[HN Gopher] Electric Cars - fuel duty and road tax: how to repla...
___________________________________________________________________
Electric Cars - fuel duty and road tax: how to replace PS35B annual
revenue
Author : phobotics
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-07-20 11:18 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.carwow.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.carwow.co.uk)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| It's easy just add it to income tax. That way it will be properly
| progressive instead of the regressive tax that it is now.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| How about the government just finds a way to make do?
|
| It's kind of preposterous that we're staring an economic slowdown
| and high inflation in the face after decades of incomes flat-
| lining and the .gov is telling people to cough up more. I get
| that EV owners are statistically richer but you're not gonna
| change that by raising the TCO via taxes.
| Silhouette wrote:
| _How about the government just finds a way to make do?_
|
| On the other hand most of us would like (for example) a
| functioning NHS. That needs good people, good facilities, and
| the tax revenues to pay for both. There is a real and imminent
| danger that our whole public health system could collapse due
| to a mass exodus of skilled professionals who decide they've
| had enough. Arguably some parts of it already have.
|
| Behind the headlines about Ukraine and COVID and Brexit and so
| on are numerous mostly overlooked yet very significant problems
| within our society and economy. Many of those problems are only
| going to get worse and by extension more expensive to
| eventually fix if they aren't dealt with soon enough.
|
| If we're going to prevent those things from happening in the
| next few years then a lot of us are going to have to pay for it
| (whoever is leading the government for the next two years or
| after the next general election). Hopefully the less well-off
| who are already struggling will be looked after and the burden
| will fall on the better-off demographics. Of course most people
| don't want to pay more tax but I suspect many of those who
| could afford to do so without suffering too much would prefer
| that to the alternative of literally watching a family member
| die because there was no ambulance available when they called
| 999 in a medical emergency!
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Get your broader point about strained household budgets. But
| taxation is deflationary. Raising taxes lowers inflation.
| lettergram wrote:
| Lol assuming inflation is caused by an increased money
| supply; not the material food shortage we are seeing.
|
| Further, this type of taxation is a regressive tax.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _assuming inflation is caused by an increased money
| supply; not the material food shortage we are seeing_
|
| Doesn't matter. Fiscal taxation (spending) reduces
| (increases) aggregate demand directly. No need for monetary
| transmission channels.
| f0xJtpvHYTVQ88B wrote:
| Taxation doesn't change the amount of spending. It only
| changes who is doing the spending.
| lettergram wrote:
| Except this taxation is supposedly going directly to
| spending on regular road maintenance. Which injects the
| funds directly back into the economy. Money supply isn't
| changing here.
|
| Even if it were, demand isn't being reduced. They're just
| forcing you to spend it on roads.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _this taxation is supposedly going directly to spending
| on regular road maintenance_
|
| Totally orthogonal. Spending is stimulative. Taxation is
| tightening. That the two are traditionally bundled is
| political convenience. We can rail against the spending
| bit as inflationary. My narrow point is that calling out
| tax increases vis-a-vis inflation is inchoate.
| em500 wrote:
| Here's an overview of the government expenditures:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/public-spending-sta...
|
| What should they cut? Every department will tell you they're
| underfunded.
| DrBazza wrote:
| A long article to just say, in the UK, the government will need
| to figure out how far you've driven an EV and charge you for that
| distance to replace the tax raised through fuel bought to travel
| the equivalent distance.
|
| Odometer read when the car gets and MOT? Maybe, but I'd expect
| more cameras, because not only can you charge people for the
| distance they've driven, if they're average speed check ones,
| they can fine you at the same time for speeding (until that pesky
| speed limiter starts making an appearance on European, and by
| extension, UK roads).
| tigerlily wrote:
| > Smart home wallbox chargers could in theory tell the
| electricity grid it was a car being charged, but homeowners could
| just plug a three-pin extension lead into a normal socket to
| charge their car, circumventing any such communication between
| grid and charge.
|
| To encourage folk to use their wall box, offer a discount rate in
| exchange for utility control of charging. That way load can be
| shifted off peak if needed.
| timthorn wrote:
| All new chargers installed in the UK must now be smart, by law.
| MafellUser wrote:
| On top of that, it is ILLEGAL to sell and install dumb EVSEs.
| Does not apply to third party resales but if you can't find
| someone to install it, it's a moot point.
| neilwilson wrote:
| Oh dear. Somebody didn't pass the geometric sequence question on
| their GSCE maths paper.
|
| The PS35B revenue replaces itself, because money doesn't stop at
| its first use.
|
| What you don't spend on fuel duty, you spend on something else,
| which is subject to VAT, causes wages to be paid subject to PAYE,
| and profits to be earned subject to corporation tax. They then
| spend their increased income cause more tax to be raised and so
| on.
|
| In other words the taxation just moves elsewhere in the
| spending/income chain. And that's because total tax take is a
| function of government spending and the desire of the non
| government sector to save or spend. The more the non-government
| saves the lower the tax take is as a percentage of government
| spending - pretty much regardless of tax rates.
|
| Tax rates really just alter the distribution, and not so much the
| total.
|
| The purpose of sin taxes is to discourage people from doing one
| thing and start doing another. There is no 'revenue', firstly
| because you can't rely on it and secondly because a sovereign
| government has no need of revenue in the first place. That's not
| the purpose of taxes!
|
| Ideally sin taxes should be matched with virtue subsidies, so
| that people who are hard of accounting can see what is happening.
| For example a fuel duty should be hypothecated to an electric car
| subsidy and they then wane in lockstep with each other as the
| behaviour changes.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| > a sovereign government has no need of revenue in the first
| place.
|
| Please explain this. Are you suggesting governments can just
| stop taxing, and print the money to pay their debts with no ill
| consequences?
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| People think government works like a household budget - it
| doesn't. Think about it - who controls how much money is the
| economy?
|
| Does someone measure 'okay the economy has grown 5%, it needs
| 5% more money to be printed?" No, nobody does that.
|
| If the government prints zero money, the money supply can
| still quadruple, because banks create money out of thin air.
|
| Which is exactly what they did prior to 2008. The reason
| government had to 'print' miney in 2008 is that they were
| replacing all the 'unsupported' money that was creates by
| banks, and then suddenly imploded.
|
| As soon as you suggest government should print money everyone
| starts screaming inflation, but when private banks do it,
| noone blinks an eye.
|
| The rules that allow banks to create money have changed
| dramatically over the past 20 years, and nobody is even
| discussing it.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The money that banks create by fractional reserve lending
| is (at least somewhat) backed by real assets. The money
| that governemnt 'prints' is backed by nothing.
| neilwilson wrote:
| The money government prints is backed by the best asset
| of them all - the power to recover it as taxation.
|
| Paying the tax to the tax collector is far cheaper than
| the alternative amount you end up paying to the bailiff
| when they confiscate all your assets.
|
| Taxation is, ultimately, the only 'reserve' asset there
| is. And as you can see it is very definitely backed by
| real assets. All your real assets.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| We have not operated fractional reserve banking for
| generations.
|
| A bank today can give out loans and mortgages without any
| assets.
|
| https://positivemoney.org/2011/04/monetary-reform-
| myths-1-10...
| flaviut wrote:
| I'm not an economist. But I can see inflation being thought
| of as a type of tax.
|
| I'm not sure what kind of incentives that creates, and if
| those incentives are better or worse than the incentives
| existing taxes create.
|
| So, maybe?
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Off the top of my head, some results would be:
|
| 1. No one wants to lend to your country again because you
| paid them back with currency far less valuable than
| expected
|
| 2. Nobody wants to use your currency as a means of exchange
| in international transactions because it can fluctuate
| suddenly
|
| 3. Massive redistribution of wealth from savers and lenders
| to borrowers (maybe a good thing on the whole, but
| devastating for people headed into retirement)
|
| 4. Anything (including govt. programs) that aren't indexed
| to inflation are suddenly far less valuable
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| All of your post assumes that when government creates
| money, it causes inflation, and when private banks create
| money, it causes no inflation. No such distinction
| exists. Most money is created by private banks.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| I know most money is created by private banks. But that
| is stable (it is assumed by ceteris paribus). If a
| government decided to stop taxing then that would be
| something new.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Is a good assumption that money created by private banks
| more stable than government created money? what economic
| mechanism provides such guarantee and what is the
| evidence?
|
| Private banks used to be able to print their own currency
| completely: in one country each bank would have different
| money that coupd be redeemed for gold, and wasn't backed
| by the government. That was very unstable.
|
| We basically stopped taxing multinationals after the end
| of cold war, we do have something new.
| neilwilson wrote:
| I can't do any better than Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the
| Federal Reserve Bank of New York, who explained it in the
| 1940s. [0]
|
| [0] http://home.hiwaay.net/~becraft/RUMLTAXES.html
| DrBazza wrote:
| UK fuel duty as a percentage:
| https://www.racfoundation.org/data/taxation-as-percentage-of...
| - currently about 45% down (amazingly) from more or less 60%
| since 2013.
|
| I kind of understand your argument, but net-income in my pocket
| that's not spent on petrol will be spent on some sort of goods
| or services that has VAT on it, which is 20%. So, yes, I might
| spend more on goods and services, which might mean more
| computer shops, clothes shops or restaurants and take aways,
| and they in turn might grow the economy a bit, but would that
| convince the government to _not_ reintroduce some kind of road
| charging?
| chongli wrote:
| Who says they have to spend that money? What if they instead
| throw it in a tax-free savings account and use it to buy stocks
| & bonds?
| neilwilson wrote:
| Buying stocks and bonds is spending the money. You've given
| the money to somebody else in exchange for something. Now
| they have the same choice as you did - spend or save.
|
| If you save it in a tax free savings account even better. The
| bank holding the offsetting reserves then does the buying via
| the DMO cash management process.
| makomk wrote:
| Pretty sure that argument doesn't actually work, though the
| reason why is a little subtle. Sure, the money doesn't stop at
| its first use, but whatever goods or services the money is
| spent on by consumers do. That is, if this tax revenue isn't
| replaced by some other equivalent source of tax revenue its
| disappearance will increase the amount consumers have available
| to spend in nominal non-inflation-adjusted terms by PS35
| billion a year without creating any correspending increase in
| the goods or services available to purchase - the government
| still needs to do all the things that were "funded" by that
| fuel duty and road tax after all.
|
| This is not in any way offset by the fact that whatever that
| money is spent on is subject to VAT, causes wages to be paid
| that are subject to PAYE, and so on, even though it sems like
| it would eventually cause all the money to end up in the
| government's pockets anyway. The VAT when that money is
| initially spent is included in the PS35 billion figure, and any
| taxes after the money is spent are irrelevant since the money
| had already become actual, final consumer spending involving
| actual consumption of goods and services.
|
| This is a much more useful way to think about taxation and the
| need for tax. By your logic, the actual tax levels don't matter
| - 100% of money will end up in the government's pockets
| eventually after all.
| neilwilson wrote:
| "without creating any correspending increase in the goods or
| services available to purchase"
|
| Why would it not create more to purchase? If you go into a
| hairdresser with money in your pocket do they work harder to
| get the queue down or shut the shop and put the prices up.
|
| The limit is actually available unemployment/underemployment,
| even now we still have millions without work that want it,
| less the increase in the level of saving. More saving = more
| space.
|
| Hence when Tories decry their proposed tax cuts as 'debt
| fuelled', they really ought to hope that they are since that
| will reduce inflationary pressures.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>firstly because you can't rely on it and secondly because a
| sovereign government has no need of revenue in the first place.
| That's not the purpose of taxes!
|
| Soo much wrong here...
|
| Revenue should be the ONLY purpose of taxation, and falsehood
| that sovereign government steams from a combination of fiat
| currency and MMT, which when combined and executed on like you
| are implying lead to inflation can currency collapse (in the
| extreme)
|
| governments SHOULD NOT use taxation to pick winners and losers,
| nor to legislate morality, they should use taxation ONLY to
| collect revenue to projects and programs approved by the
| people, and for no other purpose
| dsr_ wrote:
| When you're arguing SHOULD, you're not arguing DOES.
|
| (You're also wrong about the inevitability of currency
| collapse.)
