if that's correct, but it seems to me that you'd have a fairly fast drop-off in noxious substances as you move away from the freeway.

We also have this recent trend of building huge apartment complexes right next to the freeways while many of the nicer areas are given to commercial and industrial uses. Makes no sense to me.

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bravesoul2 6 days ago | parent [-]

How does a freeway compare to a lower speed but busy road?

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scubadude 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

There's a study from Stanford showing the dropoff based on road traffic volume. The house I tested is 40 metres from a 30,000 cars/day road (2 lanes in each direction). The study suggests that the pm2.5 drops to the equivalent of the ambient air quality of the surrounding area at 37m away. An air quality sensor showed great AQI and no changes during rush hours.

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hombre_fatal 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

That’s a good question when it comes to pollution but man, the constant whine of wheels on a freeway drives me insane.

	▲	01100011 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		For me it's the semi-trucks, modified passenger cars/trucks and motorcycles. Normal cars sound more like white noise. I used to live 2 miles from the freeway and could pick out the problem vehicles when there was an inversion layer to reflect the sound back to the ground.
	▲	GreenWatermelon 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		And horns. I fuckin hate horns. I swear car horn noises reach into the far ends if the universe, you can't escape them.