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It's also hard to untangle from other things. For example, car drivers are subsidised heavily by road infrastructure being paid for by general taxation. Howeve

It's also hard to untangle from other things. For example, car drivers are subsidised heavily by road infrastructure being paid for by general taxation. However, those same roads also allow rapid and fine-grained transport of almost everything physical that anyone in society uses: food, clothes, furniture, building materials, most industrial materials, machinery and components all probably were moved on a truck at some point. Probably the only thing that likely didn't is water, and even then the treatment chemicals did. Even if goods moved from ports to regional hubs by train (which they probably should), you still need to move them by road from the hubs (and again if they are used to produce other goods). Much as I love trains, they're no good for delivering 1000kg to a specific urban building, and much as I love bicycles, neither are they. So, much of that road that counts for the cost of the car drivers would still exist even if the cars didn't. Even in the suburbs you will still need houses to be visited by vehicles sometimes, even if only for construction or emergency purposes. Moreover, because the vehicles that would be left are physically large and heavy (heavy goods vehicles, emergency vehicles, public transport and construction equipment), the cost of roads would not substantially decrease even if you deleted every car, since it's those vehicles that dictate minimum road strength and that wear roads most in the first place.

mjevans 5y ago
Inclined to agree, but those giant noisy consumer trucks with multiple tires or the mini-monster truck tires seem likely to be heavy enough to matter. It would also be a generally good idea to break this "go to the office" mentality unless there is work that can only be done there. That's some low-hanging fruit to reduce our energy use.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Well yes, but that's not quite the point: some externalities that might be priced into cars (or anything) might actually exist anyway. The truck thing is easy: treat them as commercial vehicles and see if people still think they're cool with a speed limiter, tachograph, mandatory maximum driving times and a more rigorous driving test[1]! And, yes, I do know about that thing with the seats in Ford vans, but there might be a billion in fines for that. [1] Which begs the question: would doing that for all vehicles reduce externalities with less usage, lower speeds and safer driving?
burnished 5y ago
Well, suburbs for one wouldn't exist. You'd still need some infrastructure, being able to move things around by truck is useful, but it would look different. Roads wouldn't need to be so big if you just needed occasional access by truck.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  They'd probably look a lot like much of London (including many of the suburbs) or other old city where the road layout dates from before cars, or at least from before cars were so ubiquitous: loads of houses were built in the 30s when cars existed but were rare.

mjevans 5y ago

Inclined to agree, but those giant noisy consumer trucks with multiple tires or the mini-monster truck tires seem likely to be heavy enough to matter. It would also be a generally good idea to break this "go to the office" mentality unless there is work that can only be done there. That's some low-hanging fruit to reduce our energy use.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago
Well yes, but that's not quite the point: some externalities that might be priced into cars (or anything) might actually exist anyway. The truck thing is easy: treat them as commercial vehicles and see if people still think they're cool with a speed limiter, tachograph, mandatory maximum driving times and a more rigorous driving test[1]! And, yes, I do know about that thing with the seats in Ford vans, but there might be a billion in fines for that. [1] Which begs the question: would doing that for all vehicles reduce externalities with less usage, lower speeds and safer driving?

burnished 5y ago

Well, suburbs for one wouldn't exist. You'd still need some infrastructure, being able to move things around by truck is useful, but it would look different. Roads wouldn't need to be so big if you just needed occasional access by truck.

adhesive_wombat 5y ago
They'd probably look a lot like much of London (including many of the suburbs) or other old city where the road layout dates from before cars, or at least from before cars were so ubiquitous: loads of houses were built in the 30s when cars existed but were rare.