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >When you're arguing SHOULD, you're not arguing DOES.
|
| As is the person who I was reply to, their comment was that
| the government should not need to view taxation as revenue,
| I disagree
|
| >You're also wrong about the inevitability of currency
| collapse
|
| In the extreme of the parent comment, were a government
| ceases taxation (since they do not need the revenue) and
| just prints money to pay for everything the collapse of
| that currency is inevitable.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| How do you feel about relatively high taxes on alcohol and
| cigarettes? I enjoy a good beer, but I understand the reason
| for alcohol tax. Do you also favor low cigarette taxation?
| The "end of life" costs for heavy cigarette smokers cannot be
| overlooked! Also, the UK had a lot of success with the sugar
| tax.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| I guess that depends on what you define as "success" going
| along with the not using taxes to legislate morality, I
| also do not believe it is the role of government to protect
| someone from their own bad choices (i.e sugar or
| cigarettes), going along with this is one of the reasons I
| oppose a single payer government run health care system in
| the US, because if we have a UK style health system then
| adding in all of these legislative actions to control every
| aspect of a persons life becomes a valid cost control
| argument
|
| I dont want the government telling me what I can or can not
| eat, or setting tax policy on their recommendation. I also
| grew up with the food pyramid as the "government approved"
| diet that today most people agree is terrible, and if it
| did not directly cause it heavily aided in the obesity
| epidemic we have today (in the US).
|
| Distrust in government is our (the US) founding principle,
| and I have a HEAVY distrust of all government experts. As
| one of our presidents famously said "The nine most
| terrifying words in the English language are "I'm from the
| Government and I'm here to help"
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Taxing activities that have negative externalities is a
| positive use of taxation.
|
| It's better than forbidding such behavior for many reasons.
| The simplest reason is that it's better to make revenue dis-
| incentivizing something bad (pollution) as opposed to dis-
| incentivizing something good (income).
| phpisthebest wrote:
| To the extent that I would agree, it would IMO only be
| ethical for a government tax negative externalities to
| directly pay for mitigation, control, etc , i.e a carbon
| tax that directly goes to carbon removal / capture.
|
| taxing exernalties then using the money for unrelated
| projects i.e taxing cigarettes to pay for schools, is
| something I would oppose
| TimPC wrote:
| Taxing negative externalities works to reduce those
| externalities even without mitigation though. I'd much
| rather have a government that taxes things we want less
| of than things we want more of. The status quo is income
| tax, which is far worse than any Pigovian tax.
| milliams wrote:
| Does not the switch to electric vehicles offer indirect savings
| elsewhere, making the PS35B deficit less? For example, a
| reduction in air pollution leading to better health and less NHS
| use, less greenhouse emissions leading to less spent of fighting
| that uphill battle, less fuel being imported giving various
| third-order effects.
| leoedin wrote:
| The "per unit of energy" pricing of liquid fuels is quite
| appealing as it encourages efficiency. Even when people are using
| electric cars, efficiency is beneficial.
|
| I wonder if some sort of banded electricity pricing would work -
| you can consume x kWh at a lower price, and then a surplus tax
| applies. It's fairly easy to tax public charging. That would
| still encourage people to seek efficient EVs.
| bhawks wrote:
| You could achieve basically the same result by reading the
| odometer and giving discounts or premiums based on the
| make/model of the car. No need to measure/tier electricity
| usage.
| leoedin wrote:
| That doesn't reward economical driving though. EVs have a
| very low efficiency penalty for high performance - an EV can
| be both highly efficient at 55mph and have 400 HP and 3s 0-60
| times.
| balderdash wrote:
| I think people are starting from the wrong end of the problem. It
| appears we have two types of roads, access roads (think last mile
| roads in residential or rural areas) whose replacement cycle is
| driven by useful life vs usage. Then we have high throughput
| roads, that have enough volume to require usage driven
| replacement cycles. So if those access roads are y% of the miles
| and x% of the cost, then a vehicle "access" tax should be levied
| to cover that part of the system, and toll/usage based tax should
| be levied to maintain the usage based part of the system.
|
| Side note: to adjust for the pollution CO2 element you could add
| a tax to the wholesale price per MW of electricity based on
| generation type, in addition to a lower, purely pollution priced
| gas tax
| 988747 wrote:
| The actual problem is that government is going to lose 35
| billion per year in tax revenue, and they are trying to prevent
| that. What they actually spend that money on is secondary, they
| just need a good story to tell to their voters :)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Under this model you should also account for the amount of
| damage done by the vehicle. Which scales with the fourth power
| of axle load, i.e. ~100% of the road damage is caused by large
| commercial vehicles, to the point that collecting it from
| passenger vehicles isn't even worth the collection
| infrastructure. It certainly isn't worth the privacy cost.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Even if a road never sees a single truck, it will still need
| to be replaced and/or repaired eventually. Things like the
| freeze-thaw cycle destroy roads too.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Which has nothing to do with usage, so shouldn't be priced
| with usage.
| bagels wrote:
| This debate is so tedious. Why not just slightly increase
| property tax or income tax? Why does it have to be usage based?
| Most other government services are done this way, we all benefit
| from having roads.
| zip1234 wrote:
| There are significant negative externalities to driving.
| zaroth wrote:
| There are, however, much more significant positive intrinsic
| and extrinsic values to pervasive passenger and truck
| infrastructure than there are negative externalities.
|
| Namely, it's a fundamental underpinning of modern
| civilization.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| transportation is fundamental, that its necessarily via
| incredibly space inefficient personal automobile is not.
| mab122 wrote:
| Why not just tax the tires? Seems like they are good indicator on
| how much you are using roads and how many miles you drove etc.
| (Safety maybe an argument. Don't do it so people don't drive on
| shitty old ones)
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Aside from the safety factor, tires do have an expiration date,
| like with most things tires are rated for time and mileage. ie
| 5 years or 50,000 miles
|
| Now most people only replace them at the milage limit like
| their oil because they run out their miles faster but for some
| people (like me) I tend to replace things on time more often
| because I do not drive that much
| warmwaffles wrote:
| > ie 5 years or 50,000 miles
|
| It also depends on the make and where you live. I stretched
| my Yokohama's out to ~80k miles with good tread still left
| when I replaced them. But I live in the southern part of the
| US, so we don't have to deal with snow and ice cycles that
| cause tires to wear faster.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| Heat breaks down rubber as well having "good tread" is not
| the only failure point or wear indicator, a tire can be bad
| while having "good tread"
| jsight wrote:
| That should work in places that have good inspection
| requirements.
|
| The downside is that it would penalize soft rubber as well as
| the usage of winter tires.
| mywittyname wrote:
| UTQG can be a factor in the calculation. Use a formula to
| normalize all tires to UTQG1000 before applying the tax.
| cptskippy wrote:
| There's a pollution aspect to be considered as well. Soft
| rubber tires are more polluting. Would using summer/winter
| tires change things? Yes you'd pay the tax on 2 pairs of
| tires but your wear/replacement interval would be prolonged
| on both sets wouldn't it?
| iso1631 wrote:
| Or just look at the odometer each year at the MOT
| 1123581321 wrote:
| An old tire buyback program would be better for road safety.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Nice idea. Add a wear indicator and some DRM to it, and a
| modern service-based industry is born.
| rexreed wrote:
| Or... maybe national taxes should pay for national roads as a
| form of national infrastructure, state or county taxes paying for
| state or county roads and local taxes for local roads. Isn't this
| the way roads were paid for before widespread use of personal
| vehicles?
|
| Roads are a shared benefit for all whether you own or drive a
| vehicle or not. Think of deliveries and public transport and
| other approaches in which you personally benefit. The idea of
| funding roads by virtue of fuel taxes always struck me as odd.
| bhawks wrote:
| But then we wouldn't be able to put cameras everywhere and GPS
| trackers in people's cars?
| rexreed wrote:
| The steady creep of surveillance posing as convenience.
| iso1631 wrote:
| In the UK local council tax funds local roads, and national
| government (funded mainly from income tax, national insurance
| and VAT) funds major trunk roads.
| rexreed wrote:
| How does that square with the main point of the article: "The
| UK government receives tax revenue from drivers of petrol and
| diesel cars via two key methods: fuel duty, which brings PS28
| billion a year into government coffers, and Vehicle Excise
| Duty (road tax), which nets roughly PS7 billion. Combined,
| these sources make up 1.5% of the UK's GDP and account for
| around 4% of all tax revenue."
| iso1631 wrote:
| Because that tax "funds" things like the police and defense
| rexreed wrote:
| So auto-related taxes and fees fund policing and defense
| and general taxes fund roads. Sounds... convoluted. I
| reiterate that none of this really makes much sense, and
| I think we're seeing the end result of those policies.
| HPsquared wrote:
| It's a kind of substitute for tolls, an alternative pay-as-you-
| go system.
|
| Edit: of course it neglects that not all roads are created
| equal, some have a much higher cost and value per passenger-
| mile (e.g. bridges)
| rexreed wrote:
| Tolls are paid by those who drive on the roads, not by those
| who benefit from the roads if they don't drive. That's why
| it's a shifted burden. Tolls and fuel taxes are paid by those
| who drive, not those who otherwise benefit. Just my opinion.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| The problem is that removing all the various taxes on road use
| makes driving dramatically cheaper, which encourages people to
| drive, which will induce more traffic. It's the exact opposite
| direction we need to be going not just from an environmentalist
| pov, but its also counter to our urban planning goals as well.
|
| To meet our goals we need to be doing the opposite, which is
| making private automobile use of the roads _more expensive_
| while creating more and better alternative transportation
| opportunities (ie. public transit, cycling).
|
| Additionally if we shifted to other taxes, then this is a
| transfer of costs from relatively wealthy car owners to the
| relatively poorer who don't even own cars.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Last time I looked into this the subsidies were set so that the
| country as a whole roughly broke even.
|
| Less pollution, lower health costs, living longer, less carbon,
| less imports, higher efficiency, cheaper energy, cheaper
| transport.
|
| https://www.mdpi.com/2032-6653/8/4/996/pdf
|
| e.g. the above suggests the owner saves about $6000 and society
| gets another $10000 dollars on top, over 10 years, 120,000 miles.
|
| But, we'd do even better if we incentivise people to walk, cycle
| and use public transport because the health benefits of
| excercise.
|
| So I'm happy with 'road tax' returning for EVs, but mostly
| because road tax for ICE should always have been much higher than
| it ever was. Hopefully, e-cargo bikes and similar are incentivise
| by whatever the new scheme is.
| faichai wrote:
| Everyone always seems to jump from general schemes (road tax,
| fuel duty) to Orwellian tracking (GPS everywhere). Seems like a
| simple scheme of mileage tracking and net charge tracking would
| do. You then have an overall energy use / mile figure that you
| can use to price each mile so people who buy more efficient cars
| are rewarded, and then charge by total number of miles, so people
| who do fewer miles pay less.
| asdff wrote:
| Another easy way is to tax wear items accordingly and have
| inspections maintaining their condition for safety. E.g. EVs
| are heavier and wear down tires more than lighter cars. The
| state could implement a tax on tires and mandatory inspections
| for tread depth like they do with smog checks for emissions in
| gas cars. They could use the same testing infrastructure and
| just stock every location with a penny to measure tread. Heavy
| users of the roads will see a lot of wear on their tires and
| will be paying more into this tax accordingly in order to have
| a legally safe vehicle to drive, just like how owners of
| ancient cars that are more likely to be polluting need to take
| special care that the emissions controls are in good
| maintenance so that they pass smog.
|
| It would also be beneficial to incentivize better vehicle
| choices at the point of sale. Ebikes should be subsidized to
| the point of being free or nearly so. Other evehicles should be
| taxed extremely high per pound of mass. A family of four should
| therefore naturally gravitate toward a compact hatchback over a
| massive SUV that weighs twice as much like they do today when
| there is no incentive for getting a smaller vehicle.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's mostly because the concept of tracking has been pushed
| over and over again politically, it just never made it. It has
| been on the agenda in NL since the mid 1980's.
| lini wrote:
| Too many unknowns with the mileage solution. The most obvious
| for me is travelling abroad - travelling by car between EU
| countries is not uncommon. Another issue is that the mileage of
| the car is not very hard to modify. In Eastern Europe, buying a
| second-hand 10 year old car, imported from Germany, is almost
| funny because most seem to be around 90-100 000 miles (140-160
| 000 km), while looking for the same make and model in a German
| auto website will show most cars have double the mileage.
| smilekzs wrote:
| A solution has been long in place in the US for commercial
| vehicles. It's called IFTA. It's possible because commercial
| vehicles have to report their mileages to authorities
| frequently anyway.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Do you think that people should only withdraw exactly what they
| deposited from Social Security? Do you think that a patient
| should pay 100% of their healthcare costs under socialized
| medicine?
|
| I find it so strange that roads aren't viewed as a public
| service, and instead should be taxed (regressively) to cover
| the cost of the road by those using it.
|
| I'm fine paying fully for my own road use, as long as I can
| stop paying for all the government services I don't use. But as
| long as the government is taking half of my paycheck, providing
| me with roads is the bare minimum they could give in return.
| bluecalm wrote:
| The difference between roads and other things you mentioned
| is that current road infrastructure, especially in cities
| have huge costs for health, lifestyle, mental health. I don't
| want cars in cities and if I have to have them I want car
| owners to pay the full cost of making city life way worse
| hoping alternatives emerge.
| dahfizz wrote:
| You can make that argument about anything, though.
|
| You need roads to have a civilization, otherwise you have
| no way to transport the goods you consume, or get to the
| hospital quickly, etc. What you're arguing is that you
| don't like the current implementation.
|
| I don't like the current implementation of medicare /
| medicaid / social security. It definitely is suboptimal for
| people's (mental) health, including those in my family. It
| still comes out of my paycheck. It's also an order of
| magnitude more than whatever gas taxes and tolls I pay.
|
| That's just the nature of living in a democracy. If
| everyone paid for exactly the services they used, taxes
| wouldn't exist.
|
| I just find it curious that people on HN rally against the
| cost of roads, when they absolutely benefit from the roads
| being there. Military, SS, or Medicare are services that
| the average citizen doesn't use at all, and cost much much
| much more than roads.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Social programs I don't benefit from don't hurt me. They
| just cost me. Roads as currently implemented make my life
| way worse. That's the distinction people see.
| megablast wrote:
| Every single car should be tracked at all times. They are a
| deadly weapon, kill a million people every year around the
| world, and seriously injure many more.
| adamcharnock wrote:
| A good point. This sounds like the kind of thing that could be
| incorporated into a mileage reading at the annual vehicle
| inspection (which I assume the USA has??). Vehicles which are
| for entirely private-road use don't get inspected, so that's
| ok. Or they are specially classified somehow.
|
| Everyone else just accepts that what the system lacks in
| accounting for private road use, is made up for in simplicity
| and cheapness of administration.
| jgust wrote:
| > annual vehicle inspection (which I assume the USA has??)
