6 ms·

> I'd also like to point out that road wear is approximately proportional to the cube (^3) of the weight per axle on a vehicle, so cars are probably responsible

> I'd also like to point out that road wear is approximately proportional to the cube (^3) of the weight per axle on a vehicle, so cars are probably responsible for a minority of this pollution. Could you clarify that a bit? Do you mean that the friction of the tires on the road releases nasty emissions?

pathseeker 6y ago
No, heavy trucks wear out the road significantly more than cars and result in asphalt having to be replaced more frequently. This is another case where the gas tax isn't really adequate for funding road issues due to the disproportional increase in costs to the increase in fuel usage by trucks. All of the light vehicle drivers subsidize the heavy trucks in all mileage/fuel based tax schemes.
- Valgrim 6y ago
  For this reason, in northern latitudes, weight limits for trucks drop significantly during the spring season. Shipping water bottles, ice salt and windshield washer in stores becomes a real pain in the ass.
  - shajznnckfke 6y ago
    For what it’s worth, you can buy windshield washer concentrate online. In months where the temperature gets cold, though, you want the alcohol based stuff that won’t freeze and burst a line.
- melling 6y ago
  Sounds like we need to expand our rail capacity. Our current rail freight capacity is near 100%.
  - gruez 6y ago
    Why not tax each mode of transportation proportionately to their true cost, and let the market decide?
    - melling 6y ago
      How do you price in the fact that heavy trucks destroy the road faster, causing them to be replaced more often, causing more pollution? In other words, how do you price in the pollution? And do you really want to?
      - Taek 6y ago
        Yes, you really do want to. It would be lovely if we could charge proportional to the externalities. As for how... beats me. Best we can do is rough approximation, and accept that we will continually find out we were wrong and have to adjust the cost structure.
        epistasis 6y ago
        We could get the approximations quite wrong and still get massive economic improvements from where we currently are! However the challenge isn't the approximations, but the political difficulties. Even taxing based on mileage would cause an uproar. And taxing large pickups proportional to their economic toll on infrastructure would probably start a violent revolution.
        lostapathy 6y ago
        Large pickups aren’t an appreciable part of the problem here - 18 wheelers are.
        epistasis 6y ago
        There are a lot of smaller roads where 18 wheelers never travel, and where a 2x weight increase means 10x the road wear (between the cube and fourth power of weight, according to simple models in this thread).
  - oblio 6y ago
    Don't y'all have these amazing rivers that aren't really used any more for transportation? Maybe you should couple that up with rail transport :-)
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Barge traffic on rivers has been and still is a thing. Maintaining the rivers isn't cheap or easy, of course.
    - 205guy 6y ago
      I know the comment was tongue in cheek, but the area in question (Los Angeles) doesn't have navigable rivers. In fact, the Los Angeles river is better paved (lined with cement for various reasons) than some roads in the area. And as a sibling comment points out, where the US does have good rivers/lakes, notably the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio network and the Great Lakes, they are used extensively for transport. The only one I can think of that is disused is the Hudson and canals that connect to the Great Lakes. But the same is true for Europe: larger rivers allow larger, more efficient ships and are still used for transport, and the canal system is too narrow and so mostly recreational now.
      - Someone 6y ago
        You can always (sometimes at large cost) dig wider and deeper canals, or make existing ones wider and deeper. https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-inland-waterways-of-Europe https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-i... has plenty of examples of recently dug or now large canals supporting large ships.
      - oblio 6y ago
        How solid is rail transportation in California?
