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It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional

It's really weird how cars get a pass for so much. It's really weird how trucks get a pass from people who don't give cars a pass. If tire wear is proportional to road wear, the majority of tire-originating microplastics is from semi trucks, not commuter sedans.

julianlam 4y ago
That's a whataboutism. Many countries cannot survive without long haul trucking. Many individuals can survive without a car given the right municipal commitment.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  Isn’t that flawed logic? If you’re proposing that one of these issues can be fixed with more infrastructure, then couldn’t either? Rail is nice.
  - julianlam 4y ago
    Sure! Rail is nice, when the volume permits it. How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.
    - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
      If we wanted to redesign all our infrastructure to minimize auto and truck miles, we’d probably try to replace long-haul trucking routes with routes that pick up from local rail depots. Everyone would live near a train station (or in larger urban areas, light rail that connects to the train stations). There would be a mostly-separate freight network with depots near every population center. Trucks could be used to get goods from the depot to the store. Some long-haul routes would be needed to serve remote rural communities, and some high-priority stuff like mail delivery.
      - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
        What body has the final say over "we", and where do the funds come from? (More specific than "taxpayers")
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        I haven’t run numbers, but fewer trucks on highways means dramatically less maintenance—savings could be diverted to pay for rail buildout.
    - smileysteve 4y ago
      Rail construction and maintenance is super low cost compared to highway and interstates. The expensive part is buying new rightaways, a private company responsible for liabilities like trespassing, security, and runoff (all of which the highways get subsidized by the public) If the US spent a small percent of what it does on highways it could reactivate tracks that have shutdown since the 50s, rail towns would rise again and be the central b rural hub for groceries again. If the US replaced 1 lane of every 6+ lane interstate highway, as due for maintenance..., every major metro would have world class transit in less than a decade (you need 2 lines if you don't use modern safe switchingb at stations)
      - rocqua 4y ago
        I imagine interstate highways have slopes and curves that are too extreme for train. Specifically for high-speed rail.
    - trainsarebetter 4y ago
      That’s in the law books. In the Netherlands it’s part of the zoning to have a freight line for loading/off loading. It actually takes up much less space compared to truck loading docks. Parking take sup a lot of land.
    - worthless-trash 4y ago
      I dont see why it couldnt, if you think about it.. Trams are a thing.
    - eloisius 4y ago
      You're getting closer. Suburban supermarkets might be unfeasible without long-haul trucking. That's just another example of the public subsidizing the suburban lifestyle, which is unsustainable without fossil fuels and public subsidies. Rail can very well transport goods from port to population centers, where box trucks can handle the last mile to stores.
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        Lol you came so close! Suburban supermarkets would get their goods just like your urban supermarket: smaller box trucks transporting goods from rail depot to supermarket.
        eloisius 4y ago
        I doubt it would be viable to stock suburban walmart via box trucks.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        I don’t see why not, but in any case you wouldn’t need long-haul trucking to get goods from a local rail depot.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      You don’t need long-haul trucking to get goods to the supermarket, you use rail and then smaller trucks from rail depot to supermarket.
- dimitrios1 4y ago
  We survived without long haul trucking for the majority of the industrial age.
- petre 4y ago
  Yes, Algeria, which is like 90% desert. Not the US though. Instead, US individuals can't survive without a car due to how your cities are built.
dahdum 4y ago
I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.
- dimitrios1 4y ago
  The interstate highway system was not built for commercial trucking. > In the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938, Congress asked the BPR for a report on "the feasibility of building, and cost of, superhighways... including the feasibility of a toll system on such roads." The BPR based its report on data collected from extensive highway planning surveys that had been conducted around the country beginning in 1935. The origin-and-destination surveys showed that transcontinental traffic was limited, with traffic heaviest around cities and in interregional movements. Given the low income of most motorists, toll roads would have a traffic-repelling character. As a result, most routes would not carry enough traffic to generate sufficient revenue to pay off bonds needed to finance their construction. Instead, the BPR recommended construction of a network of toll-free express highways. The BPR's description of "A Master Plan for Free Highway Development" was its first description of what would become the Interstate System. Based on the survey data, the BPR explained that the primary justification for the network was passenger traffic, particularly congested city traffic, not interstate trucking. In fact, the report made little reference to trucks. [0] Commercial trucking would not start to take foothold over rail until the 1960s, primarily under President Johnson. [0]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/freight.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/freight.cfm
  - gresrun 4y ago
    It was also built to allow the U.S. Army to rapidly move convoys of trucks, tanks, & materiel around the U.S.[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...
    - dimitrios1 4y ago
gonzo41 4y ago
Build more trains, and then make smaller trucks that are locally bound.
