Speaking of road tax, you know that bad-faith argument about how cyclists need to pay our “fair share?” Well, I would be happy to pay 1¢ for my 10 kg bicycle if everybody with a car had to pay fairly by weight^4^,
Comment on A 7,000-Pound Car Smashed Through a Guardrail. That’s Bad News for All of Us.
frezik@midwest.social 3 months agoThe “problem” with that tax is that if it’s applied fairly, it gets very big very fast. The damage to the road goes up with weight, but not linearly. Not a square factor, either. Not even cube. It’s to the fourth power.
Start applying that to long haul trucks and the whole industry will be bankrupt in a month.
That said, this is also a very good argument for improving cargo trains to the point where most long haul trucking goes away.
grue@lemmy.world 3 months ago
RidgeDweller@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Maybe it’s because I don’t really know anyone passionate on either side of this issue, but I’ve never heard of this argument. I know you said it’s a bad faith argument, but I can’t really imagine what a cyclist’s fair share would be aside from maybe widening a road to add a bike lane lol
Nurgle@lemmy.world 3 months ago
You see it a lot on in the comment sections of local newspapers or the city specific subs on Reddit.
RidgeDweller@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Makes sense, that’s where my local NIMBYs hang too.
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 3 months ago
I heard it on Top Gear.
Goronmon@lemmy.world 3 months ago
No reason the tax had to scale exactly to match the damage though. At least make it painful enough so people consider whether a larger vehicle is worth it.
frezik@midwest.social 3 months ago
What I’m suggesting is to ramp up the tax on roads over several years in order to pay for the initial outlay on new train infrastructure. Then you don’t need 90% of the trucking industry at all.
Which would be great for many other reasons.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Train infrastructure is being removed around the world - and there are good reasons for that.
If it’s not even cost effective to keep existing railway lines it’s certainly not worth building new ones.
obinice@lemmy.world 3 months ago
What if it’s not a larger vehicle, but transitioning from a petrol burning vehicle to an electric vehicle?
We don’t want to give people reasons to hold on to old combustion vehicles any longer than they have to, but the roads of course need to be made safe for passengers and pedestrians and wildlife, I agree.
Vrtrx@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If the hold on to their existing vehicle than thats just another upside. If they buy a new gasoline car instead of an EV this is bad. But EVs dont have to be insanely heavy if we stop the whole cars getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger crap. They will still be heavier than their gasoline counterpart but one solution might be 2 tax brackets: One for gasoline cars and one for evs that has the same taxation levels but allows for, lets say, 500kg more weight in them
magiccupcake@lemmy.world 3 months ago
So much of that freight should be moved by rail.
Tax based on weight to 4th power would work if we nationalized railways like roads.
hardcoreufo@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Only if rail can figure out their shit and hire enough workers and give them all time off. Too many train derailments from precision scheduled railroading.
magiccupcake@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Actually maintained rail shouldn’t have this problem, but the private companies like Norfolk Southern spend the minimum amount to keep them operational.
With a budget just a fraction of highway upkeep and expansion they should be able to be kept in good repair.
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Why bother with maintenance when the EPA handles the cleanup?
billiam0202@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yeah, I think turning highways back into methods of travel instead of “rolling warehouses saving Walmart a few bucks not storing anything on site” is a good thing.
zeekaran@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
Long haul trucking shouldn’t exist.
StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
As a truck driver, I would like to ask, how would you acquire all the “stuff” you have bought over the years? I am reasonably sure most of it was not produced locally to you. And the raw materials almost certainly aren’t locally sourced. Trucking and logistics generally has its issues, and you only have glimpsed a fraction of them, but it is absolutely necessary for modern society. Unless you’re proposing we kill off 2/3rds of humanity and go back to hunter-gatherer. Not a fan of that idea.
Blankmann@lemmy.world 3 months ago
He’s proposing trains should do the ‘Long Haul’ portion.
StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org 3 months ago
Which have their own issues. Namely, to my knowledge, upfront cost and lack of flexibility. I’m sure there are others.