        toast0 6y ago
        For freight? It's pretty solid. In calendar year 2019, the alameda corridor [1] processed about 4.8 million twenty foot equivilent units (TEU) [2] and the ports of los angeles and long beach processed about 9.3 million [3]. So around about half of the container trips to or from the port are by rail rather than truck. Some of the containers may just get put on trucks at the rail yards at the other end of the corridor to avoid trucking congestion in the port, but I don't think there's a lot of that. (I could be wrong) For passengers? It's pretty iffy outside of commuter rail, Amtrak operates on freight lines, and is deprioritized, and there's a lot of freight volume, so there's a lot of delays for passengers. I don't know the right keywords to find data for the ports of Oakland and Stockton. They probably have a decent rail volume too, but they have more challenging geography to get east than in southern california. [1] the rails between the port of la/long beach and major rail yards exiting los angeles [2] http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf [3] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-4ebd-8c6a-dc72195a65f1/2019-facts-figures https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-...
- mirkules 6y ago
  The way you frame this makes it seem like a road tax is in our future. That, in turn, makes me more skeptical about this study, the funds for which were granted by the EPA. I’m not really insinuating the EPA is after your tax dollars, but the fact that a government agency funds a study that can have tax implications should at least raise an eyebrow. I don‘t know how common this is. The problem I have with this is that the gas tax was [Edit: this is apparently not true, as was pointed out below] created because exhaust fumes were damaging the environment and reducing air quality - and I agree with that. But now that we have made significant strides towards reducing emissions - both in the way of more efficient vehicles and battery-operated vehicles - causing a decrease in gas tax dollars flowing in, suddenly we have another source of emissions which would require another tax. I can’t help but feel that at least on some level this will be a money grab - even if the underlying study is confirmed long-term.
  - CameronNemo 6y ago
    >the gas tax was created because exhaust fumes were damaging the environment and reducing air quality Do you have a source for this? Everything I have read states that gas taxes were first enacted to finance road construction (thereby leading to more exhaust fumes), and gas taxes in place today often dedicate the majority if not all of their funds to road building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
    - mirkules 6y ago
      Actually, I don’t have a source, it was just my assumption, so you’re probably right. But seeing the downvotes roll in, I should have known better than to question the financial motivation for an environmental study on HN.
      - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
        Pairing those questions with skepticism of government certainly didn't help.
      - 6y ago
- cameldrv 6y ago
  You could get a decent approximation of the right tax by taxing diesel more. Especially after dieselgate, there are hardly any light vehicles that use it.
  - adwww 6y ago
    Except in Europe, where Diesel peaked at almost 50% of all vehicles sold - pre dieselgate.
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    That same hammer would also hamper innovation in new light diesel vehicles. All three auto makers now make diesel half ton trucks and Jeep is expanding it into more vehicles. We should encourage that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nickff 6y ago
A few things came to mind for me: - Many of these emissions are described as being from paving, so more frequent repaving caused by increased wear would aggravate the issue. - These issues seem to be related to temperature, and I suspect that the increased wear by heavier vehicles is largely caused by increased friction (which would increase temperature-related emissions). - Cracks and potholes expose more asphalt, and are largely caused by the heavier vehicles.
zip1234 6y ago
Tires wearing out is indeed a source of pollution though. That material wears off onto the roads.