|
| Hah. Washington state doesn't even test for emissions, let
| alone do a vehicle inspection.
| dazc wrote:
| Maybe not a long term alternative but taxing drivers behaviour
| via extreme penalties rather than the type of fuel or vehicle
| they use would not only raise revenue but may also encourage
| people to drive in a safer and more fuel-efficient manner?
|
| For example, overtaking a cyclist regardless of the fact that
| you are already approaching a stop junction should result in a
| fine of at least PS10,000.
|
| Tailgating in a dangerous and aggressive manner, PS50,000.
|
| From everyday observation, this would raise a few billion in no
| time at all and price some very stupid and aggressive people
| off the roads entirely.
| MafellUser wrote:
| You will NEVER catch the perpetrator. Period. Also the cost
| of enforcement will quickly outpace any revenue gained, as
| council's parking enforcements has shown.
|
| Even when caught says on CCTV, there's no guarantee you can
| find and fine the driver. There are over half a million
| uninsured cars on the UK streets at any time. Twice that many
| uninsured drivers. Even getting them to pay for insurance is
| hard enough, how difficult do you think it'd be to get them
| to pay PS10k fine?
| dazc wrote:
| > 'Even getting them to pay for insurance is hard enough,
| how difficult do you think it'd be to get them to pay PS10k
| fine?'
|
| In a lot of cases the fine for having no insurance is lower
| than the insurance would have cost.
|
| In other words, the system is seriously f*d up and needs to
| be changed.
| TimPC wrote:
| Driving without insurance should be a jailable offence
| and needs to be taken far more seriously. You are at risk
| of not having coverage when you cause significant injury
| or death to someone. If a breadwinner for a family is no
| longer able to work, the verdict may be more than you can
| earn in a lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt
| slave. Not having insurance when you can inflict severe
| harm on other people is quite dystopian.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If a breadwinner for a family is no longer able to
| work, the verdict may be more than you can earn in a
| lifetime which makes you into some sort of debt slave.
|
| the bigger issue is the breadwinner's family will go from
| middle class to living in poverty. The types that don't
| pay insurance are not gonna pay court settlement in a
| timely manner.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Database of all cars. All penalties are assigned to the car
| and are to be paid on yearly inspection. If not paid, the
| car isn't allowed on the road.
|
| If the owner of the car let someone else drive it then it's
| their issue to resolve.
|
| We just need political will which isn't there. It's not a
| technical problem to solve.
| gruez wrote:
| This sounds good until you realize it's extremely regressive
| and will cause the average offender to go into a debt spiral.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It doesn't sound good at all, it sounds absolutely
| tyrannical.
| blibble wrote:
| there's a couple of edge cases for odometer based tracking,
| namely private roads and tracks (e.g. racing)
| happyopossum wrote:
| Would you trust a government imposed GPS based tracking
| system to properly account for those edge cases? I sure as
| hell wouldn't.
|
| Also, those aren't exempted under the current gas tax model
| anyway, so why bother?
| blibble wrote:
| I would indeed prefer the odometer based solution to the
| GPS
|
| but it's not perfect
|
| (and you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if
| you have a electric vehicle on private roads / tracks, I
| doubt too many are affected by this though)
| hexo wrote:
| I would prefer freedom and privacy to both "solutions".
| happyopossum wrote:
| > you are currently exempted from the gax tax model if
| you have a electric vehicle on private roads
|
| Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't
| pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.
| blibble wrote:
| > Private roads are irrelevant - electric vehicles don't
| pay gas tax, that's the point of this whole conversation.
|
| uh, yes?
|
| which wouldn't be the case if we switched to a tax based
| on an odometer
|
| that's the point of this whole conversation.
| planede wrote:
| Tracks could be handled by having an official reading when
| entering and leaving the track, then make the difference
| deductible from your "miles tax".
|
| Similar stuff for entering and leaving the country.
|
| Not sure how I would approach private roads.
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's not really an edge case. Everyone drives on paved
| private property (parking lots and the like). A flat 2%
| mileage reduction per year is probably enough to cover this
| for the vast majority of people. So if someone drives 10,000
| miles a year, you'd charge them for 9800 miles with the
| assumption that they drove about 200 miles on private
| property that year.
| smackay wrote:
| The UK Government currently spends around PS11 billion on roads,
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/298667/united-kingdom-uk...
| so the excess is a handy revenue stream which clearly it would
| lothed to give up.
|
| That means the real opportunities with the switch to electrifying
| transportation, like moving freight traffic to rail will not be
| seized as that would entail even more spending. Instead we are
| stuck with the problem that every solution to climate change is
| along the same lines of "just like before but this time with
| electricity".
| arethuza wrote:
| I wonder about council spending on roads and spending by the
| devolved governments - are they included in that total?
| matsemann wrote:
| > _The UK Government currently spends around PS11 billion on
| roads_
|
| How much does it spend on secondary things? At least in Norway,
| I think the number is that even for a normal ICE vehicle and
| all it's costs, you're still not paying what the government
| actually spends in total. With something like $1000 per car or
| so.
|
| Mostly because of secondary effects. Higher hospital costs vs
| what would have happened investing that money on public
| transport, walkable cities etc. Street parking is basically
| free compared to what that land is worth. Cost of accidents.
| Etc. etc.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| > The UK Government currently spends around PS11 billion on
| roads, https://www.statista.com/statistics/298667/united-
| kingdom-uk... so the excess is a handy revenue stream which
| clearly it would lothed to give up.
|
| There's no excess when you account for the effects on climate.
| At some point, we'll have to pay to mitigate the impact of
| fossil-based transportation, and any operators in the industry
| (from oil extraction to road constructions) will be bankrupt
| unless we keep externalizing/socializing the costs and pretend
| climate change is not caused by CO2 emissions.
| srg0 wrote:
| I don't see a problem replacing fuel duty with an energy tax.
| Make it progressive. Let say the first 3000 kWh per year are
| priced at residential rate, apply higher rate above that.
| Households without a car will pay the same price as before. EV
| owners will pay a tax proportional to car usage.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| If we revamp the fuel duty tax, why not introduce a carbon tax
| to pay for the impact of CO2 emissions on climate? This would
| make the fuel duty tax insignificant (the cost of climate
| change is more or less infinite now, given the current trends).
|
| Then, we can rethink the whole system and realize road-based
| transportation with private cars is not sustainable. And then,
| we can forget about fuel duty / energy tax because we have
| whole societies to redesign :)
| srg0 wrote:
| Personally I would support a uniform CO2 tax on everything,
| but I think it's more difficult to introduce and enforce.
| Energy tax + fuel duty can be a CO2 tax in disguise: there
| are already precise tools to measure and bill energy and fuel
| consumption, carbon intensity at any given time is known, and
| energy, heating and transportation are responsible for 73% of
| emissions.
|
| What's left out is harder to monitor and regulate:
| agriculture (livestock, fertilizers, crop burning etc),
| construction and industrial processes, and waste. It may take
| a while before the society accepts that meat is never going
| to be that cheap again.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| 53p (+20% VAT) per litre for a car that uses 7.5 litres per 100km
| is about PS48/1000km.
|
| The average UK mileage has dropped a lot over the years and is
| now just below 7000 miles a year. An odometer duty for that would
| be about PS200, or PS17 a month.
|
| If HMRC bring in PS35bn a year in fuel duty a year for 45m
| drivers (the number of people with active driving licenses)
| that's more like PS700 a head. Why the threefold difference?
| balderdash wrote:
| Trucks/lorries might make up a big chunk of that revenue
| jacobp100 wrote:
| I'd like to see a parking tax. Currently if you go to the
| supermarket, it probably has a car park, which is paid for by all
| customers - including those without cars. Having a minimum cost
| to parking - through VAT or just a minimum fee a company has to
| charge - would make people reconsider their car use
| osrec wrote:
| Perhaps if the UK government more competently spent it's money,
| it wouldn't need to replace the lost revenue.
|
| The NHS track and trace app, which cost around GBP 40 billion, is
| an absolute sham.
|
| I've worked with NHS trusts that are paying GBP 500 for each
| lightbulb replacement in a hospital, GBP 200 for a ream of paper,
| amongst other things.
|
| The UK also rakes a significant amount from national insurance
| and income tax.
|
| You can't just keep on taxing as a way to grease the wheels of an
| inefficient government machine. I bet if someone was to clean up
| the junky contracts that corrupt MPs have lumbered us with, we'd
| comfortably save more than GBP 35 billion a year.
| timthorn wrote:
| Track and trace, including the free covid tests and the staff
| on the phone lines, cost about PS40bn. There is a lot of
| spending inefficiency in government spending, including that
| programme, but to suggest that the app cost that much is
| disingenuous.
| sk8terboi wrote:
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| It's the same issue in France now. Taxes on fuel/petrol brings in
| close to 30Bn euros per year.
|
| The taxes actually make 60% of the price when buying fuel for
| your car. Currently the price of 1L of fuel in France is around
| 2.1 euros. That is 1.2 euros per liter is going straight to the
| government's coffers.
|
| As always, I am expecting the French government to wake up
| sometime around 2030 and realize that the taxes are starting to
| bring in less and less money each year because more and more
| people are switching to EV.
|
| Then there will be a big show from the politicians that the
| situation is dire and we need to make up the fall in revenue by
| reducing the social safety net once again for the lower wage
| earners.
|
| As always the people with the lowest wages will be the one paying
| most taxes in the end. The reason for that being that if they
| can't afford to switch to an EV due to the prohibitive prices,
| then they will be the last ones on the line having to pay heavy
| taxes on petrol while the middle class who can afford it would
| have already switched a while ago.
|
| Ergo we are creating a regressive tax on poor people.
|
| As to where to find the revenue to make up the shortfall, that is
| going to be incredibly tough.
|
| For starters France has been running a deficit forever and the
| debt as ballooned during COVID. Could it continue to do so? That
| seems unlikely because France has pledge to reduce its deficit to
| fall in line with EU regulations so France needs to tighten its
| belt somehow.
|
| At the same time, it needs to increase the EV uptake to meet the
| climate action pledge so it can't start raising taxes on EV. Some
| subsidies may disappear but that is not going to be enough to
| plug the hole left by the fuel taxes.
|
| It also can't raise the VAT which is currently at 20% and is a
| very unpopular measure who will surely lead to an election loss
| for the minority party in power currently.
|
| It can't raise more taxes on the middle class as it's being
| squeezed like a lemon currently and would also lead to mass
| protests(see Yellow Vest protests of 2019 to get an idea of what
| could happen).
|
| Some seem to think that an increase in Ev uptake will lead to
| savings elsewhere, in the healthcare costs for example.
|
| But Those savings will not materialize until at least a few years
| after the transition to full EV has happened. Yes the air may be
| less polluted as the transition happens, but the damage is
| already done and those who suffered or are suffering due to air
| pollution currently will require indefinite ongoing care in the
| future which will be expensive.
| throwawayacc2 wrote:
| A road or car tax doesn't have to go away just because the car is
| electric no? Am I missing something?
|
| As for the fuel tax, why not make up for it with an increase in
| car tax once sufficient adoption is reached? Once 80% of cars are
| electric, the car tax increases by an amount required to make up
| for the average revenue from fuel. At that point, electric cars
| pay just a high car tax and fossil fuel cars pay both the high
| car tax and the fuel duty, further incentiveiseing the switch to
| electric.
|
| Am I missing something? What would be the issues with this
| approach?
| fdsafdsfdsa wrote:
| VED (Vehicle Exercise Duty), as it is currently known, is now
| based on emissions. It would be a hard sell to undo that, and
| base it on something else (like vehicle weight/size/etc). The
| most acceptable way to tax EVs at this point is probably taxing
| at the charging point.
| infogulch wrote:
| Add an additional VED component for road damage, which is
| vehicle miles times the fourth power of axle load.
| fdsafdsfdsa wrote:
| There isn't a way to do that without HGVs (heavy goods
| vehicles) paying practically all of the annual VED.
|
| It's pretty clear that "smart chargers" will become "smart
| tax revenue generators" in the near future.
| WelcomeShorty wrote:
| Same issue here in Switzerland. I am sure this will popup in all
| countries that have stimulated these EVs via tax benefits.
|
| Just bought mine (Audi e-tron) and am happily surprised by all
| the subsidies and rebates, but it is clear that does not scale.
| hedora wrote:
| These sorts of articles have always confused me. This would be a
| great problem to have! If gas usage gas halves then double the
| tax, and so on. Once gas taxes are 10-20x what they are today, we
| can talk about how to find replacement revenue.
|
| Also; the annual ongoing damage Britain is incurring from burning
| fossil fuels is already way above 35 billion pounds. Focusing on
| where the money for those repairs is coming from is probably more
| important.
| tiernano wrote:
| that aint going to work... if the tax doubles, people will
| start to revolt. Taxis, Trucks, Van drivers and anyone who
| either 1) cant afford a new electric car, or 2) cant buy one
| one for one reason or another (distance they travel, stuff they
| carry, etc) are going to be very pissed off. And if more people
| do go an buy electric cars, your still in the same boat...