- eru 4y ago
  That's already what's happening. The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well. Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Macha 4y ago
    Of course, this ignores that the tracks are mostly privately owned and the private operators prioritize their own freight traffic over the passenger traffic despite the latter being less time sensitive. The one part where the passenger rail does work well is where the government passenger rail company also owns the network...
    - eru 4y ago
      Well, the whole system (or systems) used to be various private hands when they were first built. The government takeover came later.
      - Macha 4y ago
        And it was taken over by the government because those private companies were going bankrupt, so it's still not a good promotion for the private market
        eru 4y ago
        https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransportationDeregulation.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransporta... and https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-government-takes-over-control-of-nations-railroads https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-government-t... suggest there's more to the story: > The U.S. entry into the war in April 1917 coincided with a downturn in the fortunes of the nation’s railroads: rising taxes and operations costs, combined with prices that were fixed by law, had pushed many railroad companies into receivership as early as late 1915. A year later, in a last-minute bill passed through Congress, Wilson had forced the railroad management to accept union demands for an eight-hour work day. Government fixed prices, and made one of their factors of production (labour) more expensive.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
For people that don’t know the math behind this, it is astounding. >when you double the weight per axle, you increase the road damage by 16 times >For example, while a truck axle carrying 18,000 pounds is only 9 times heavier than a 2,000-pound automobile axle, it does 5,000 times more damage.
- freeqaz 4y ago
  Mind throwing a resource that I could review about this? I'd love to share it with my friends, as well.
  - jdironman 4y ago
    Even more so, sharing with the general public through available media channels. Anything that is extremely detrimental to the public health, or the public lands and property should be the loudest thing mentioned. It should become so ingrained in the publics opinion that the only course of action is "How to fix this? Or how to prevent it from continuing?"
  - Scalestein 4y ago
    Looks like here https://www.gao.gov/products/ced-79-94 https://www.gao.gov/products/ced-79-94 "Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Support" from GAO
  - JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
    The gao report is good and here is discussion of the equation. https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
- causality0 4y ago
  This is why arguments that road-maintenance taxes should be applied to BEVs and bicycles are horseshit. Everything lighter than 4,000 pounds is essentially a rounding error as far as damage to road surface goes.
airstrike 4y ago
The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%
- gruez 4y ago
  > The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    > consumer demand drives industry And industry lobby drives government policy and regulation. Industry apologism will not help us move towards mitigating climate crisis effects. Industry has externalized most of their environmental costs, this needs to change ASAP.
    - tekknik 4y ago
      What is your solution for bulk transport, last mile, etc?
      - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
        You are asking the wrong question. _Total_ Road transport emissions is 11.9% of CO2 emissions. It is still a lot but it will probably be the hardest to get rid of due to the whole car-centric infrastructure. - Energy use in buildings is 17.5% of CO2 emissions - Energy use in Industry is 24.4% of CO2 Emissions, The steel industry alone accounts for 7% of global emissions of CO2 The _number_one_priority_ is to force out Coal and Methane Gas from the Energy production sector and heating. That alone would cut global emissions by more than 40%. This is a gigantic step because it solely depends on government energy policy, Infrastructure investiment, and also requires us to advance against an extremely embedded lobby of both Coal and Oil&Gas.
Grimburger 4y ago
> If tire wear is proportional to road wear It's not though, rendering the point moot. They are two vastly different materials with different models of wear. A quick thought experiment would make this very apparent: Do trucks need to replace tires at magnitudes less distance travelled than cars? Do cars tires last 100x longer than motorbike tires?
- throwaway894345 4y ago
  Your thought experiment incorrectly assumes trucks, cars, and motorbikes have the same number and size of tires. Trucks have more, larger tires to allow for more wear between replacements.
  - Grimburger 4y ago
    Is it the magnitudes more though rather than 8x or 2x? I've seen it often said that a fully loaded truck is equivalent to 1,000 cars wrt road wear. Even accounting for tyre numbers and thickness/sizes, it doesn't add up. > Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan. https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      It seems like you’re agreeing that it’s orders of magnitude, which supports my point. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. :)
foxyv 4y ago
The answer as always is TRAINS! MORE TRAINS! For the love of the Earth and all that is sacred we need more trains! Trams, commuter rail, low gauge freight, high speed rail, street cars, metros and parks with little trains to ride on! Not rubber or plastic, steel on steel! Cars should be something that only a few people really need. Unfortunately auto makers and oil companies have had a huge influence on our government and society since World War II. The result is this stupid nonsense where you can't even go to a GROCERY STORE without some form of car. Where our train tracks are rotting and rail lines are slowly disappearing. Where you can't even go out your back door without seeing a monstrously loud big rig turning acres of asphalt into rutted gravel.