pathseeker 6y ago

No, heavy trucks wear out the road significantly more than cars and result in asphalt having to be replaced more frequently. This is another case where the gas tax isn't really adequate for funding road issues due to the disproportional increase in costs to the increase in fuel usage by trucks. All of the light vehicle drivers subsidize the heavy trucks in all mileage/fuel based tax schemes.

Valgrim 6y ago
For this reason, in northern latitudes, weight limits for trucks drop significantly during the spring season. Shipping water bottles, ice salt and windshield washer in stores becomes a real pain in the ass.
- shajznnckfke 6y ago
  For what it’s worth, you can buy windshield washer concentrate online. In months where the temperature gets cold, though, you want the alcohol based stuff that won’t freeze and burst a line.
melling 6y ago
Sounds like we need to expand our rail capacity. Our current rail freight capacity is near 100%.
- gruez 6y ago
  Why not tax each mode of transportation proportionately to their true cost, and let the market decide?
  - melling 6y ago
    How do you price in the fact that heavy trucks destroy the road faster, causing them to be replaced more often, causing more pollution? In other words, how do you price in the pollution? And do you really want to?
    - Taek 6y ago
      Yes, you really do want to. It would be lovely if we could charge proportional to the externalities. As for how... beats me. Best we can do is rough approximation, and accept that we will continually find out we were wrong and have to adjust the cost structure.
      - epistasis 6y ago
        We could get the approximations quite wrong and still get massive economic improvements from where we currently are! However the challenge isn't the approximations, but the political difficulties. Even taxing based on mileage would cause an uproar. And taxing large pickups proportional to their economic toll on infrastructure would probably start a violent revolution.
        lostapathy 6y ago
        Large pickups aren’t an appreciable part of the problem here - 18 wheelers are.
        epistasis 6y ago
        There are a lot of smaller roads where 18 wheelers never travel, and where a 2x weight increase means 10x the road wear (between the cube and fourth power of weight, according to simple models in this thread).
- oblio 6y ago
  Don't y'all have these amazing rivers that aren't really used any more for transportation? Maybe you should couple that up with rail transport :-)
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Barge traffic on rivers has been and still is a thing. Maintaining the rivers isn't cheap or easy, of course.
  - 205guy 6y ago
    I know the comment was tongue in cheek, but the area in question (Los Angeles) doesn't have navigable rivers. In fact, the Los Angeles river is better paved (lined with cement for various reasons) than some roads in the area. And as a sibling comment points out, where the US does have good rivers/lakes, notably the Mississippi-Missouri-Ohio network and the Great Lakes, they are used extensively for transport. The only one I can think of that is disused is the Hudson and canals that connect to the Great Lakes. But the same is true for Europe: larger rivers allow larger, more efficient ships and are still used for transport, and the canal system is too narrow and so mostly recreational now.
    - Someone 6y ago
      You can always (sometimes at large cost) dig wider and deeper canals, or make existing ones wider and deeper. https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-inland-waterways-of-Europe https://www.britannica.com/technology/canal-waterway/Major-i... has plenty of examples of recently dug or now large canals supporting large ships.
    - oblio 6y ago
      How solid is rail transportation in California?
      - toast0 6y ago
        For freight? It's pretty solid. In calendar year 2019, the alameda corridor [1] processed about 4.8 million twenty foot equivilent units (TEU) [2] and the ports of los angeles and long beach processed about 9.3 million [3]. So around about half of the container trips to or from the port are by rail rather than truck. Some of the containers may just get put on trucks at the rail yards at the other end of the corridor to avoid trucking congestion in the port, but I don't think there's a lot of that. (I could be wrong) For passengers? It's pretty iffy outside of commuter rail, Amtrak operates on freight lines, and is deprioritized, and there's a lot of freight volume, so there's a lot of delays for passengers. I don't know the right keywords to find data for the ports of Oakland and Stockton. They probably have a decent rail volume too, but they have more challenging geography to get east than in southern california. [1] the rails between the port of la/long beach and major rail yards exiting los angeles [2] http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf http://www.acta.org/pdf/Monthly_TEUREV_History.pdf [3] https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-4ebd-8c6a-dc72195a65f1/2019-facts-figures https://kentico.portoflosangeles.org/getmedia/a43d3038-7713-...
mirkules 6y ago
The way you frame this makes it seem like a road tax is in our future. That, in turn, makes me more skeptical about this study, the funds for which were granted by the EPA. I’m not really insinuating the EPA is after your tax dollars, but the fact that a government agency funds a study that can have tax implications should at least raise an eyebrow. I don‘t know how common this is. The problem I have with this is that the gas tax was [Edit: this is apparently not true, as was pointed out below] created because exhaust fumes were damaging the environment and reducing air quality - and I agree with that. But now that we have made significant strides towards reducing emissions - both in the way of more efficient vehicles and battery-operated vehicles - causing a decrease in gas tax dollars flowing in, suddenly we have another source of emissions which would require another tax. I can’t help but feel that at least on some level this will be a money grab - even if the underlying study is confirmed long-term.
- CameronNemo 6y ago
  >the gas tax was created because exhaust fumes were damaging the environment and reducing air quality Do you have a source for this? Everything I have read states that gas taxes were first enacted to finance road construction (thereby leading to more exhaust fumes), and gas taxes in place today often dedicate the majority if not all of their funds to road building. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
  - mirkules 6y ago
    Actually, I don’t have a source, it was just my assumption, so you’re probably right. But seeing the downvotes roll in, I should have known better than to question the financial motivation for an environmental study on HN.
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Pairing those questions with skepticism of government certainly didn't help.
    - 6y ago
cameldrv 6y ago
You could get a decent approximation of the right tax by taxing diesel more. Especially after dieselgate, there are hardly any light vehicles that use it.
- adwww 6y ago
  Except in Europe, where Diesel peaked at almost 50% of all vehicles sold - pre dieselgate.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  That same hammer would also hamper innovation in new light diesel vehicles. All three auto makers now make diesel half ton trucks and Jeep is expanding it into more vehicles. We should encourage that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nickff 6y ago

A few things came to mind for me: - Many of these emissions are described as being from paving, so more frequent repaving caused by increased wear would aggravate the issue. - These issues seem to be related to temperature, and I suspect that the increased wear by heavier vehicles is largely caused by increased friction (which would increase temperature-related emissions). - Cracks and potholes expose more asphalt, and are largely caused by the heavier vehicles.

zip1234 6y ago

Tires wearing out is indeed a source of pollution though. That material wears off onto the roads.