Here in the US, you are unlikely to find enough people willing to think far enough ahead for that to happen. Too many emotions guiding actions.
nothead@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Even if we put 100% of freight on trains, and expand the existing rail network 10x, the need for trucking infrastructure would not decrease by any significant amount. Trains can’t stop at every single business that needs freight, and trucks are still needed to get that freight from the railport to its destination (this is called “last mile” freight, but it can be up to a few hundred miles depending on where the nearest logistics hub is compared to the destination).
By the way, we already use trains significantly. Look up the intermodal logistics network. The general concept is smaller trucks pick up freight from different businesses, consolidate it in a single warehouse, then the freight gets put on full size trucks to move to the nearest railport and the trailer is loaded on a train which carries it as far as possible, then the reverse happens at the other end. The vast majority of freight movement uses this method.
daltotron@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Neither should lots of short haul trucking, more specifically drayage trucking, that industry sucks. We probably need to move more towards vans and stuff.
reddig33@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Oh well. I guess they’ll just have to go bankrupt then.
frezik@midwest.social 3 months ago
And now you starve. None of the stores will stay open long without them.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 3 months ago
That should mean they don’t go bankrupt though. If their service is vital, people will pay for it even if the prices rise. It would mean an increase in prices for goods admittedly as the stores try to recoup the increased logistics costs, but intuitively I’d imagine the financial impact on the end customer wouldn’t be as much because they’re paying for the road upkeep either way, just via higher taxes in the current state and via increased prices in the new one.
BassTurd@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s not a supply and demand thing though. There just wouldn’t be product to buy because there’s no way to get it to the stores. It’s less about the bankruptcy and more about availability.
Nommer@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Think of the shareholders!
JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz 3 months ago
There’s no need to have the tax be the exact same for every vehicle class. Proper long haul trucks have to be heavy, private cars do not.
The US already has 14 total vehicle classes defined by weight, the lightest being 6000lbs (which is still ridiculously high, my VW Up is 2200lbs)
Traister101@lemmy.today 3 months ago
So? That money is still coming from somewhere. If the freight industry can’t afford to pay then it means we are subsiding them CURRENTLY. They by the very nature of capitalism deserve to go out of business
catloaf@lemm.ee 3 months ago
True but unfettered capitalism is a terrible model.
frezik@midwest.social 3 months ago
If you look down further, I’m just saying you can’t deal with the problem in this specific way.
fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 3 months ago
In Australia (and I assume other similar countries) trucks have tax concessions to avoid the cost of food fluctuating too much with the cost of diesel. This tax doesn’t need to be any different.
anivia@lemmy.ml 3 months ago
To be fair, it’s the fourth power of the axle weight, not vehicle weight. So it’s not as extreme for long haul trucks as you make it sound, but still much higher than for a car
nothead@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Trucks already pay a lot more in tax and regulatory expenses. In my state, annual car registration is $30-ish. Annual registration for a full-sized 18-wheeler is $1350 for the truck and $30-300 for each trailer. They also have to pay annual fees at the federal level which can be $600+/year, and an additional fuel tax on top of the existing state sales tax on diesel which I don’t know the rate of right now. All of that applies to every single power unit and trailer in a fleet.
Trucks should be taxed much higher than cars, but too many people don’t know or just don’t care that this is already the case, and it has been this way since the 1940s.
frezik@midwest.social 3 months ago
They are taxed a lot. Are they taxed to the fourth power of axel weight? Not even close.
nothead@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Based on your math, you’d be charging almost $2 million per year per truck. With that much money, you’d be building an entire nations worth of brand new infrastructure several times over each year.
cogman@lemmy.world 3 months ago
And frankly, I’m really ok with this.
Trains should be the backbone for shipping. They are WAY more fuel efficient, like 3 to 4x more efficient than shipping by truck. Rail requires far less maintenance. And there’s always the option install a 3rd rail and use electricity instead of fossil fuels to ship.