Please edit and put we should know. This post is locked until you message me that it’s fixed. It will be deleted if not fixed in 24 hours.
“… regardless of whether they drive or not.”
Even if they don’t drive, they benefit from roads and highways. Trucks bring food to stores, along with all the other products. Unless they are living off the grid, growing their own food, and weaving their own cloth, they’re dependent on the roads. Also, emergency services and maintenance crews need the roads.
Many people long for a simple life, until they break a leg, or their appendix bursts, or they have an infected tooth. Then they’re more than happy to take the road to the hospital.
There’s no dichotomy of “roads or no roads”. Individuals driving necessitates wider and more extensive roads. People who choose to drive when they otherwise don’t have to have the effect of making everything farther away and making road maintenance considerably more expensive.
And your point?
Historically, roads were built for transporting goods, and this started long before cars existed as a concept, see Rome, the Silk Road, etc.
Even in the US the road infrastructure push was driven by the need to transport goods with trucks. Early days of the conversation were around this. It wasn’t until cars started becoming affordable for the average person (rather than the wealthy elites) that cars were even a consideration.
Even today the infrastructure is designed around trucks - bridge heights, durability, etc, cars are secondary.
You can stop driving cars all you want (which simply isn’t going to happen) but you’d still have trucks, because trucks on roads are flexible and trains are not.
It might be news to some but your mail, groceries, healthcare, emergency services, construction vehicles, tradesmen and myriad other essential services require roads regardless of whether you personally drive on them.
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It’s economically inefficient. The true cost of transport should be naturally priced into the good or service, rather than artificially externalized. Supply-side subsidy by the government like this leads to higher-than-optimal use, which is the definition of deadweight loss. It costs us more to do things this way.
And, in this case, it’s not just taxpayers and consumers paying too much, there are catastrophic climate, social, environmental, and health effects from overuse of automobiles. If anything, government policy should work to eliminate these negative externalities by making drivers pay those costs, instead of imposing them on everybody else.
Saying “things you use go by car, neener neener” may sound profound, if you don’t examine the notion critically. It’s really just a thought-terminating cliché, though.
Eliminating cars in cities and reducing them in towns makes sense. It doesn’t for people that are spread out. I live 15 minutes from the nearest town(by car), with a 900f change in elevation. Not very doable for most people, and essentially impossible in winter.
That’s more than prolly fine, it is fine. If you can afford to pay the true cost of driving to enable that choice of location, I’ll not mind. But what is the net benefit to society to subsidize that choice? It reminds me of the joke about losing money on each sale, but making it up on volume.
not viable in our area to in the west most tech employers are outside of cities.
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Ok then the next time you break your leg make sure you limp a few miles to the nearest ambulance-train lmao
I love these nonsensical replies. They’re very validating.
Yeah your nonsensical comment would be validated by a nonsensical reply, wouldn’t it
If it’s not nonsense, then let’s examine the logic underlying your comment: A user-pays funding model for automobile infrastructure, with all costs internalized, means that there would no longer be any motor vehicles, and thus no ambulances. So, the implication is that driving is so costly that nobody would do it if they actually had to pay for it themselves.
If your insinuation is that the existence of subsidization is the be-all-end-all of whether a form of transportation is viable or nonviable, then we need only turn our gaze to every other form of transportation available to us which is subsidized to hell and back as well to see how nonsensical your comment is. The only form of overland transportation that doesn’t require substantial state and federal government subsidies is freight rail.
So here we are again, with no way to move people around because it’s too “inefficient” for you. Have fun on your walk to your ambulance train.
Hahahaha, ambulance trains! I would predict that ambulances would cost a bit more due to higher fuel and registration costs, but I’d come out ahead because an ambulance ride is rare, compared to the income and property taxes that I pay every year. Especially since the overwhelmingly-likely way that I might break my leg is getting hit by a car. (They’d also have better response times with fewer cars on the streets.)