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| That would make the gas tax a tax on the poor, whom cannot
| afford electric cars
| xxpor wrote:
| The truly poor can't afford a car regardless, especially not
| at 2GBP/L gas prices already.
| IndrekR wrote:
| For the road wear -- tax the tires proportional to the tire
| weight. But that most likely would mean few-fold increase in the
| tire cost and may impair road safety. Easier to add an annual fee
| proportional to the square of fully loaded vehicle mass. Would be
| about PS1k/yr on average. Less for smaller cars, more for larger
| ones.
| pornel wrote:
| I wouldn't mess with the tires. It creates financial incentives
| to compromise on safety by using old tires, avoiding buying
| separate summer/winter tires, may create a black market for
| untaxed tires without quality control, etc.
| asdff wrote:
| Then you can do what was done when these things came up for
| emissions and have tire checks along with your smog checking.
| Tread depth doesn't even need a fancy inspection site. A
| parking officer could easily be checking tread depth while
| they are also looking for double parked cars and out of
| registration tags.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I think it'd be pretty bad to penalize electric cars based on
| weight squared unless fossil fuels are eliminated from
| transportation. Then I agree.
| asdff wrote:
| Why not? Penalize all vehicles based on weight squared.
| People shouldn't be moving to electric cars if they actually
| are concerned about climate change. They should strive to
| replace as many trips as possible with bike commuting and
| letting the car they already own and works fine sit in the
| garage collecting dust, versus willing a new one into
| existence from parts extracted from around the earth and
| perpetuating an autocentric and consumptive lifestyle.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Because then you're effectively subsidizing CO2 emissions
| by penalizing the significantly lower emissions vehicles.
| cptskippy wrote:
| It's not really a penalty. Road repair costs are real and you
| should be paying your share proportional to your usage of the
| road and the amount of damage your vehicle causes.
|
| When ICE are the only game in town, a fuel tax is a simple
| solution because larger more damaging vehicles are generally
| less fuel efficient. The downside is that anyone using fuel
| for non-ICEV usage is unfairly taxed.
|
| Perhaps putting the tax on tires is the solution because tire
| wear tracks to usage and vehicle weight as well? You can
| still have a fuel tax to penalize ICE in addition.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Fuel taxes WERE ALWAYS supposed to be a conservation
| measure and Pigouvian tax on pollution AS WELL AS a use
| tax. So a replacement tax that doesn't have the same effect
| of taxing CO2 emissions is effectively subsidizing CO2
| emissions compared to the status quo.
|
| That seems like a bad idea.
| cptskippy wrote:
| I don't think anyone was suggesting what you're calling a
| bad idea.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| People saying we should replace a fuel tax with a weight
| tax (without a replacement CO2 tax) _are_ suggesting
| that.
| cptskippy wrote:
| You said yourself that were were fuel taxes, so you're
| assuming they're suggesting replacing all of them.
| iso1631 wrote:
| You should make it proportional to the miles driven. Someone
| who does 1,000 miles a year causes far less wear than someone
| doing 30,000 miles a year
|
| That's the crazy thing about vehicle excise duty, if you do
| 1,500 miles a year you might use 300 litres of petrol (about
| PS150 tax), but you could be paying another PS160 in VED,
| making the total tax 20p per mile
|
| Meanwhile someone doing 30,000 miles at the same mpg will be
| paying about 10p per mile
| jsight wrote:
| If implemented properly and adjusted for mileage, this would
| have interesting impacts on both the cost of EVs as well as the
| cost of liquid fuels.
|
| EVs tend to be heavier, so they'd pay more on average.
|
| OTOH, fuel transport trucks are very heavy and fully taxing
| based on the square of fully loaded weight would increase
| transport costs significantly. This would end up getting passed
| on to ICE vehicle users.
|
| This solution works, IMO.
| TheLoafOfBread wrote:
| Big problem with taxing more heavy trucks is that price will
| get moved on customers, which will move it on end users. And
| because almost everything is transported by a truck into
| shops, which will cause hike in prices for goods in shops -
| you are now punishing poor.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| The state I live in charges electric car owners an extra fee when
| registering their cars to make up for the loss of "gas tax"
| revenue.
| matsemann wrote:
| There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for
| polluting, not using the road. I hate that it's being used as an
| argument against cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road
| tax". This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also
| own a car..
|
| Norway have the same issues now. Almost all new cars are
| electric. You don't pay purchase tax / vat when buying it. Pay
| less on toll roads. Cheaper to use. Etc. etc.
|
| Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get the
| infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. Lots of
| budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts from cars
| using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the price.
|
| While they don't emit carbon dioxide, they are just as deadly as
| normal cars. Also pollute more from the tires being heavier. Just
| as noisy. Need the same expensive roads. And as all cars they
| ruin the city.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Which was great to get the initial people to convert, and get
| the infrastructure in place. But now it's time to tax them. "
|
| Maybe in Norway, and _only_ Norway. Every other nation should
| be quadrupling-down on EV incentives. Or 10 fold. Or 20.
| Originami wrote:
| Road tax needs to be morphed into road-usage tax, based on
| time of day, location, axle weight, and distance.
|
| It should be prohibitively expensive to use congested
| freeways and city streets during peak hours, but free at all
| other times.
|
| Road expansion is justified based on peaks of usage - so by
| smoothing out these peaks, we can save significantly on the
| need to build more roads. Trip length can also scale non-
| linearly based on congestion: 10-20% more cars than capacity
| can result in 50% longer trips.
| megablast wrote:
| Why?? EVs aren't good for the environment at all. Why push
| for them??
|
| Why are we continuously subsidising the car industry?
| analog31 wrote:
| >>>> I hate that it's being used as an argument against
| cyclists: "get off the road, you don't pay road tax". This of
| course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own a car.
|
| Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that we
| use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties are
| paid for with property taxes. Income taxes cover a fair amount
| of road construction. The county bike paths have a fee. We're
| not allowed to ride on the Interstates, and we tend to avoid
| "big" roads for safety / comfort reasons.
|
| My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding of
| roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy for
| heavy trucking.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding
| of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy
| for heavy trucking.
|
| Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight,
| assuming similar tire pressures. An F-150 that weighs one and
| a half times what your Mazda 3 weighs, does 5 times the road
| wear.
|
| Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would
| cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road wear?
| Flockster wrote:
| That sounds interesting, do you have some more infos about
| this, how the 4th power comes about? I don't have any
| intuition why it would be that "high". Or some keywords to
| lead my google searches ;)
| brianwawok wrote:
| Start here
|
| https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-
| heavy-...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Study is here
| https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr61g/61g.pdf
|
| But raw data is hard to find
| mateo411 wrote:
| > Road wear grows at the 4th power of vehicular weight,
| assuming similar tire pressures.
|
| That's fascinating, is there an equation for road wear in
| relation to vehicle weight and other factors?
|
| --- EDIT ---
|
| Ten seconds after I posted this, I see somebody else also
| asked this question and there is this link.
|
| https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-
| heavy-...
|
| The fourth power rule, I guess it was empirically measured.
| analog31 wrote:
| Don't worry, I wasn't opposing the subsidy, just calling it
| for what it is. In a sense I'm helping reduce road wear by
| riding a bike. ;)
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| > Would you like to calculate how much those tomatoes would
| cost, if everybody were paying their fair share of road
| wear?
|
| The cost is already there, it's just extracted through
| taxes rather than through increased prices of transported
| goods.
|
| The advantage of shifting maintenance costs over to those
| creating those costs in the first place is that it allows
| the market to properly optimize for those costs. If
| transporting those tomatoes by rail is actually cheaper
| overall once you factor in road maintenance costs, but you
| aren't charging those costs to the trucking companies, then
| they're just going to keep shipping tomatoes by truck even
| though it's less efficient. The invisible hand of the
| market cannot optimize for costs it doesn't know about.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Based on [1] this first result on Google, a truck can carry
| about 300,000 tomatoes. I don't think those tomatoes are
| going to add up very soon. A loaded truck of about 80,000
| pounds (11.5 times the weight) would have 17490 times the
| road impact compared to the same trip driven back home.
| Distributed over 300,000 tomatoes, the cost wouldn't be all
| that much. Despite inefficient engines and truck
| construction, bulk transport is actually very efficient.
| Generally speaking: the bigger the trailer, the better,
| even with the weight increase.
|
| Even better would be using this as an incentive to expand
| and improve the quality of the much more efficient rail
| network (or transport over waterways, where available) to
| improve the entire supply chain. That would require the
| government to act in the interest of its people, though, so
| I don't think we'll see the effects of such a programme too
| soon if it ever makes it.
|
| Every tax-paying citizen is already paying this heavy
| price! Only instead of the damage inefficient transport
| causes to our infrastructure being reflected in our
| everyday expenses, it's hidden from plain sight in taxes.
|
| The only industry I'd expect to see killed by paying for
| road damage would be package delivery vans. They're driving
| long distances with comparatively almost no weight at all
| for the convenience of not needing to go to a centralized
| store to pick up your stuff. With the way Amazon and
| friends have their drivers pee in bottles, I don't see why
| we should subsidize those vans.
|
| [1]: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1999-oct-26-mn-26434...
| wil421 wrote:
| > Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that
| we use. For instance most local roads in cities and counties
| are paid for with property taxes.
|
| Not true for a lot of states. Property tax is not used for
| roads. Georgia pays for roads using gas taxes and road use
| fees like registration (tolls contribute a very small
| amount). Florida is similar but they are much more toll
| heavy. Alabama is similar as too. All 3 states are in the top
| 10 roads in America[1]. I believe Georgia plans to charge
| higher registration fees for EVs at some point.
|
| [1] https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/us-road-
| condition...
| zip1234 wrote:
| Georgia is 3rd in Federal road subsidies:
| https://www.ajc.com/news/feds-transportation-spending/
| Usage/registration fees pay for less of roads than people
| think.
|
| There is also this: https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-
| funding-2019/
| vel0city wrote:
| It really depends on the road in question. I've absolutely
| voted for city bond projects paid for by property taxes
| which paid to redo intersections and sections of roads
| maintained by the city. There are county roads which are
| maintained by the county which gets most of its funding
| from property taxes, sales taxes, and vehicle registration
| taxes. Sure, some funding for some of these projects also
| come from the state's budgets which is often backed by gas
| taxes, some funding is from federal sources often by gas
| taxes, but some of it _does_ come from my property taxes.
|
| Then there are state roads, which are almost entirely
| funded from state and federal (gas) taxes, and federal
| roads which are almost exclusively funded from gas taxes.
|
| On an average day the roads I personally drive on are
| probably _at least_ 50% funded from property and sales
| taxes paid by my neighbors and me. Most of my miles driven
| are almost exclusively on streets managed by my city. For
| my neighbors commuting deeper into the city driving on a US
| highway, its probably closer to 5-10% coming from property
| and sales taxes.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The amount of road funding in the US that comes from gas
| taxes and road fees varies by state between 1/3 to 2/3.
| Georgia is one of the lower and funds 40% of road spending
| from gas taxes, road fees, and tolls (using 2017 numbers.)
| [0]
|
| [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/mapp
| ing-h...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| At the state level, sure, but local roads are paid for by
| local governments using local general taxes, no? A random
| suburban residential street is not usually getting gas tax
| money.
| asdff wrote:
| A random suburban residential street could get away with
| being repaved every 100 years. The ones in my
| neighborhood bear contractor stamps from the 1920s at
| least. A big source of road wear is trucking traffic and
| usually truck routes are along state routes that get
| state gas tax funding for maintenance at least.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| EV fees are already much higher than the state gas tax they
| replace in many places, especially considering the extra
| sales tax on the battery, tax on electricity, and even
| personal property tax on the battery. The idea EVs get a
| free pass is a myth.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > especially considering the extra sales tax on the
| battery, tax on electricity, and even personal property
| tax on the battery.
|
| I don't understand, do you pay an extra tax on the
| battery? Sales & property tax on a $60k car should always
| be the same, regardless of powertrain.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The electric car I drive (LEAF) costs about $12K-15K more
| than the roughly comparable ICE car (Versa). Taking the
| lower estimate, the sales tax difference in my state is
| $750, which is the state gas tax on just over 3100
| gallons or about 100K miles of gasoline purchased for the
| car.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yup, and consider that sales tax applies any time the car
| is sold, and often cars are sold multiple times in their
| lives.
| xur17 wrote:
| I'm guessing the argument is that EV's cost more upfront
| (since they include a battery, etc), but have a lower
| cost of use. Since you get charged sales tax on the
| upfront cost, EV's get charged sales tax on a larger
| percentage of the overall "ownership cost" of the car.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Exactly. With gas cars, you pay for gasoline over time.
| With electric cars, you pay about 50/50 upfront on
| battery & over time on electricity. EV owners are being
| punished for paying for part of the "fuel" costs upfront.
| For whatever reason, capital costs for consumers are
| penalized with taxes more than incremental operating
| costs.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I mean, we don't charge lower gas taxes to luxury cars
| because they pay more upfront, so I don't know why this
| is now an expectation for EVs. And we've never had flat
| taxes for sales; gas is actually the only exception in
| the US I'm aware of, but that's probably because of the
| price volatility of gas making a percentage tax hard to
| budget for.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > For whatever reason, capital costs for consumers are
| penalized with taxes more than incremental operating
| costs.
|
| How so? Is the gas tax lower than the purchase taxes?
