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weight is the easiest measure. wear&tear on road, mpg, damage in accident all scale with weight
by trgn 2mo ago
weight is the easiest measure. wear&tear on road, mpg, damage in accident all scale with weight
- avidiax 2mo ago> scale with weight Road damage scales with axle weight to the fourth power (w^4). So if a 500lbs motorcycle is the unit of damage, a 4,000 lbs sedan does 4,096 units of damage (4096x as much), a 6,000 lbs SUV/pickup does 20,736x, a 14,000 lbs delivery van does 614,000x, and the 80,000 lbs US federal limit 5 axle semi-trailer does 90,800,000x the damage of the motorcycle. So probably shipping stuff in trucks doesn't cost enough, and SUVs/pickups should cost 5x for road tax what sedans do.
- TacticalCoder 2mo ago> So probably shipping stuff in trucks doesn't cost enough, and SUVs/pickups should cost 5x for road tax what sedans do. Nope because the numbers you just posted exemplify what every knows: road cars don't even register on the radar compared to semi-trailers. The tax for "road damage" should be approximately zero for cars, any cars, and way more expensive for semis. But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth: they're all too happy to take their bicycle to go buy the milk the semis brought to their city.
- oatmeal1 2mo ago> But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth A tad heavy on the rhetoric, wouldn't you say?
- inigyou 2mo agoCheck their comment history. With showdead on. Normal talk interspersed with crazy political rants.
- avidiax 2mo agoIt's a bit more complicated than that. There are fixed or per-vehicle costs: * signage, lighting, snow removal, etc. * weather-related wear and tear from freeze/thaw, thermal expansion, etc. * capacity (more lanes needed, driven by passenger vehicles, not trucks) So yeah, semi's should probably be paying $100k/year in road tax based on wear, but that doesn't meant that your car's road tax should be $1/year. There's also a great argument that all the suburbs are not paying enough in property taxes. Those paved roads have high costs to maintain over time, and service just the traffic to/from some large houses. Some have gone so far as to call suburbia a scam, on the basis that it has to perpetually grow to pay for maintenance.
- wolvoleo 2mo ago> But people who hate on cars don't want to hear the truth: they're all too happy to take their bicycle to go buy the milk the semis brought to their city. The truth is it's not all about road damage. In fact I couldn't care less about that because I don't really use those roads anyway. Tax is more about driving behaviour than anything.
- flir 2mo agoWeight and number of miles travelled aren't correlated though. If you go with a fuel tax (more difficult with EVs but not impossible) you get fuel efficiency, weight and miles travelled in one neat bundle.
- fakedang 2mo agoIf you want to encourage EV use and make it the mainstream majority, the last thing you need is to put further obstacles to its use such as an EV miles tax.
- flir 2mo agoYou apply a fuel tax to all vehicles, and an additional sin tax to ICE vehicles. They can still both be applied at the point of refuelling.