141–150 of 328 posts
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I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.
Trucks suck. Even with the US' road-friendly policies, transporting goods via truck is twelve times as expensive as by rail.
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It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.
Build more trains, and then make smaller trucks that are locally bound.
The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well.
Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?
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It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.
I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.
We could simply use rail.
The idea that folks on bicycles should be subject to gigantic, badly designed commercial vehicles while going about their business is absurd and a product of decades upon decades of lobbying.
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Are trucks an unavoidable reality of transportation? I don't think so. If there are ways to transport those staples aside from using trucks, it seems like an effective tax on using trucks would just be an optimization that encourages alternatives that don't spread as much damage onto general infrastructure.
For the last miles, delivering parcels to people and pallets to commerce, they are for sure. Rail just won't work well at that level of granularity. Between cities is probably another story where rail makes more sense but I'd guess it's much easier to schedule a truck at the last minute and you're not beholden to whoever operates the rail network(s).
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This is why arguments that road-maintenance taxes should be applied to BEVs and bicycles are horseshit. Everything lighter than 4,000 pounds is essentially a rounding error as far as damage to road surface goes.
Wouldn't this in effect add a regressive tax to staple products like bread and flour, which are transported by trucks and would require raised prices to be passed on? I'd be interested in seeing the numbers and what price rise if any would be expected.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.
The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
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Wouldn't this in effect add a regressive tax to staple products like bread and flour, which are transported by trucks and would require raised prices to be passed on? I'd be interested in seeing the numbers and what price rise if any would be expected.
Why regressive? Are you arguing that making people pay for bread at all is 'regressive'?
And yes, eating to survive is kind of regressive in that sense, but it's not what I'm talking about. If we generally assume society is unfair but still balanced around current expenditures, adding more may upset that balance.
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Are trucks an unavoidable reality of transportation? I don't think so. If there are ways to transport those staples aside from using trucks, it seems like an effective tax on using trucks would just be an optimization that encourages alternatives that don't spread as much damage onto general infrastructure.
What are the alternatives? Back every store up to a rail line?
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Build more trains, and then make smaller trucks that are locally bound.
That's already what's happening. The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well. Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?
To place this in context, it's 50,000 tons/year of fishing waste, versus 200,000 tons/year of microplastics from car tires: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/14/car-tyre... Further, microplastics enter the ecosystem far easier than the bulky big plastic from fishing gear, so the tire microplastics should be far more concerning to people. It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. Try to live a…