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Yes, plus personal property tax. If I own the car for 8
| years before selling it and the battery is about $10,000
| In value and the sales tax rate is 6% or so, the tax I'm
| paying is already equal to the gas tax I already
| typically would pay driving a 30mpg the average number of
| miles per year in a typical state. And some localities
| have personal property taxes, and that $10,000 battery
| often puts the car in a higher bracket, so you end up
| paying a 4% personal property tax EVERY YEAR on the
| battery, which is about 5 times what state gas tax would
| be.
|
| And keep in mind many states already charge EV owners a
| high registration fee that more than makes up for the
| lack of state gas taxes. So sales tax plus personal
| property tax plus EV registration fee... you're already
| paying nearly an order of magnitude more than the typical
| consumer pays state gas tax.
|
| It's a pretty stupid idea to charge far more taxes for
| far lower emissions vehicles if you think climate change
| is real. Regardless of your rationale about use taxes or
| whatever. It's just stupid.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| > Indeed, here in the states, cyclists pay for the roads that
| we use.
|
| This isn't true where I live. Taxes on gasoline purchases pay
| for the roads.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Gas taxes are a small portion of road costs, and are only
| for state roads. Cities generally don't receive road
| subsidies from the state. Cyclists drive on city roads, and
| city roads are generally paid for with property taxes or
| local sales taxes (if your city has them). And cyclists
| cause zero damage to roads, unlike cars or trucks
|
| Really, cyclists are getting shafted because they have to
| pay for so many roads they can't use.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Some motorists seem to forget that cyclists don't need a 30m
| wide, 40cm thick, heavily reinforced highway with stabilized
| foundation that has to be revised every year to account for
| the damage caused by heavy vehicles.
|
| The costs of a cycling path that support the same flow of
| people is negligible compared to that of a corresponding
| highway.
| ars wrote:
| > The costs of a cycling path that support the same flow of
| people is negligible compared to that of a corresponding
| highway.
|
| That's not true The ground pressure of a bicycle is higher
| than the ground pressure of a car.
|
| Some bike tire pressures exceed 100 psi. Only the largest
| trucks have ground pressures that high. A typical passenger
| vehicle has a pressure of around 36 psi.
|
| The ground pressure of someone in heels is even higher than
| that. There's a reason sidewalks are made of cement while
| roads can be made of cheaper asphalt.
| asdff wrote:
| No one ever says "why don't we charge pedestrians fees for
| sidewalks," for good reason. Bike infrastructure should be
| thought of as the same way. A paved bike path is going to
| be like a sidewalk: it will last as long as the elements
| permit it no matter the amount of usage it sees. Versus a
| road used for vehicular traffic that is heavy enough to
| degrade the road, that sort of usage makes a lot more sense
| to tax.
| ars wrote:
| That isn't true. Pedestrians put more pressure on the
| ground than cars do. Google it if you don't believe me.
|
| The reason sidewalks last so long is they're made of
| cement rather than asphalt. If you made roads out of
| cement they would last just as long if not longer.
|
| And the reason they make sidewalls out of cement is they
| have to. If they made then out of asphalt they would
| decay very quickly.
| makomk wrote:
| The thick, heavily reinforced roads with stabilized
| foundations generally have much nicer surfaces to cycle on
| than narrow cycle paths though, at least around here.
| Probably because a lot of the deterioration is caused by
| weather rather than traffic and the cost reduction is
| mostly through having lower standards and accepting more
| deterioration.
| imtringued wrote:
| No they don't, cyclists prefer concrete bike paths which
| both last longer and have a smoother surface.
| ehnto wrote:
| I'd take a rough separated cycle path over a shared car
| road any day.
| timellis-smith wrote:
| Depending on what type of bike you have. On a mountain
| bike, anyday. On a road bike with paper thin tyres that
| easily puncture, maybe not so much.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Road bikes aren't really designed for being in traffic in
| the first place so that places some of the downsides of
| that on the user. I've used one for many years, so don't
| get me wrong, I _love_ riding one but it is abundantly
| clear to me that when my bike tires fits into the slots
| of a drain that that is _my_ problem and not the problem
| of whoever designs and maintains the road.
|
| In many places a road bike isn't actually street legal
| (no bell, no fenders, no lights, of course you could add
| those).
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| It sounds peculiar that some places would have
| requirements for bells and fenders in order for a bike to
| be "street legal"; this strikes me as more of a quaint
| historical holdover than anything else. Some cyclists
| might be more comfortable with ringing their bell a than
| raising their voice if they need to urgently signal the
| attention of another road user, but a requirement for a
| bell on any bike is mystifying to me. Likewise fenders;
| cycling on wet roads can cause dirty water to be sprayed
| onto a vehicle that is driving close behind a cyclist,
| but people don't tend to cycle on road bikes in wet
| weather in the first place (unless their bike has been
| adapted), and people should maintain a safe stopping
| distance, especially in wet conditions. But the use of
| lights when cycling at night is a perfectly reasonable
| legal requirement (more or less universal in my
| experience), and perfectly effective temporary lights can
| be easily attached to road bikes if necessary.
| asdff wrote:
| Just put some good tires on your road bike and you wont
| deal with flats. I have used gatorskins which have always
| been indestructable, tubes last for years and are only
| replaced when I put new tires on the bike. I'm moving to
| the continental gp5k for the next set because apparently
| the puncture resistance is good enough these days in
| those more standard road bike tires. Unless you manage to
| hit an upright nail you shouldn't worry too much.
| ehnto wrote:
| Definitely concur, for commuting I ride a pretty wide
| tire for that reason. I've actually really enjoyed cross-
| bikes for city commuting, since they're designed for a
| bit more of a pliable ride and more comfort while still
| running pretty fast overall.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Usually the concern is getting hit by car traffic.
|
| At least in the US, drivers don't drive well around
| cyclists, and sometimes that's intentional to boot.
| Better to not share the road with people who are actively
| trying to hurt you with a metal object weighing several
| thousand pounds.
| analog31 wrote:
| Bikes are a lot less delicate than people seem to think.
| My daily driver has road bike rims and tires. They're
| quite durable. The region has some bike paths that are
| crushed limestone on hard clay, and sometimes I find
| myself on gravel roads, off-road shortcuts, or even
| "easy" mountain bike trails.
|
| The main issue is comfort. Riding rough roads on hard
| tires gets old after a while. Also, real MTB'ing, where
| the trails are _designed_ to be challenging, is its own
| beast.
|
| I also prefer avoiding car traffic if possible.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >My hunch is that if one were to look closely at the funding
| of roads, one would find that they represent a net subsidy
| for heavy trucking.
|
| Which is itself a net subsidy for all sorts of other economic
| activity.
|
| It's subsidies all the way down.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Indeed - if heavy trucking is subsidised then eventually
| the prices you're paying for something are lower.
| pif wrote:
| > There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it? It's a fee for
| polluting, not using the road.
|
| It is not what you call it, but what you spend it on.
| youngtaff wrote:
| And it's part of general taxation...
|
| Roads are funded partly out of local taxes, and partly out of
| general taxes - there's no hypothecation of 'road tax' paying
| for roads
| belorn wrote:
| bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax based
| on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is minimal
| compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if the wear and
| tear is so small that it can't even be measured.
|
| But I could be wrong. It would be interesting to hear if heavy
| bike/pedestrian roads have higher road maintenance than those
| that are used lightly. My guess would be that the major wear
| and tear comes from nature, water in particular, which mean
| wear and tear isn't based on usage.
|
| When it come to tire pollution those would be better taxed on
| the tires themselves. Bike tires tend to be much much smaller
| than cars so the taxation wouldn't be that big of a deal to
| cyclists.
| pydry wrote:
| There is no road tax, only vehicle excise duty which
| bicyclists dont pay. It goes straight into the treasury so
| it's not even really "used" per se it's just a way of
| exerting downward pressure on inflation (which is how it
| should be, IMHO).
| tomgp wrote:
| thats a strangely abstract way of looking at it. i think of
| it as a way to capture some of the externalities of car
| use, the environmental, social and public health damage.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The obvious way to do that is via the fuel tax, where the
| more you pay the more you use.
|
| The reality is probably that it's not that well coupled
| to any cause, and really it's just a way to farm money
| from the majority of the country, who need to use motor
| transport to live their lives. The advertised political
| reason will change depending on the concerns of the
| populace at the time.
| tzs wrote:
| > bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax
| based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is
| minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if
| the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured.
|
| That is the case, which came as a surprise to me.
|
| For things like the road bed, where the force from the
| surface is going to be spread out more, I'd expect the car to
| do more damage because total weight would be all that
| mattered.
|
| But for damage at or near the road surface I'd have expected
| bikes to do more.
|
| My reasoning was simple: although cars weigh a lot more they
| are spreading that weight over a larger contact area.
|
| My car for example has four tires each at a pressure of 32
| PSI. My bike, before I replaced the tires with wider tires,
| had two tires each at 110 PSI. Any given small patch of road
| I drive or ride over would only get about 29% as much force
| on it from the car as it would from the bike at any given
| time a tire is on that patch of road.
|
| It would get that force for more time from the car than from
| the bike if the car is going less than ~3.4 times the speed
| of the bike and for less time if the car is going faster than
| that, and more different small patches of road would get
| force from the car than would get force from the bike.
|
| This is similar to why if I were to put a flat metal plate on
| my chest and set a bowling ball on top it would not hurt, but
| if I were to set hold a dagger against my chest and set a
| bowling ball on top it would likely hurt a lot.
|
| But something is wrong with my reasoning, and it turns out
| that road damage goes as something like the fourth power of
| the vehicles axel weight. Whether the tires are narrow high
| pressure tires or wide low pressure tires, from what I've
| read, is not relevant.
|
| I'm not sure if that is because I was just wrong about top
| layer damage, or if it is just that lower level damage is
| just much more important and expensive, so any difference in
| top layer damage due to tire size is lost in the noise.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| > Any given small patch of road I drive or ride over would
| only get about 29% as much force on it from the car as it
| would from the bike at any given time a tire is on that
| patch of road.
|
| ...
|
| > This is similar to why if I were to put a flat metal
| plate on my chest and set a bowling ball on top it would
| not hurt, but if I were to set hold a dagger against my
| chest and set a bowling ball on top it would likely hurt a
| lot.
|
| This is because your chest is weak and soft in comparison
| to the incompressible metal plate or dagger blade, which is
| not analogous to the situation on the road. A better
| analogy would be poking yourself with the tip of an al
| dente noodle compared to the load transmitted by a large,
| spongy slice of bread. Neither is going to hurt you in any
| way.
|
| Whether your tire is transmitting 110 psi or 32 psi doesn't
| matter much because the compressive strength of Portland
| cement concrete is ~4000 PSI and the compressive strength
| of bituminous pavement is ~500 PSI.
|
| However, soil bearing loads are on the order of 15-50 psi
| under constant loading, and can act as a spring or can
| yield at much lower transitory loads. The dirt beneath the
| pavement (or rather, the dirt beneath the gravel beneath
| the pavement) gives easily, so instead of asking the
| concrete to survive the compression forces caused by the
| contact patch, you're asking it to form a beam/plate that
| spreads the loads over a broad area, and asking that beam
| to resist deflection rather than crushing. The real damage,
| and the reason that damage scales with the fourth power of
| axle loading, is caused when a large truck rolls over the
| road, the ground shakes, and the roadbed flexes down into
| the soil under the axle and back up after it passes.
|
| Try to imagine riding your road bike over a piece of
| cardboard laid on the sand. That wrinkling and creasing is
| much closer to actual road wear patterns than a dagger
| cutting your chest.
| vel0city wrote:
| Sure, the contact patch is a good bit smaller on a bike
| than a car, but people don't usually weigh 5,000lbs.
|
| I'd much rather get run over by average person on a bicycle
| than get run over by a car.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That's because you aren't a smooth surface :) Because of
| your shape (and I admit I'm making an assumption here)
| you will experience pressure spikes due to the fact that
| different bits of you stick out. E.g. knees due to their
| shape will experience much higher pressure. A road won't
| do that.
| kingaillas wrote:
| >My car for example has four tires each at a pressure of 32
| PSI.
|
| The air pressure of your car/bike tires doesn't matter -
| all tires could be flat. Try comparing (vehicle weight +
| your weight) / (vehicle contact surface area) where vehicle
| is either your car or your bike.
| ars wrote:
| When the tire is flat it is being supported by the
| sidewalls and by the wheel.
|
| And if you notice the contact patch of a flat tire is
| much larger.
|
| The ground pressure of any vehicle is almost exactly
| equal to the psi. With the exception of force carried by
| the sidewalls.
| tzs wrote:
| For tires that support the vehicle via air pressure in
| the tires, contact area is roughly weight supported by
| tire / air pressure in tire [1].
|
| [1] http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211_fall2013.web.dir/conn
| or_matt...
| bagels wrote:
| This analysis based on tire pressure seems faulty. If you
| place your hand on a bike tire, you do not experience
| thousands of pounds of force.
|
| To estimate the pressure exerted on the road, you want to
| compare vehicle system weight/tire contact area. Velocity
| also plays a role.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Having lived in New York with really high rates of
| pedestrians, sidewalks are never being replaced from normal
| wear and tear from use.
|
| Usually it's
|
| * retrofitting for ADA compliance
|
| * fixing heaving from freeze-thaw
|
| * fixing heaving from the root systems of trees in street
| planters
| lol768 wrote:
| > bicycle and pedestrians could be exempted from a road tax
| based on fairly simple assumption: the wear and tear is
| minimal compared to a car. It wouldn't even surprise me if
| the wear and tear is so small that it can't even be measured.
|
| Isn't car wear and tear minimal to HGV wear and tear?
| cogman10 wrote:
| Yup.
|
| Though cars still put out a fair bit more pollution from
| tire wear than bicycles do.
| dahfizz wrote:
| It also depends highly on your local weather, I imagine.
| I'm willing to bet that a harsh winter does more road
| damage than all traffic combined.
| 7952 wrote:
| I think road wear is axle weight to the fourth power. So
| lorries are massively more damaging than cars. And cars are
| massively more damaging than bikes. Anecdotally the issue
| with bike and pedestrian paths is intruding vegetation which
| slowly narrows the width.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's not just a matter of "massively more" -- with those
| numbers the damage from anything other than large
| commercial vehicles is a rounding error which, if accounted
| for proportionally, would cost more money to collect than
| the amount collected.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| It's the fourth power of axle load according to the AAHSO
| report (https://camdencyclists.org.uk/2020/06/the-fourth-
| power-rule-...)
