7 ms·
Taxing by fourth power axel weight per mile sounds good $10 for a bike doing 1000 miles a year, so 1 cent a mile. Gross axel weight about 100lb. So axel weigh
by iso947 7y ago
Taxing by fourth power axel weight per mile sounds good
$10 for a bike doing 1000 miles a year, so 1 cent a mile. Gross axel weight about 100lb.
So axel weight of 1000lb would be $100 a mile.
F150 at 2500lb would be $4,000 a mile.
I suggest putting the first year on the sale price, so that $200 bike costs $210, and the $60k f150 costs $60 million.
- seattle_spring 7y agoYep that's usually the response I give to folks in my neighborhood FB group. They are conspicuously absent to the conversation after that.
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoWell maybe because it's a total nonsense argument? Unless you actually want to kill all road transport and everything reliant on it, which is effectively everything, in which case I also think it's clear why you're not getting any replies.
- SilasX 7y agoPer my other comment [1], it’s nonsense to actually collect $4000, but it’s not nonsense to have the ratios work like that. Such a tax would eliminate marginal uses of trucks but not eliminate trucks entirely (since it would be a higher but not ridiculous tax). It also works as a reductio against any wear-based tax on bikes, since it would imply an absurd tax on trucks. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22519021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22519021 (Edited over past hour to fix numerous typos.)
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoYou are missing that the cost of bike lanes isn't just in constructing and maintaining them. Adding bike lanes in cities means dropping car lanes because there's not enough space. That ends up creating potentially huge opportunity costs.
- SilasX 7y agoI wasn’t missing that, I just wasn’t addressing it; I was just addressing how to assess maintenance taxes. If there are other costs of having the road there, like its real estate usage, I agree that’s another factor to consider.
- read_if_gay_ 7y agoOkay. If we're just talking maintenance taxes then I agree the idea isn't nonsense. Excuse the misunderstanding.
- Retric 7y agoBike lanes can handle more traffic per surface area than car lanes. Utilization is unfortunately low in most areas, but capacity wise it’s a clear net gain for city centers. Oddly enough, sidewalks are the most efficient use of space, but require good public transportation and extreme density to reach that threshold.
- dragontamer 7y agoNot quite IMO. Anyone who has done any amount of virtual traffic engineering (aka: Factorio, City Skylines, OpenTTD) knows that intersections are where the bottlenecks are. Its incredibly difficult to design a max-throughput intersection. Roads have a huge amount of throughput, most "traffic" just gets stuck at offramps and traffic lights. Narrowing a road to make room for bike lanes is a lower cost than people might think. If you're all going to get stuck at the next intersection anyway, it doesn't matter if you're a 2-lane, 4-lane, or 8-lane road.
- allovernow 7y ago> it doesn't matter if you're a 2-lane, 4-lane, or 8-lane road If you halve the capacity of the road, you're just going to spread the same cars (and congestion) among twice as many lights...and make traffic far worse.
- Marsymars 7y ago
- nitrogen 7y agoIf everyone switches to bikes, then weathering will be the primary form of road wear. It might already be so in harsh climates with freezing wet winters and hot desert summers (not sure though).
- labawi 7y agoWhen built properly, roads are quite resistant to the elements, though the execution is often culture-dependent. Roads for light loads can be built much cheaper.
- theluketaylor 7y agoSnow plowing absolutely destroys roads. The blade catches on the smallest imperfections and creates potholes. Then water gets in and the freeze/thaw expansion cycle quickly makes things worse. Here in Canada roads really don't last very long before they have to be peeled up and put down again.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoYes, but this doesn't create particle pollution, just potholes.
- SilasX 7y agoObviously you would try to saturate such tax revenues at the actual cost of road maintenance, so you wouldn’t actually collect $4000/truck mile, but yes, that’s the approximate ratio the taxes should be relative to each other.
- briandear 7y agoPerhaps a inverse tax tied to economic output of that vehicle. The higher the economic contribution of the vehicle, the lower the tax. So a recreational cyclist pays more than a delivery truck because the delivery truck is contributing to the economy and not simply joyriding.
- hansvm 7y agoThat seems too easy to game, and the system might have low compliance. Who's to say when a person is joyriding vs commuting to work on a bicycle? If we're taxing based on the economic output (which we hopefully already are via income/sales taxes), does the time value of goods being transported now get included in the calculation?
- hombre_fatal 7y agoThat is way too arbitrary. Just because money exchanged hands at some point doesn't mean the transportation is a net benefit or should be encouraged and everything else discouraged. Besides, I think the economy would be much healthier if everyone was riding their bike recreationally (healthy bodies, healthy minds). And a much bigger boost to the economy than a delivery truck driving 10 miles to deliver a $2 package.
- jbay808 7y agoWhy? If a vehicle has high economic output, presumably the owner is already getting paid for it?
- seattle_spring 7y agoSure, but we're talking about F150 type trucks here. Most people in cities have those for completely personal reasons and not for "economic activity."