julianlam 4y ago

That's a whataboutism. Many countries cannot survive without long haul trucking. Many individuals can survive without a car given the right municipal commitment.

Waterluvian 4y ago
Isn’t that flawed logic? If you’re proposing that one of these issues can be fixed with more infrastructure, then couldn’t either? Rail is nice.
- julianlam 4y ago
  Sure! Rail is nice, when the volume permits it. How would we supply the supermarket, though? A rail line would be unfeasible.
  - fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    If we wanted to redesign all our infrastructure to minimize auto and truck miles, we’d probably try to replace long-haul trucking routes with routes that pick up from local rail depots. Everyone would live near a train station (or in larger urban areas, light rail that connects to the train stations). There would be a mostly-separate freight network with depots near every population center. Trucks could be used to get goods from the depot to the store. Some long-haul routes would be needed to serve remote rural communities, and some high-priority stuff like mail delivery.
    - aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
      What body has the final say over "we", and where do the funds come from? (More specific than "taxpayers")
      - throwaway894345 4y ago
        I haven’t run numbers, but fewer trucks on highways means dramatically less maintenance—savings could be diverted to pay for rail buildout.
  - smileysteve 4y ago
    Rail construction and maintenance is super low cost compared to highway and interstates. The expensive part is buying new rightaways, a private company responsible for liabilities like trespassing, security, and runoff (all of which the highways get subsidized by the public) If the US spent a small percent of what it does on highways it could reactivate tracks that have shutdown since the 50s, rail towns would rise again and be the central b rural hub for groceries again. If the US replaced 1 lane of every 6+ lane interstate highway, as due for maintenance..., every major metro would have world class transit in less than a decade (you need 2 lines if you don't use modern safe switchingb at stations)
    - rocqua 4y ago
      I imagine interstate highways have slopes and curves that are too extreme for train. Specifically for high-speed rail.
  - trainsarebetter 4y ago
    That’s in the law books. In the Netherlands it’s part of the zoning to have a freight line for loading/off loading. It actually takes up much less space compared to truck loading docks. Parking take sup a lot of land.
  - worthless-trash 4y ago
    I dont see why it couldnt, if you think about it.. Trams are a thing.
  - eloisius 4y ago
    You're getting closer. Suburban supermarkets might be unfeasible without long-haul trucking. That's just another example of the public subsidizing the suburban lifestyle, which is unsustainable without fossil fuels and public subsidies. Rail can very well transport goods from port to population centers, where box trucks can handle the last mile to stores.
    - throwaway894345 4y ago
      Lol you came so close! Suburban supermarkets would get their goods just like your urban supermarket: smaller box trucks transporting goods from rail depot to supermarket.
      - eloisius 4y ago
        I doubt it would be viable to stock suburban walmart via box trucks.
        throwaway894345 4y ago
        I don’t see why not, but in any case you wouldn’t need long-haul trucking to get goods from a local rail depot.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    You don’t need long-haul trucking to get goods to the supermarket, you use rail and then smaller trucks from rail depot to supermarket.
dimitrios1 4y ago
We survived without long haul trucking for the majority of the industrial age.
petre 4y ago
Yes, Algeria, which is like 90% desert. Not the US though. Instead, US individuals can't survive without a car due to how your cities are built.