|
| A 30-ton 5-axle HGV would be 6 tons per axle, a BMW
| 7-Series would be 1 ton per axle, and a heavy cyclist on
| a heavy bicycle would work out to around 0.05 tons per
| axle, so while a car might cause ~1/1000th of the wear of
| a heavy truck, a bicycle would cause less than 1/100000th
| of the wear that is caused by a car, and that's before
| you consider the wear that's caused according to the
| speed that a vehicle is traveling (it is roughly linear).
| So while it might conceivably be possible to tax
| motorists according to the level of damage that they
| cause to roads (with trucks paying far more than they do
| now, and with revenues not exceeding the costs of
| collection), it certainly wouldn't be possible to tax
| cyclists.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The point is that it's not worth doing even for cars. If
| the toll for the truck was $50, the proportional toll for
| the car would be one half of one cent.
| belorn wrote:
| Dealing with government and taxes there is one additional
| factor to consider. The government can give tax cuts to
| targeted groups if they consider it beneficial to
| society.
|
| So let say the truck has a $5000 tax to pay for yearly
| wear and tear on roads, but they also get a $5000 tax cut
| to reduce costs in the transportation sector. That will
| leave cars to still pay their road tax, even if in
| comparison they would be a tiny portion of the total road
| tax.
| brippalcharrid wrote:
| On the other hand, trucks are often speed-restricted and
| the tax might need to be on the order of $50k for a
| 60-foot truck (which would still equate to around $50 for
| a car). The costs would be passed down to all of the
| things that trucks are used for, so I suppose the average
| person wouldn't really pay any less for combined
| transport+groceries+fuel+household goods, but it might
| incentivize the use of smaller trucks with lighter axle
| loads, but that would also mean more drivers/poorer fuel
| efficiency/more accidents per ton per mile. At the least
| we should be mindful of the way that motorists are
| providing a subsidy to the logistics industry (which we
| indirectly benefit from, as well).
| diordiderot wrote:
| I'd rather pay costs where they're owed personally
| pengaru wrote:
| Except not all roads are built to handle heavier
| vehicles, such roads experience significant wear from
| common weight automobiles. I don't think the cost of
| maintenance for such roads is a rounding error.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Most roads _are_ built to handle heavier vehicles and the
| few exceptions rarely if ever see enough traffic to
| result in maintenance costs not dominated by nature and
| weather.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > I hate that it's being used as an argument against cyclists:
| "get off the road, you don't pay road tax".
|
| It's really more that many cyclists are in the way and aren't
| going the speed limit. You end up holding up a lot of traffic
| that is forced to go slower and that's annoying to everyone. to
| be frank, when you're driving a car a person on a bike taking
| up the entire road is annoying. This is why people really
| dislike bikes - they get in the way of people trying to get
| somewhere.
| yohannparis wrote:
| > many cyclists [...] aren't going the speed limit.
|
| It's a speed upper limit, not a minimum. Are you upset when
| an agricole machine is using the public roads?
|
| This "annoyance" against people not travelling at the speed
| limit on public roads is based on a lack of time management
| and the expectation that the road is empty. This is a selfish
| point of view.
|
| When I want to control my travelling time, I walk or cycle.
| When I want comfort, I use public transportation or my car.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It's a speed upper limit, not a minimum. Are you upset
| when an agricole machine is using the public roads?
|
| This is an infantile way of framing it. 99.9999% of road
| users (all types) DGAF what you do as long as you meed
| expectations for your type of traffic.
|
| Pretty much nobody gets angry at slower traffic (tractors,
| cyclists, commercial vehicles) so long as it is meeting
| their expectations for what it is. If you drive a normal
| car and try and act like something slower don't be
| surprised when it pisses people off. Likewise if you cycle
| or have to operate heavy machinery on road and try and act
| like a car outside of some narrow circumstances don't be
| surprised when it pisses people off.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Are you upset when an agricole machine is using the
| public roads?
|
| Nope.
|
| 1) Any tractor I've been behind on a public road will pull
| over to let traffic pass by when possible.
|
| 2) Tractors obey all traffic lights and laws and behave
| predictably.
|
| 3) I've never seen a tractor driver act aggressively
| towards a car.
| yohannparis wrote:
| 1) Cyclist are on the right side of the road (not against
| the ditch/gutter/curb...), and easy to see past them to
| know if you can safely pass them.
|
| 2) Most cyclist do, some do not, same as drivers 3) Same
| as 2), and cyclist can be aggressive when your life is at
| stake. I think drivers mostly forget they are in charge
| of a dangerous machine.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Cyclists are are smaller and easier to pass than
| tractors. Cyclists are better than obeying traffic laws
| than drivers. Multiple police surveys confirm it. Finally
| cyclists are subject of so much abuse and straight up
| murder attempts on the road that it's reasonable to
| expect them "acting aggressively towards a car". I mean
| if you come swinging a heavy object next to me I may lose
| my cool as well.
| prmoustache wrote:
| But then you look at the average speed of cars and you
| realize that in most urban area it is roughly the same as the
| cyclists.
|
| How many stupid motorists kept screaming their engine when I
| was commuting just to pass me then come to a screetching halt
| behind other cars at the next traffic light while I just pass
| them back to the front of the line.
| _vertigo wrote:
| As a cyclist, I am also trying to get somewhere, and I don't
| enjoy being on the road with motorists either.
|
| Based on your comment, I have to assume we live in different
| areas. I live in the city, and generally it is better and
| faster to bike because one can bike almost as fast as a car
| due to not needing to wait for traffic and there's no need to
| find parking at the destination. From my POV, the motorists I
| have to share the road with are driving on low throughput
| streets and generally don't belong on the streets I am
| traveling down.
|
| Do you live out in the country with 2 lane roads? A small
| town?
| nemo44x wrote:
| I take the subway when in the city or a taxi if it's
| faster. People on bikes get hit all the time and police
| investigations nearly always find the bike rider at fault.
|
| The town I'm in outside the city is not a small town.
| There's very little that's more annoying than a group of
| spandex clad Tour de France wannabes taking up the entire
| road so they can cosplay.
| ehnto wrote:
| That's a nasty bias you have. Cyclists are clearly also
| "people trying to get somewhere". I'd argue they're trying
| harder than you are.
|
| I won't defend all cyclists, some of them have bad etiquette
| for sure. I certainly don't have traffic piled up behind me.
| But I'd argue they've inconvenienced you far less than your
| car infrastructure has inconvenienced them. I promise if they
| had a separated fast bike lane to use, they'd be using that
| instead of getting blasted by cars and trucks and dealing
| with people angry they're late for their next stoplight.
|
| If you want cyclists off your road, then you should be
| lobbying for better cycling infrastructure.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The cyclists in the US I see in a suburban area are almost
| all doing it for exercise (pretty obvious from the getup),
| not to get somewhere.
|
| In a more downtown area it's obviously different.
|
| >dealing with people angry they're late for their next
| stoplight.
|
| Sounds like you have some nasty bias yourself.
| matsemann wrote:
| And why are people driving? Is their goal so much holier
| than whatever reason the bicyclist is out biking?
|
| Don't live your life thinking everything revolves around
| you.
| ecnahc515 wrote:
| > The cyclists in the US I see in a suburban area are
| almost all doing it for exercise (pretty obvious from the
| getup), not to get somewhere.
|
| That might change if there was more dedicated bike lanes.
| yohannparis wrote:
| Few people cyclists in the U.S.A. suburs are cycling for
| transport instead of sport... because of the
| infrastructure. Only mad cyclists dare their life for it!
|
| The danger while cycling is not the bike or falling down,
| it's the motorized users.
| tomgp wrote:
| leaving aside the fact that the speed limit is an upper bound
| on speed not mandatory... on my bike i'm more regularly held
| up by cars (often a single occupant) than i am by cyclists
| when driving my car. but overwhelmingly its cars holding up
| other cars.
| techterrier wrote:
| hell hath no fury like a mildly inconvenienced motorist
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| > This of course also ignores that most adult cyclists also own
| a car.
|
| What does owning a car have to do with it? If you own two cars,
| or a car and a scooter, you still have to pay taxes for both to
| be on the road, don't you?
|
| EDIT: I forgot to mention, where I live taxes aren't collected
| as a "fee for polluting." They're to keep roads maintained and
| improve them. This often includes special bike lanes that
| bicyclists do nothing to pay for.
| matsemann wrote:
| That's my point, though. When I'm on a bike and someone
| shouts at me to get off the road because I don't pay for it
| and they do, they are _wrong_. I pay the same as they do, I
| just choose to use my bike every day to commute.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| It's a vehicle tax.
|
| It's depending on emissions at the moment as a way to encourage
| vehicles with low/no emissions but there is no reason for EV to
| keep being exempt.
|
| The issue in term of tax revenue is fuel duty and VAT on fuel.
| I'm suspecting that once transition is advanced enough they'll
| find ways to add tax on charging points/electricity used for
| charging, or an actual road tax on mileage or whatnot.
| ehnto wrote:
| In Australia and I imagine the UK, infrastructure is paid for
| by the municipalities from their own budgets, a portion of
| which is granted to them from the federal government. Larger
| projects are usually taken on by the state. These budgets come
| out of general tax revenue, which is paid by everyone via GST
| and income tax. So cyclists absolutely pay, and in many many
| cases, they're paying to build infrastructure they don't even
| use. The unfair burden usually goes toward the cyclist, who's
| historically been shortchanged on infrastructure for cycling.
|
| Registration goes toward running the registration apparatus,
| not into infrastructure. That's another misconception. The
| other contribution is from fuel sales taxes/excises, and that
| goes into general tax revenue as well, so is not explicitly set
| aside for road projects. Negating the potential income from
| fuel sales taxes, is all the fossil fuel subsidies, what once
| was 15bil income, after subsidies of 12bil, is now just
| 3billion in income from fuel taxes. So the money comes in from
| the consumer, and goes straight out to the fossil fuel industry
| through industry fuel tax credits. Absolutely bullshit, but it
| also means there's not much left of that fuel tax income to pay
| for infrastructure.
|
| https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...
| .
|
| Ultimately a cyclist will pay the same amount of tax, minus the
| fuel taxes, and get just a scrap of that tax spent back on
| cycling.
| josefresco wrote:
| > Lots of budgets are now off because they estimated X amounts
| from cars using toll roads, but half of them don't pay the
| price.
|
| Citation needed.
| matsemann wrote:
| Income from toll roads in Oslo was 1 billion NOK lower per
| year than budgeted, after the electric car boom and their
| free/subsidized passing.
|
| https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/vil-fjerne-
| bompengerabatten-f...
|
| That alone almost collapsed the whole Oslo city government,
| actually. As they had to negotiate with the national
| government and neighbor districts on how various
| infrastructure projects could be finished.
|
| Was _quite_ a big deal this spring.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| The "pollute more from the tires being heavier" is a myth, by
| the way. There was an article that circulated claiming this,
| but they never actually measured the tire pollution of electric
| cars, just extrapolated from ICE cars with really terrible and
| ultimately false arguments. Electric cars tend to use low
| rolling resistance tires (potentially less wear... if you're
| experiencing less rolling resistance, that means less energy
| ends up being used to produce wear, so less wear occurs... in
| part due to geometric effects and partly due to composition of
| the tires). Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb
| weight due to massive weight reductions elsewhere, plus
| improved traction control (and the more gentle regenerative
| braking) means less wheel slippage and wear. And it assumes ICE
| cars are operating at full emissions-control mode which is also
| untrue especially on startup or in cold weather or if using
| diesel. It also assumes tire wear mass is all minute particles
| of the same problematic effects of ICE exhaust particles, which
| is a bad assumption for multiple reasons (for one, it ignores
| empirical measurements of particle sizes), and it ignores
| gaseous emissions entirely in the calculation, many of which
| are very problematic like carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides of
| various types, components of gasoline such as benzene and
| xylene and toluene, ozone (a major component of smog), etc. It
| also ignores the near absence of break wear in electric cars,
| thus the absence of silica dust (or iron oxide dust, or
| whatever the brakes and the rotors are made of, etc).
|
| In short, it is misinformation.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Electric cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due
| to massive weight reductions elsewhere,
|
| Seriously, this meme needs to die. A Tesla model 3 is the
| same weight as a BMW 340, and the model 3 is hundreds of
| pounds _lighter_ than an SUV like the BMW X3.
|
| Batteries are heavy, but so are gas engines & transmissions.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > A Tesla model 3 is the same weight as a BMW 340
|
| Sure, but its also 500-1200lbs heavier than a Civic
| depending on the trims of each which has very similar
| utility to an M3 and is much closer in TCO to a model 3
| than a 340 or an X3 is.
|
| We shouldn't be having our cake and eating it too by saying
| "electric cars are more expensive but the TCO so much lower
| than ICE that its worth it" and then make comparisons to
| ICE vehicles at the MSRP of the EV.
| dahfizz wrote:
| The point is that ICE cars and electric cars are
| comparable in weight. There are some ICE cars lighter
| than an electric car, and some ICE cars heavier than an
| electric car. Some of that is just due to the fact that
| electric cars are new, and haven't moved into the "ultra
| light sporty car" segment with the civic or Miata.
|
| The point is you don't see a BMW go down the road and
| freak out about how heavy it is. But there is this meme
| in everyone's mind that EV's tire polution is much much
| worse than ICE because EVs are much much heavier. They
| aren't.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > The point is that ICE cars and electric cars are
| comparable in weight.
|
| My point is that this just isn't true in the general
| sense. I didn't choose the Civic because its an "ultra
| light sporty car" I chose it because it's in a very
| similar class of car to the model 3 and moves a lot of
| units, but you could look at the Camry, Corolla, Accord,
| or Altima and see that the heaviest trims of all 5
| (including hybrids) all weigh less than the lightest
| model 3 currently available.
|
| Those 5 cars cover every sedan on the top 25 sales list
| other than the Model 3. I'm sure there are tons of luxury
| sedans that weigh more than the Model 3, but their total
| number of units is much smaller than any of the 6 cars
| we're talking about and their TCO is massively higher as
| well. So if you weigh the average comparable vehicle on
| the road the Model 3 will weigh more, and the Model 3 is
| one of the lightest 250+ mile EVs! the Polestar 2 weighs
| 4400 lbs!
|
| FWIW I agree that the tire pollution thing is a silly
| aspect to focus on when comparing EVs and ICE, especially
| considering a lot of people who believe the lie that it
| makes EVs worse overall are probably driving a mall
| crawler or bro-dozer that weighs 5000+ lbs.
