261–270 of 327 posts
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You could tax trucks like 1000 times more. But don't expect the butter and milk to stay the same price.
The milk would cost more, but we'd save even more money on road maintenance. Then many trucks could be adjusted to have more axles and lighter loads, saving money on both ends. The end result is a better system.
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Those roads are what allow stuff to be delivered. How do you ship an air conditioning unit on a bike path? The point is that the roads serve commerce and a tax on roads is really a tax on everything. Roads aren’t exactly massively subsidized — the commerce they generate results in taxes. Tax revenue generated per mile driven is far greater than any supposed subsidy. We could make an argument that schools are massivel…
> How do you ship an air conditioning unit on a bike path? Use a trailer? While not possible for everything, we could easily do with 1/10000 of the cars we have.
I still regret having bought an expensive percussion drill to install a bathroom vanity, when I could have just rented one from the local hardware store chain. [2]
> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…
> Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes Some States do, California does not. The underlying issue is that California roads can infamously cost an order of magnitude more to build and maintain per mile than the same road segment in other States (e.g. interstate highways). It is possible to pay for roads with fuel and use taxes, in some other States it is a constitutional requirement, but the extr…
Why is that? It's not like they have harsh winters like New England or anything.
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Yes, the average car in the US gets about 25MPG, while the average tractor trailer is 6MPG, so about 4x the fuel per mile. Accounting for the higher tax rate, they’re paying maybe 5x the tax per mile, while causing maybe 5,000x the damage.
You could tax trucks like 1000 times more. But don't expect the butter and milk to stay the same price.
> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…
All of taxes deter productivity from increasing. It is better to tax the land date trees grow on, than to tax the output of the trees themselves.
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Those taxes should be proportional to the wear, otherwise it remains unbalanced.
If we are talking about maintenance costs, sure trucks should pay their share, but congestion (the reason to build additional roads) is caused primarily by passenger cars.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You could tax trucks like 1000 times more. But don't expect the butter and milk to stay the same price.
The milk would cost more, but we'd save even more money on road maintenance. Then many trucks could be adjusted to have more axles and lighter loads, saving money on both ends. The end result is a better system.
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What is more expensive, train or road maintenance? What gets better total utilization rates?
Road gets you everywhere, rail only gets you to the nearest terminal. Depending on the signalling system used rail can have a higher capacity from terminal to terminal, leaving the 'last mile' (which in reality is more likely to be the last 100 miles) to be travelled by road. Road needs more maintenance and the work itself is more labour-intensive. Imagine a package-switching network comprising an (electrified) rail…
That is not true. Road gets you to where the road serves, just like rail. With a good enough coverage, virtually all transportation needs are met.
> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…
Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree. That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and consistent with the state's greenhouse ga…
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So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. Which is why the California tax on gasoline is 48.7¢/gallon and the California tax on diesel fuel is 67¢/gallon.[1] Federal tax on gasoline is 18.4¢/gallon, and diesel fuel is 24.4¢/gallon.[2] I'm not defending the trucking industry. I think more stuff should go by train instead. But truck fuel is taxed more heavily than car f…
It’s taxed slightly more heavily. But trucks cause literally thousands of times more damage than cars.