dahdum 4y ago

I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles. I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.

dimitrios1 4y ago
The interstate highway system was not built for commercial trucking. > In the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938, Congress asked the BPR for a report on "the feasibility of building, and cost of, superhighways... including the feasibility of a toll system on such roads." The BPR based its report on data collected from extensive highway planning surveys that had been conducted around the country beginning in 1935. The origin-and-destination surveys showed that transcontinental traffic was limited, with traffic heaviest around cities and in interregional movements. Given the low income of most motorists, toll roads would have a traffic-repelling character. As a result, most routes would not carry enough traffic to generate sufficient revenue to pay off bonds needed to finance their construction. Instead, the BPR recommended construction of a network of toll-free express highways. The BPR's description of "A Master Plan for Free Highway Development" was its first description of what would become the Interstate System. Based on the survey data, the BPR explained that the primary justification for the network was passenger traffic, particularly congested city traffic, not interstate trucking. In fact, the report made little reference to trucks. [0] Commercial trucking would not start to take foothold over rail until the 1960s, primarily under President Johnson. [0]: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/freight.cfm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/interstate/freight.cfm
- gresrun 4y ago
  It was also built to allow the U.S. Army to rapidly move convoys of trucks, tanks, & materiel around the U.S.[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_1956 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...
  - dimitrios1 4y ago

gonzo41 4y ago

Build more trains, and then make smaller trucks that are locally bound.

eru 4y ago
That's already what's happening. The US has some of the best railways in the world. It's just that for various institutional reasons the Americans suck at passenger rail, so people totally ignore that their freight rail works really, really well. Guess which part of the industry is in government hands, and which part is privatised and deregulated?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Macha 4y ago
  Of course, this ignores that the tracks are mostly privately owned and the private operators prioritize their own freight traffic over the passenger traffic despite the latter being less time sensitive. The one part where the passenger rail does work well is where the government passenger rail company also owns the network...
  - eru 4y ago
    Well, the whole system (or systems) used to be various private hands when they were first built. The government takeover came later.
    - Macha 4y ago
      And it was taken over by the government because those private companies were going bankrupt, so it's still not a good promotion for the private market
      - eru 4y ago
        https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransportationDeregulation.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/SurfaceFreightTransporta... and https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-government-takes-over-control-of-nations-railroads https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-government-t... suggest there's more to the story: > The U.S. entry into the war in April 1917 coincided with a downturn in the fortunes of the nation’s railroads: rising taxes and operations costs, combined with prices that were fixed by law, had pushed many railroad companies into receivership as early as late 1915. A year later, in a last-minute bill passed through Congress, Wilson had forced the railroad management to accept union demands for an eight-hour work day. Government fixed prices, and made one of their factors of production (labour) more expensive.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

For people that don’t know the math behind this, it is astounding. >when you double the weight per axle, you increase the road damage by 16 times >For example, while a truck axle carrying 18,000 pounds is only 9 times heavier than a 2,000-pound automobile axle, it does 5,000 times more damage.

