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When you're dealing with 1 hour deliveries, those trucks aren't delivering "hundreds of boxes", they're actually still making a lot of smaller trips because the

When you're dealing with 1 hour deliveries, those trucks aren't delivering "hundreds of boxes", they're actually still making a lot of smaller trips because they can't batch efficiently due to delivery time commitments.

sevenless 10y ago
It's beyond a joke that Amazon, a company famous for not paying tax, profits from massive wasteful exploitation and over-use of taxpayer-funded roads to make very fast deliveries, contributing to traffic and pollution everyone else has to put up with. If anything this makes a strong case for a luxury tax on ultra-premium delivery services.
- gonvaled 10y ago
  Or for a proper pricing of infrastructure costs: everybody who uses the roads should pay for them, according to the use they make (heavier trucks should pay more than bicycles)
  - sevenless 10y ago
    This is one of these suggestions that sounds reasonable and would be dreadful in practice. We should encourage people to cycle or take public transport. Cycling frees up roads and makes people healthier. Charging cyclists would decrease cycling, disproportionately impact the poorest, and hurt public health (I'd make a case we should actually pay people to cycle). Likewise charging to use cars, in locations where there's no good public transit, would be terrible for the poor. The amount of damage done to roads by vehicles scales as something like the fourth power of weight at the axles, so the repair cost of cycling is nil, anyway. Everyone benefits from roads one way or the other, so the cost of roads and infrastructure should be spread. It's not an ethical issue, just a matter of who can afford to pay. Bill Gates profits greatly from his employees having infrastructure by which they can get to work, even if he doesn't drive. That's kind of the whole point of having a state.
    - gonvaled 10y ago
      You charge 1€/1000 km for bicycle for road use, and give a 100€/100km tax credit for health impact. That is my pricing model.

sevenless 10y ago

It's beyond a joke that Amazon, a company famous for not paying tax, profits from massive wasteful exploitation and over-use of taxpayer-funded roads to make very fast deliveries, contributing to traffic and pollution everyone else has to put up with. If anything this makes a strong case for a luxury tax on ultra-premium delivery services.

gonvaled 10y ago
Or for a proper pricing of infrastructure costs: everybody who uses the roads should pay for them, according to the use they make (heavier trucks should pay more than bicycles)
- sevenless 10y ago
  This is one of these suggestions that sounds reasonable and would be dreadful in practice. We should encourage people to cycle or take public transport. Cycling frees up roads and makes people healthier. Charging cyclists would decrease cycling, disproportionately impact the poorest, and hurt public health (I'd make a case we should actually pay people to cycle). Likewise charging to use cars, in locations where there's no good public transit, would be terrible for the poor. The amount of damage done to roads by vehicles scales as something like the fourth power of weight at the axles, so the repair cost of cycling is nil, anyway. Everyone benefits from roads one way or the other, so the cost of roads and infrastructure should be spread. It's not an ethical issue, just a matter of who can afford to pay. Bill Gates profits greatly from his employees having infrastructure by which they can get to work, even if he doesn't drive. That's kind of the whole point of having a state.
  - gonvaled 10y ago
    You charge 1€/1000 km for bicycle for road use, and give a 100€/100km tax credit for health impact. That is my pricing model.