So we’ve agreed that private cars are a net loss to society, i.e. they cost more to operate than drivers receive in benefits. (This conclusion must follow from the idea that a user-pays system is untenable, rather than either a wash or a benefit to drivers.) We can bear that as a society, even if it’s grossly unfair, as long as the economic good times last. But the good times aren’t lasting; lots of communities are structurally bankrupt due to infrastructure obligations, primarily due to accommodating motor vehicles.
Walking and biking require no subsidies, by the way. One might argue that bike lanes are a subsidy, but they aren’t needed on streets with fewer, slower cars. Bike lanes are motor vehicle infrastructure.
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Plus, the implication that your taxes should only pay for services that you personally use, or even for services that you might use, is just plain uncivilized.
Some people have that situation, for example, where they can choose whether to pay for fire services, and if they don’t and their house catches fire, the fire department won’t do anything except protect neighboring houses that have paid for it.
It’s pretty backwards for modern sensibilities.
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Ah, but facilities used to drive a car are private goods, in that they are rivalrous and potentially excludable. Only one car can occupy a given space at a time, and we can (and do) charge for their use. Education, on the other hand, is a public good, non-rivalrous and non-exclusive. They are not the same, and there are good reasons to fund one with tax money, and not the other.
Buses exist.
Local buses are a public service run by a municipality or transit authority, generally, but are still a private good. They’re rivalrous (only one butt per seat), and excludable (can’t ride if you don’t pay). This is clearer with inter-city buses, which are operated by private corporations.
A ton of public services use roads. Actually, literally all public services use roads. School buses use roads to bring children to school. The post office uses roads, as do firefighters and EMS. So does your electric service, waste collection, and water service
Yes, and? All of those public services rely on private goods to operate, e.g. vehicles, fuel, wages, et cetera. All of those are rolled in to the cost of providing the service, so there’s no reason that use of the basic vehicle infrastructure could not also be included. It would help eliminate deadweight loss, in fact.
I have no idea what sort of model you’re advocating for here
Fair. I’m advocating removing all subsidies for private motor vehicles, so that we have a user-pays system, including the cost of negative externalities, like pollution, carbon emissions, and human health impacts, through taxes and registration fees (or similar). This would price the true cost of transportion into goods and services, which would lead to an economically optimal amount of driving. Undoubtedly we’d choose to drive much less, which would have lots of knock-on benefits for individuals and local communities.
Ok. What would that realistically look like? How does your plan account for the significantly higher cost burden that would be born by people who are lower income, given they’re less likely to be able to afford fuel-efficient vehicles? And how do you account for EVs, or variability in carbon emissions?
Regardless, we’re talking about funding for roads, which is a related but totally separate issue from everything else I just mentioned. Roads are a public service, and I’m vehemently against the libertarian idea of “pay per use” you’re advocating
Given that car drivers currently overpay for road maintenance and trucking underpays you would see the opposite effect, where people are encouraged to use smaller vehicles.
Costs would rise for everyone, impacting the poorest.
Suddenly the BMW drivers who currently overpay and have been subsidising roads for non-drivers is saving money and the pensioner who doesn’t drive has increased food and medicine costs.
There’s a reason the costs are spread the way they are. It’s a form of effective socialism.
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Right? I don’t have kids but I’m happy my property tax funds schools.
The only thing is I’m getting awfully cynical on that. Sure, I’m all in to approve any tax increase for education, but is it really for that? The cynic in me wonders if politicians tend to shuffle the budget around so education appears to be in need. People are more likely to pay for education but are less likely to approve tax increases for other uses
My property taxes go overwhelmingly to the school (well like 52 percent where nothing else is close to that big) and I’ll never have kids.
I like the kids educated that do exist though! Like damn we need them educated!
but still gets underfunded somehow.
I don’t have kids why the hell should I pay for schools…wellml because I like living in an educated society, helló I’ll never bep upset I’m paying for (real actual scientifically and primary source-backed) education.