freeqaz 4y ago
Mind throwing a resource that I could review about this? I'd love to share it with my friends, as well.
- jdironman 4y ago
  Even more so, sharing with the general public through available media channels. Anything that is extremely detrimental to the public health, or the public lands and property should be the loudest thing mentioned. It should become so ingrained in the publics opinion that the only course of action is "How to fix this? Or how to prevent it from continuing?"
- Scalestein 4y ago
  Looks like here https://www.gao.gov/products/ced-79-94 https://www.gao.gov/products/ced-79-94 "Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Support" from GAO
- JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
  The gao report is good and here is discussion of the equation. https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
causality0 4y ago
This is why arguments that road-maintenance taxes should be applied to BEVs and bicycles are horseshit. Everything lighter than 4,000 pounds is essentially a rounding error as far as damage to road surface goes.

airstrike 4y ago

The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce People talk shutting off the faucet while brushing one's teeth but ~70% of global freshwater usage comes from agriculture and ~20% from industry, with municipalities accounting for only 10%

gruez 4y ago
> The corollary to this argument is that most environmental issues routinely blamed on individual behavior pale in comparison to the externalities from industry and commerce I agree with internalizing externalities, but let's not pretend that isn't part of individual behavior (consumer demand drives industry), or that individuals don't benefit from them in some way.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > consumer demand drives industry And industry lobby drives government policy and regulation. Industry apologism will not help us move towards mitigating climate crisis effects. Industry has externalized most of their environmental costs, this needs to change ASAP.
  - tekknik 4y ago
    What is your solution for bulk transport, last mile, etc?
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      You are asking the wrong question. _Total_ Road transport emissions is 11.9% of CO2 emissions. It is still a lot but it will probably be the hardest to get rid of due to the whole car-centric infrastructure. - Energy use in buildings is 17.5% of CO2 emissions - Energy use in Industry is 24.4% of CO2 Emissions, The steel industry alone accounts for 7% of global emissions of CO2 The _number_one_priority_ is to force out Coal and Methane Gas from the Energy production sector and heating. That alone would cut global emissions by more than 40%. This is a gigantic step because it solely depends on government energy policy, Infrastructure investiment, and also requires us to advance against an extremely embedded lobby of both Coal and Oil&Gas.

Grimburger 4y ago

> If tire wear is proportional to road wear It's not though, rendering the point moot. They are two vastly different materials with different models of wear. A quick thought experiment would make this very apparent: Do trucks need to replace tires at magnitudes less distance travelled than cars? Do cars tires last 100x longer than motorbike tires?

throwaway894345 4y ago
Your thought experiment incorrectly assumes trucks, cars, and motorbikes have the same number and size of tires. Trucks have more, larger tires to allow for more wear between replacements.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  Is it the magnitudes more though rather than 8x or 2x? I've seen it often said that a fully loaded truck is equivalent to 1,000 cars wrt road wear. Even accounting for tyre numbers and thickness/sizes, it doesn't add up. > Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) -- 2,500 times that of the sedan. https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
  - throwaway894345 4y ago
    It seems like you’re agreeing that it’s orders of magnitude, which supports my point. I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make. :)

foxyv 4y ago

The answer as always is TRAINS! MORE TRAINS! For the love of the Earth and all that is sacred we need more trains! Trams, commuter rail, low gauge freight, high speed rail, street cars, metros and parks with little trains to ride on! Not rubber or plastic, steel on steel! Cars should be something that only a few people really need. Unfortunately auto makers and oil companies have had a huge influence on our government and society since World War II. The result is this stupid nonsense where you can't even go to a GROCERY STORE without some form of car. Where our train tracks are rotting and rail lines are slowly disappearing. Where you can't even go out your back door without seeing a monstrously loud big rig turning acres of asphalt into rutted gravel.