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/527966/electric-cars-from-
| heavies...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| It's comparing to a similar performance ICE vehicle.
| Model 3 is much higher performance than the civic, more
| comparable to the BMW.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Sure, and the Civic Type-R has a 0.8 second faster 0-60
| than an SR+ M3 while weighing 550 lbs less and beats the
| Model 3 Performance at Nurburgring by over a minute while
| weighing over 1000 lbs less. All while having a $10k-20k
| lower MSRP. the Type-R is only 15 seconds behind a model
| S plaid at nurburgring which is more than 50% heavier.
|
| But beyond that, if the only thing you ever try to
| compare is 0-60 performance then EVs always have an upper
| hand because it is one of their primary strengths, and
| that's great! But cars are much, much more than their
| 0-60 (as evidenced by a fwd car with a 5.0s trouncing an
| awd car with 3.1s on the track) and for many people TCO,
| utility, creature comforts, reliability, etc. are more
| important comparisons.
| google234123 wrote:
| > All while having a $10k-20k lower MSRP
|
| Civic Type-R is a 40k car, just like the model 3 and it
| probably has high markups above the MSRP on average.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| The cheapest model 3 on Tesla's website right now is $47k
| MSRP, the 2021 Type-R MSRP was $38k (there is no 2022)
| and the Performance Model 3 is $63k.
|
| So my bad its $9k-$25k MSRP, not that the minutiae of
| pricing is that important for this comparison. It was
| just to note that Honda isn't winning on weight by
| spending a fortune on materials or manufacturing like if
| I had compared the Model 3 to some supercar.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Performance isn't relevant.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It should be noted that weight has been dropping YoY and
| is expected to drop further when M3 gets a structural
| battery pack. Those drop the weight not only because
| there's now no longer a structure the battery is bolted
| to, it is the structure, but also because the weight drop
| lowers the batteries needed to get comparable range
| (further reducing weight).
|
| Model Y is the first tesla vehicle with a structural
| pack.
|
| I expect that other EV manufactures will eventually
| follow suit. Why wouldn't they? Less batteries and
| materials is a win win.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Unfortunately most of the benefits of structural battery
| packs haven't materialized yet based on the stats Tesla
| submitted to the EPA. The Austin Model Y is 25 lbs
| lighter but has 14kWh less capacity and 51 fewer miles of
| range. Part of this is probably the battery chemistry
| being used in the current 4680 cells and as the chemistry
| improves they may catch back up in range to the non-
| structural 2170 packs but they have a really really long
| way to go before they get to the range increase and
| weight decrease they promised at battery day. That or
| some aspect of the EPA numbers are massively wrong but I
| feel like we would have heard from Elon about that by
| now.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/u1926z/conf
| irm...
| Robotbeat wrote:
| They're going with cheaper (but safer and longer lasting)
| 100% Cobalt and Nickel-free LFP cells, right? That could
| explain it.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| > Electric cars tend to use low rolling resistance tires
| (potentially less wear... if you're experiencing less rolling
| resistance, that means less energy ends up being used to
| produce wear, so less wear occurs... in part due to geometric
| effects and partly due to composition of the tires). Electric
| cars are also fairly comparable in curb weight due to massive
| weight reductions elsewhere, plus improved traction control
| (and the more gentle regenerative braking) means less wheel
| slippage and wear.
|
| Do we need to go this deep into our analysis? I would think
| ((pi*radius^2)-(pi*(radius-tread_depth)^2))*width/miles would
| tell us pretty much everything we need to know about _tire_
| emissions, and most EV owners in my experience will
| acknowledge spending much more on tires for the same # of
| miles or spending the same for a good bit less # of miles. I
| 'm not sure what the dimensional differences are on your
| average EV tire purchase versus your average ICE tire
| purchase, but if we look at model 3 base tires vs civic
| touring tires (biggest stock civic tire sold):
|
| M3: 235/45R18 10/32 (Primacy MXM4)
|
| Civic: 235/40R18 9/32 (Eagle Sport A/S)
|
| so at least as far as stock tires M3 should have more total
| tread than a similarly sized/similar TCO vehicle given the
| larger aspect ratio and deeper tread depth. Unfortunately I
| can't find any non-anecdotal data on how many miles they
| would each get.
|
| Of course I agree with pretty much everything you said but I
| do think tires are an important conversation to have around
| EVs, particularly when prices come down and budget conscious
| buyers start putting cheap, loud, fast wearing tires on their
| EVs.
| bagels wrote:
| I don't think torque, tire compound and driving habits can
| be ignored in a serious analysis.
|
| Also, cheap tires tend to have harder, longer lasting
| compounds.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| I was including all three of those in the "per mile"
| piece of the equation since we are looking at products in
| aggregate. If EVs generally cause people to accelerate
| harder than if they bought an equivalent ICE then that
| would be reflected in the reduced tire life and if chosen
| tire compound decreases wear then that would be reflected
| as well.
|
| That said tire compound could be more or less dense or
| have more or less of an effect on the environment per
| unit so that wouldn't be captured, and low torque EVs
| would most likely have less wear/mile so the
| categorization of just EV vs ICE might be too broad.
| DrBazza wrote:
| > There is no "road tax" in the UK, is it?
|
| Vehicle Excise Duty since 1920 -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_Excise_Duty
|
| Road _funding_ in the UK is just from the general pot of tax
| money.
|
| There are a lot of anti-cyclist types in the UK that always
| incorrectly (or ironically, correctly) claim that cyclists
| don't pay road tax (no one does) and therefore shouldn't use
| the road, even though just about every cyclist is an adult that
| pays UK tax.
|
| I certainly expect the UK, and every other country to tax EVs
| by mileage within a decade, and additionally toll charge on
| major routes, almost certainly via cameras (to also fine you
| for speeding), or require all cars to have a GPS blackbox
| (which let's face it, isn't expensive now).
| chrisco255 wrote:
| The point of road taxes is to pay for maintenance and
| expansion. Roads break down over time if you do not maintain
| them.
| techterrier wrote:
| this is paid out of local taxation. Which is why pedestrians,
| cylists, equestrians, tractors, cows and ducks are allowed to
| used the road.
|
| There is no such thing as road tax.
| [deleted]
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Dunno how it works in UK, but in US, there are local roads,
| state roads, and federal roads. There are also local,
| state, and federal gas taxes that vary by jurisdiction. The
| funds from these gas taxes are used to finance new highway
| and roadway construction and maintenance of existing roads.
| Sometimes, a special tax is levied at the local level for
| specific local roadway projects. But the big infrastructure
| projects are almost entirely paid for by gas taxes.
|
| Either way, the point of the tax has never been to "punish
| pollution".
| zip1234 wrote:
| > the big infrastructure projects are almost entirely
| paid for by gas taxes. About 50% is probably correct: htt
| p://www.financingtransportation.org/funding_financing/fun
| ...
| asdff wrote:
| There is such thing as a road tax and not all roads allow
| cows and ducks and lions and bears. Note the sign on the
| highway onramp that says something like "no pedestrians or
| cyclists" and the fact that every car on the road has to
| pay a yearly fee in order to not be impounded by the local
| government for neglecting to pay for fees that go on to
| maintain the roads.
| blibble wrote:
| trunk roads and motorways are definitely not paid out of
| local taxation
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Roads break down over time primarily as a function of vehicle
| weight. Most road taxes (especially gas taxes) are poor
| proxies for vehicle weight taxes. It's probably time to
| reconsider vehicle weight taxes.
| redeeman wrote:
| so perhaps its also time for the government to admit that the
| prior taxes didnt have ANYTHING to do with environment, but
| just a way to justify money grabbing to spend on their own
| worthy causes?
| matsemann wrote:
| No, it's the opposite. You don't want people to drive because
| of the environment, health, noise, road "accidents" killing
| people, how it destroys cities etc. So the taxes are a direct
| incentive to find alternative modes of travel.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Not really. They exist because cars are required. If we all
| became able to live our lives purely with cycling then
| cycling would be taxed.
| unglaublich wrote:
| Cars are a huge burden on health, safety, environment and
| quality of life. It has never been a secret that governments
| tax cars to subsidize causes that should partially compensate
| the indirect damage that cars do to their countries.
| mbg721 wrote:
| We saw this play out with the money from tobacco
| settlements a few decades ago; states see sin taxes as a
| windfall that can substitute for sustainable budgeting.
| gpmcadam wrote:
| It's a combination. Revenues gathered via road tax have a
| provision for older/more polluting cars so you pay less the
| newer your vehicle, essentially. Some of the money is used to
| fund the maintenance of highways, though.
|
| Local roads are funded by council tax, so this probably
| dispells the anti-cycling argument because presumably the
| cyclists do pay council tax (unless they're on motorways which
| is another issue.)
| semanticist wrote:
| > Some of the money is used to fund the maintenance of
| highways, though.
|
| Only in the sense that some of all tax money is used in that
| way - VED just gets pooled with all tax income, none of it is
| 'ring fenced' for any specific purpose. That's why the idea
| of 'road tax' is so annoying, since it implies it's to be
| used for a specific purpose.
| efaref wrote:
| "Road tax" is a _tax_ you have to pay in order to use the
| _road_. It's the most natural name for it, which is why
| people call it that.
|
| Despite the words they use, it's not a vehicle tax: you can
| own a vehicle without paying it as long as you declare that
| you will not use the vehicle _on_the_road_ (a.k.a., make a
| Statutory Off Road Notification). It's a tax for using the
| roads. A road tax.
|
| That the government don't ring-fence it to use on road
| maintenance is irrelevant.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > That the government don't ring-fence it to use on road
| maintenance is irrelevant.
|
| It's not irrelevant to the quoted section, which is the
| only thing the previous poster was replying to.
| techterrier wrote:
| motorways, not highways
| gpmcadam wrote:
| No, it's highways because not all highways (major roads and
| motorways) are motorways.
|
| See: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/highways-
| england
| martin-adams wrote:
| It's very odd they used the term Road Tax. It's always been
| known as Vehicle Tax for the very reason you've pointed out.
| Hence why you don't need to pay tax to ride a bicycle on the
| road.
|
| The other area they are losing out not mentioned in the article
| is Benefit in Kind tax for EVs used as company cars. At some
| point, that will also need to end and be more in alignment with
| ICE vehicles.
| techterrier wrote:
| It's a handy dog whistle so we know they are part of the car
| lobby
|
| edit: spelling
| blibble wrote:
| or it could simply be that the commonly used term for
| Vehicle Excise Duty is "road tax" (even if it's technically
| incorrect)
|
| not everything is a conspiracy
| techterrier wrote:
| commonly used by people who disingenuously use it's
| etymology to imply that all 'road users' (by which they
| mean cyclists) rather than 'vehicle users' should pay it
| blibble wrote:
| I don't see anything in the article that suggests the
| author wants that to happen?
|
| these hysterical responses say more about you then the
| people you're demonising
| techterrier wrote:
| I dont think a carsalesman is going to feel overly
| demonised by being reffered to as part of the car lobby.
| He does know better than to conflate road and vehicle tax
| however.
| blibble wrote:
| when you can't get the name of the duty right (it's a
| duty, not a tax), it seems a bit rich to complain about
| others getting it wrong
|
| let alone accusing them of dog-whistling
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| When you try and look for dog whistles everywhere the world
| becomes a useless cacophony of high pitched screeching.
| Road tax and vehicle tax are used pretty much
| interchangeably and I wouldn't read into the word choice
| any more than I'd read into the results of the coin toss.
| techterrier wrote:
| *listen
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You're being pedantic. Odds are your brain parsed the
| article from visual input not audio. It could go either
| way depending on which linguistic hard line you want to
| take.
| efaref wrote:
| You also don't need to pay it to own a vehicle. You are
| allowed to own a vehicle without paying this tax as long as
| you promise not to drive it on the road (SORN). So by that
| logic it's not a vehicle tax either.
|
| Also, bicycles _are_ vehicles. So surely they should pay
| Vehicle Tax as well?
|
| A more accurate name would be the "Using a Motorized Vehicle
| on the Public Road Tax". Let's abbreviate it by dropping all
| but the last two words. :)
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Tax the oil companies for the difference.
| dabbledash wrote:
| Would never for one second consent to the government tracking the
| location of every car, and would vote against any candidate who
| suggested such a thing.
| lamontcg wrote:
| impose taxes on yachts, property worth over PS2M and other stuff
| the upper class buys.
| MafellUser wrote:
| Completely absence from this are the loss due to lower Benefit in
| Kind (BIK) for Electric vehicles, and First Year Allowances for
| EV purchases. Driving an EV means only paying 1-2% per year tax
| compared to 30-40% for a locally polluting vehicles. First Year
| allowances mean you claim back 100% of the cost of the EV to
| offset any taxable income.
|
| These business rates mean owning an EV outright as a normal
| employee is very dumb. Would you rather pay PS300 per month for a
| PCP on a Zoe, or PS150 a month for a Taycan as a company car?