That’s totally missing the point. The scale of our roads is far larger than is strictly necessary, but we build in a lot of the costs associated with car usage, making it effectively cheaper to use a car. We also don’t invest in alternatives, making it practically necessary. This all has the effect of increasing the scale of roads, increasing the cost.
Yes, we need some roads, and yes some of that cost should be socialized. We do not need roads like we have today. We also do not need to be making it easier to use a car than, say, a bike for basic things, or a train for longer distances, or a bus for medium distances (yes, busses use roads, but they substantially reduce road usage, which means maintenance costs, by carrying dozens of people, compared to a car on average carrying slightly more than one person).
The largest cost of roads is maintanance. A large part of this, is just regular commuting, not the services you mentioned. That cost should not be socialized. It should be individual based on your usage. If you’re creating a need for more maintenance, you should have to pay for it. This incentivizes not just less car usage, but also less heavy car usage. IIRC, maintenance cost is accrued by a square of mass, or something similar to that. An SUV is creating much more maintenance demand/cost than a sedan, and a sedan more than a bike.
Don’t tell the /fuckcars people that. They’ll get absolutely livid and start calling you names.
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I don’t think that’s true.
You don’t think this would merit a “carbrain”? I’ve seen it thrown at much less.
Nah, I don’t think “tax money is used to provide public infrastructure” warrants a “carbrain,” and I don’t think that’s an unpopular opinion, even amongst my fellow automotive unenthusiasts.
It’s amazing how you just gloss over than the “public infrastructure” is “roads”. I’ve seen people call people carbrains just for acknowledging roads ARE public infrastructure.
I maybe only see the stupidest and most vicious. You maybe only see the most intelligent and measured.
The truth is, you’re at a disadvantage here trying to convince me or anyone that rabid idiots don’t exist in the fuckcars community when others have seen and interacted personally with them.
I guess all I can really ask is that IF you see this behavior you call it out. Communities that don’t self regulate inevitably go insane and start generating slurs for people outside of thier culture which is a pretty good litmus test for toxicity.
Road != car road
The citizens pay for the infrastructure. Yes. That’s how it works. You want mail? You want your package delivery? You want your grubhub? You want things to be in stock at the stores you shop at? You want the farmers at the farmer’s market to be able to bring your their sweet corn? Even if you don’t drive, you use the roads. All of the time, every day. This myth of “I don’t drive” or, “I ride a bike” or whatever excuse is en vogue today, it’s reductionist logic that doesn’t hold up. You belong to a society that uses infrastructure, and as a member, you use it as well.
Not a good take. People don’t have to be driving to benefit from roads. Deliveries, emergency access, routing for utilities
This is also a poor take. “Benefit” is not a binary state. What if we treated, say, water the same way? That is, you pay the local water utility a connection fee, and the water is free. There’d be no penalty, no incentive not to have a waterfall feature in your front yard fed by the tap. What would happen to water usage?
The same thing that happens with “free” use of roads and streets—the tragedy of the commons. They fill to overcapacity daily.
You should also know that most vehicles do little to no damage to the roadway. 99%+ of the damage comes from heavy truck and bus traffic.
Almost like we should pay vehicle registration based on gross weight and distance driven.
Love to see a source on that as it’s counter to what I’ve heard.
It’s a well-known rule of matsci
The tldr;
“Therefore, the resulting stress difference between truck and car is 15,000 to 1.”
yea, that figure comes to my mind when it is said larger cars consume more gasoline, so they pay more gas taxes, therefore that compensate road damage, but the proportion is way off
on other note, i like to think 1000 light scratches do less damage to the skin than one very energetic
It’s not uncommon for roads to have load limits (ie 70% rated axle capacity) for certain times of the year, when the subgrade is more susceptible to damage. Like during spring frost thaw. A fully loaded vehicle would essentially sink breaking the asphalt bond and everything in the subgrade.
