This is a common carbrain argument
“I already pay the gas tax”
The problem is that it’s false.
In a recent study, researchers Stefan Gössling, Jessica Kees, and Todd Litman calculated the social costs of driving. They found that the social cost is about 30-40% higher than what car owners are actually paying
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943?via=ihub
That cost is paid by non-drivers.
It’s a shame we let those damned bikes take up so much room, and for free too.
And my brother was telling me how bikes don’t pay enough of their fair share of the road tax and all that …
Doing a bit of napkin math here, but presuming an 80kg person in a 1200kg car vs a 15kg bike (commuter and mountain bikes are in this weight range), accounting for average speeds of 50 and 15 mph…
By my count, to do the same amount of damage to the road, as a single car of the above specs, you’d need somewhere between 30 and 50 thousand bikes travelling down the same road, in 4-5 columns.
And that’s a pessimistic estimate.
Most people with bikes also own cars too. Crazy.
Is there a study that shows the full environmental cost over the decades it takes for the cars pollution to be handled by the world?
Including fine particles that mostly stem from car tires as far as I know.
That’s a no brainer. Of course not.
Should it be? Everyone benefits from the roads even if they don’t own or drive a car, because I can assure you that every single item in your house has at one point been transported on a road. Roads are primarily made for freight and it’s also the large trucks that wear out the roads so the roads need to be maintained. So it should be the large cargo trucks that paid for the roads, right. But then the cost of freight would have to increase. That’d be great, because freight is way too cheap when companies can offer free freight. There’s no such thing as free freight. It costs somebody something. Higher freight costs would mean that people would either consume less, which is bad for the economy, or worse, that they’d simply start driving more themselves, which is bad for the environment.
There’s no winning scenario as long as everything is dependent on roads, even when you don’t use the road yourself.
That’s not a good thing. Road freight being subsidized means it gets unfair advantage over more efficient transport when it makes sense. So taxes are being used to subsidize inefficient means of transport, at least some of the time.
Making freight pay their share would make them examine how to be most efficient, instead of not caring since they don’t pay.
Roads are primarily made for freight
[Citation Needed]
That’s such an obviously false claim, i only need to look out my front window to see how laughable, but it’s also ahistorical, too.
Road maintenance is for freight.
The roads are built for the heaviest users and besides the natural frost damage, the only reason why roads wear down is heavy traffic. Roads that are only used by personal vehicles can last a lifetime while the larger cargo routes needs repair constantly and complete overhauls every 5 years or so. That’s where the costs of road maintenance comes from.
We can bitch and moan about cars and traffic all day for all kinds of reasons, but when the question is about who should pay the insane price of road maintenance, the arrow points in one direction: Cargo.
Aye, that is the historical progression: We built roads and highways for automobiles, and the logistics companies took advantage of the subsidized “free” ways. We should absolutely make them pay for what they use. It may seem like this system is “good for the economy,” but this kind of subsidy distorts the supply/demand equilibrium and creates deadweight loss. Furthermore, the effect it’s had on logistics favors just-in-time inventory systems, distant manufacturers, and large, centralized distribution centers. Wal-Mart and Amazon are one visible result.
Perhaps if we priced the cost of transport into the price of goods, it would be better for most people, as manufacturing and distribution (with the associated jobs) moved back closer to the consumers?
A scenario closer to winning is instead of only building infrastructure for cars, we build a comprehensive transportation system where people could choose the best mode for any given purpose.
You might ask yourself why everything is dependent on roads and whether that even makes sense?
And if you disagree with the idea of car and truck owners paying their fair share, perhaps a different proposal?
And last-mile cargo trains. Like they have in Switzerland.
I’d settle for first mile. Boston’s “Big Dig” from a couple decades ago missed one fundamental piece to straightening out traffic downtown: they built a “haul road”. This allows trucks to avoid some traffic while bringing out cargo from the port.
I don’t understand how this wasn’t a train
Fuck cars all you want, but you’re an idiot if you think you don’t need roads as a distribution network for your way of living. Be glad some of the maintenance is supplemented by a fuel tax for now.
What compels you to to type a comment of this nature? You know we are not advocating for the total abolishment of roads as a concept. What is the point of mentioning that they are a part of the distribution network? It does not argue for more or less cars, but for some reason you ask me to be glad that a tax is paying for a part of it’s maintenance, when its maintenance would still be paid by taxes- just other taxes. It would presumably also be significantly cheaper to maintain if we did get rid of most cars and replaced them with alternative transportation, especially bikes. The roads are primarily not being used for logistics.
This month, I bought tires and my insurance renewing: still pretty expensive after being subsidized by 35% by everyone.
You’re not actually subsidized, the companies are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Is that a common argument made in Germany? I’m not German so I’m just wondering. I know I’ve heard that here in the States. I my area we don’t only have the tax on gas though, we also have registration, wheel tax, and I think alcohol and tobacco taxes are often slated for roads, though I’m not positive on that (tax dollars often feel like a shell game to me anyway and I’m not able to follow my local politics as closely as I know I should).