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Given that only two cars I've ever owned in 25 years of driving
| cost more than PS300 to buy outright, I can't imagine paying
| PS300 per month for any sort of vehicle.
| gpmcadam wrote:
| "Road tax" (a levy to cover the cost of maintaining the public
| highway) obviously needs to be extended to cover EVs at some
| point. I'm surprised it hasn't already.
|
| However, broadly speaking: tax the thing you want less of.
|
| There's various strategies being raised to cover this so-called
| "lost revenue", including the tracking of your home electricity
| usage via smart boxes to tax you on charging your own car (!!)
| and charging cars a per-mile-tax instead of on fuel.
|
| But, if we're to believe that EVs are currently being
| incentivised because the Government wants to lower emissions (and
| thus avoid any costs of continued nationwide carbon reliance)
| then perhaps a study should be done to see if the cost-saving of
| people moving _away_ from ICEs outweighs the lost revenue of
| taxing petrol/diesel, in the long run.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| We should split road taxes and carbon taxes, and ensure both
| revenue streams cover all the investment and expenses required
| for the sector but also to cover long-term effects on climate.
|
| This way, we can spend the revenues from road taxes to build
| and maintain our infrastructure, and the realize that the
| latter will just make the whole car industry bankrupt
| overnight.
| lettergram wrote:
| > There's various strategies being raised to cover this so-
| called "lost revenue", including the tracking of your home
| electricity usage via smart boxes to tax you on charging your
| own car (!!) and charging cars a per-mile-tax instead of on
| fuel.
|
| At the end of the day any implementation of the methods
| discussed lead to absolute tyranny.
|
| To track per-mile-tax you're going to have either government
| gps tracking in real-time or cameras tracking your ever my
| movement. Alternatively, the government will track and then
| likely limit power consumption for your cars.
|
| This is the exact opposite of any free market. Effectively,
| you're giving total control to the government around what
| movement you can make and/or you'll have zero anonymity by law.
| planede wrote:
| > To track per-mile-tax you're going to have either
| government gps tracking in real-time or cameras tracking your
| ever my movement. Alternatively, the government will track
| and then likely limit power consumption for your cars.
|
| Maybe I'm naive, but shouldn't an odometer reading do the job
| just fine?
| causi wrote:
| Tax vehicles based on actual wear to the road surface and add it
| to the annual tag renewal. Of course, that would stop us from
| conveniently ignoring the fact that the _vast_ majority of road
| wear comes from semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles.
| asdff wrote:
| You could also tax semitruck brakes and tires accordingly, and
| inspect them for tread and pad depth at weigh stations and
| during registration.
| tigerlily wrote:
| I hear road wear scales with the fourth power of vehicle mass.
| cocoflunchy wrote:
| Found this discussion while looking for a source:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25171899
| tigerlily wrote:
| Ah, thanks that's where I must've read it.
| unglaublich wrote:
| That's why a bike lane, being a fraction of a highway's
| thickness, doesn't need maintenance for decades.
| asdff wrote:
| In California a bike lane is probably good forever once its
| laid. There are vehicular roads in my neighborhood that are
| from the 1920s. These are roads that see construction
| vehicles and cement trucks abusing them for the past 100
| years to infill more housing into the neighborhood, along
| with your standard semitruck based home movers, delivery
| vehicles, garbage trucks, fire, etc, and still work fine
| for roads.
|
| A bike lane on the other hand deals with at most probably a
| 300lb vehicle. Bike lanes in CA especially would probably
| last as long as the Appian way if not longer.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| That would just result in a trivial tax for personal vehicles
| and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get passed on
| resulting in more or less a consumption tax, which isn't
| necessarily bad but that's outside scope for here)
|
| Additionally, despite a lot of people saying they want to use
| taxes to "handle externalities" or some other sort of "pay per
| usage" type manner like that what they actually want is to tax
| people who are on the fence between bus pass and used cheap car
| solidly into the bus pass camp and taxing for road wear would
| not accomplish that.
|
| Additionally, when it comes to all forms of public
| infrastructure there's a common good argument to be made for a
| tax that's effectively very flat. The whole point of government
| funded things is that we all kick in a little and then all can
| use the resulting things as much or little as we want and that
| this low cost per use has societal benefits.
|
| Edit:
|
| For these kinds of activism driven discussions it's generally
| accepted that road wear is correlated to weight ^4
|
| cyclist -> 100 ^4
|
| (very) compact car -> 1000 ^4
|
| electric hummer -> 5000 ^4
|
| medium duty commercial truck -> 10000^4
|
| Pick what you think is a reasonable bill for any one of those
| and then compute what the resulting bill for the others would
| be. Even if you want to do variable rate monkey business you're
| gonna have a hell of a time overcoming the whole "^4" bit.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Road wear isn't the only consideration though. Cars take up
| _space_ on the road while driving, and as anyone who 's ever
| been in a traffic jam knows, there is a limited amount of
| road space available.
|
| Maybe it'd make sense for trucks to fund the majority of
| wear-induced maintenance costs, but for new construction and
| improvement projects (e.g. increasing the number of lanes on
| a highway) cars should pay a significant portion of that.
| causi wrote:
| _That would just result in a trivial tax for personal
| vehicles and high taxes on heavy trucks (which would just get
| passed on resulting in more or less a consumption tax)_
|
| That is the _entire_ point. Why are we subsidizing other
| peoples ' bad decisions? If you want to go shop for fast
| fashion every other day or drive a 9,036-pound electric
| Hummer the rest of us should not pay the price for your
| jackassery.
| happyopossum wrote:
| I think you're trivializing the effect that shipping costs
| have on every day necessities. Far more trucks haul produce
| and other groceries around my neighborhood than 'fast
| fashion', and as we are seeing right now significant
| increases in those prices have an outsized effect on the
| most vulnerable.
| est31 wrote:
| The current system might cause the entire economy to
| spend more on transportation overall. A 2 times as heavy
| truck might be able to transport 3 times as much as a
| "baseline" truck (these numbers are off, but it usually
| scales sublinearly), but it causes 16 times the wear of
| one trip. That means that switching to that heavier truck
| model causes 5.333 times of the wear on your country's
| roads. Now if you let everyone pay a mostly flat tax, it
| means that there is no motivation for logistics companies
| to have a larger number of trucks, because it means they
| have to pay for more drivers, etc.
|
| Say that all logistics companies switch to the bigger
| trucks and now only pay half of their costs, so e.g. 3
| billion instead of 6 billion per year. Now assume that
| road maintenance used to cost 1 billion annually. With
| the new system it will cost 5.33 billion. So you have
| savings by the logistics companies of 3 billion per year
| contrasted by additional maintenance expenses of 4.33
| billion per year. So your economy now spends 1.33 billion
| more per annum on transport, if it's through a higher
| base rate on your car's license or through more income
| taxes being redirected for road maintenance instead of
| building schools or whatever.
|
| These numbers are totally made up for me, and were only
| meant to demonstrate that not internalizing externalities
| can lead to inefficiencies.
|
| It's true that if you increase taxes for heavy trucks,
| customers will notice it via grocery store price
| increases. That's maybe the problem why it's not being
| done, because voters notice it way less that a road
| repair is more expensive and thus a school can't be
| renovated or something.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Correct, and this is something people often fail to
| understand about the free market. The market is making
| optimizations like the one you just suggested above
| (using smaller trucks over larger ones) _constantly_ ,
| innovating to reduce costs in thousands of ingenious
| little ways no single person could possibly come up with
| on their own. And those optimizations aren't just
| confined to first order effects, they cascade across the
| entire market. A small change to the cost of
| transportation by truck will, over time, result in the
| entire economy making millions of small adjustments to
| optimize for that cost.
|
| But the market can't optimize for a cost it doesn't know
| about. If you're just funding road construction and
| maintenance with income taxes and people aren't paying
| those costs in proportion to usage, then there's zero
| reason for the market to do anything to try to reduce
| those costs.
| causi wrote:
| I can't find any data on what products make up what
| proportions of the gross weight of land shipping. Without
| that data it's not productive to debate who would be most
| hurt by shipping trucks losing their road-wear subsidy.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > Without that data it's not productive to debate
|
| It sure is convenient that it's "not productive" to
| debate one of the biggest and most obvious downsides to
| what you're advocating for.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I loathe the people who have a
| 4Runner for a household with one kid but their stupidity
| might just be collateral damage of an otherwise decent
| overall system.
| causi wrote:
| _It sure is convenient that it 's "not productive" to
| debate one of the biggest and most obvious downsides to
| what you're advocating for._
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong; I'm saying I can't find data
| backing up your statement. It would be good if you were
| right because that would mean the world as it is
| currently is slightly better than if I was right.
|
| Regardless, disincentivizing total shipped mass is not
| entirely a bad thing. It disincentivises planned
| obsolescence and poor quality products in favor of
| reliable, repairable goods.
| TimPC wrote:
| I think you're underestimating how fourth powers work. If
| you want to charge a 10,000 pound hummer $1000/year to
| provide substantial disincentive then you end up charging a
| five axel semi trailer (75,000 pounds) $3,164,000/year.
| That obviously doesn't work.
| avar wrote:
| Why doesn't it work? Those vehicles would either need to
| add more axles[1], or you'd spread the same shipment over
| more lighter vehicles.
|
| Such a tax should be as close to an approximation of the
| actual cost of road maintenance, full stop. If it makes
| certain vehicles uneconomical that's the intended effect.
|
| Of course you'd want to grandfather in such a drastic
| policy change, or phase it in at some % per year.
|
| 1. Taxing this based on axle weight is also stupid. In
| reality road wear is a function of tire width/shape/size
| etc., speed and numerous other factors.
| TimPC wrote:
| I think the actual measurement is off. If a single truck
| did over $3 million in road damage per year we'd have far
| worse infrastructure problems than we do. Chances are if
| you tax road damage you're charging the hummer $10/year
| and the truck $31,700 or so.
| avar wrote:
| Let's leave the specific numbers aside and just assume
| that there's a huge gap, e.g. ~$10 to ~$30k. You still
| haven't explained why that "doesn't work".
|
| Clearly it would make some truck operations uneconomical,
| but that's a feature. The assumption is that the cost is
| being paid today, but it's effectively a subsidy that
| society is paying for.
|
| Even if someone's going to argue that trucking is so
| critical to society that the trucks can't pay their fair
| share of road maintenance this way of doing it still
| seems dumb.
|
| If you're paying ~$30k/yr for road maintenance per truck
| I'm willing to bet that you could e.g. spend ~$10k/yr to
| retrofit the truck to be gentler on the road (e.g. just
| adding an extra axle), and then use the remaining money
| to more directly subsidize trucking.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Conveniently ignoring the fact that roads have terrible
| capacity as a transport system and therefore many many many
| miles of terribly expensive road only exist to accommodate the
| _space_ taken up by a comparatively small number of vehicles,
| with semi-trucks and other heavy vehicles often a minority.
|
| Count the heavy vehicles:
| https://twitter.com/urbanthoughts11/status/11912952051876864...
|
| Don't get me wrong, the tax system is setup as a massive
| subsidy to trucking on roads that should be eliminated so this
| stuff can move onto trains where it belongs for everything but
| the last mile, but a big part of the cost is also just the
| _space_ and _area_ consumed by it all.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Imho individual cars should be banned except maybe for people
| with disabilities. They simply make people hateful, angry at
| everyone and generally unhappy. And an awful lot of space is
| wasted for them to stay parked most of the time.
|
| Between 15 to 50% of the existing roads should be dedicated
| to non motorized use (depending on the geography, moutains
| can pose some challenges at times), the rest to a dense
| network of autonomous buses and last miles autonomous
| delivery trucks. Long range goods transport should be allowed
| only on railways, we could remove space used by multilane
| highways to reallocate them to rail.
| bluecalm wrote:
| People with disabilities would be much happier if no one
| can drive in cities. Running a mobility scooter, a
| wheelchair or an electric wheelchair would be so much
| easier. Cars are especially bad for people with
| disabilities and not only because many of them can't drive
| at all.
| causi wrote:
| _Imho individual cars should be banned except maybe for
| people with disabilities._
|
| Append "in any area with a population density over 5,000
| per square mile" and I'd agree with you.
| zackmorris wrote:
| Came here to say the same thing. Road wear comes from heavy
| transport fleets, not commuter vehicles, so all of the
| infrastructure to monitor semis and tax shipping fuels is
| already in place.
|
| The shipping industry doesn't want to pay that tax, which is
| why they're lobbying to pass the tax onto the rest of us.
|
| Privatize profits, socialize costs.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I would guess that huge SUVs and enormous trucks represent a
| not-insignificant proportion of road wear, since those
| vehicles are more common than semis.
|
| Agreed that a road wear tax based on weight makes sense
| though. It might make sense to use a function of weight +
| miles driven per year to get an even more accurate
| measurement of road wear contribution.
| zip1234 wrote:
| While we are at it, add tax for other externalities such as
| noise and air pollution.
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