Counter to what you’ve heard? Like it’s the light car traffic doing the damage?
Edit: To clarify- when I say damage I mean to the roadway surface and not the surrounding infrastructure.
Yeah, each individual car may not cause as much wear, but the sheer number of cars and light trucks causes most of the damage overall. I suppose it would still make sense to tax larger vehicles more heavily though, so I guess it still supports your conclusion, I just heard that the proportion of damage caused is way more than ~1% from just car traffic.
Doubt it. Stand on basically any street and count cars until you see a bus, big diesel truck, or a tractor-trailer come through, if you count less than 15000 cars, then the truck is doing more damage.
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Even the surrounding infrastructure.
Cars are designed to take the damage of a crash and dissipate the energy, transport trucks aren’t. Then there’s the momentum issue.
One truck crashing into a bridge is way more damage than a bunch of cars.
Then the price for fuel use would drop, but the cost for running large vehicles would increase dramatically to make up for the difference. Which will be passed on to consumers. Possible kill transit in some areas that already get questioned on cost. I’m more for spreading the cost over everyone using the road than giving more excuse for price increases on everything.
Shouldn’t the cost be spread to consumers though? Shouldn’t we try to encourage people purchasing products that created less damage to infrastructure? Buying local would be made cheaper, in comparison, and so would products that do a better job with shipping. That’s good, isn’t it?
Instead, we spread the cost evenly so there’s no reason to minimize this. That’s wasteful and antithetical to any argument that capitalism can effectively encourage beneficial behaviors. (I’m not a fan of capitalism, but as long as we’re stuck with it the things it does well should at least be used.)
But you pay more when you have a big car. In Germany anyway.
A persistent myth that drivers pay for roads through gas taxes and tolls pervades all discussions on transportation funding, limiting the conversation not just about how we pay for transportation but also what our transportation system looks like.
You’re repeating the exact misconception TFA addresses. Your large vehicle fee is a vanishingly small proportion of upkeep.
And yet, you pay more for a larger car. That’s all I said.
No wonder Michigan has the worst roads. The state has one of the highest truck weight limits in the country.
Damn, your mom needs to be carried by truck?
There is also a weather factor there. Freeze/thaw cycles and water intrusion are big factors in pothole creation.
Anyone who believes that only drivers pay for roads has obviously doesn’t participate in their local government, so why would they care anyway.
Taxes go to schools, libraries, fire and police, lots of things you might never use. I think gas taxes usually go towards road maintenance (or they should).
Not directed at you, OP, but there seems to be a lot of anti-tax stuff lately that I’ve seen posted, and not one of them brought up how much taxes go to support a military operation. They always seem to lean towards pointing out how much of their money goes to social programs that they don’t use or want. They ought to compare the price of a school vs. a missile.
Eh gas tax basically just covers Healthcare externalities from all the pollution. If you are in a country with private health care its even worse - drivers aren’t even covering the lung disease they are giving you!
Libertarian astroturfing.
Housecats don’t understand the system they are in and think all tax bad. Usually males between 19-27. Unless they never mature, which is common.
Housecats
Is this a term for libertarian that I’ve never seen?
Kind of insulting to cats imo
The total amount of money that’s spent on roads and driving in car-oriented cultures is absolutely fucking astounding when you add it all up.
right, highways are a tiny % of the budget. Most of the costs to a car are elsewhere. (and even more elsewhere if you count things not measured in money)
There are a lot of reasons we should be encouraging transit, but we still need highways for shipping and construction use that can never be on transit (could be on trains, that doesn’t seem reasonable)
And this is why I support cyclists and pedestrians having as much right to roadways as a person that chooses to drive their car.
I’ve never heard anyone claim that only drivers pay for roads.
Many people think registration and gas taxes cover roadway expenses. Its why you see people complain “cyclists don’t pay their fair share for bike lanes”.
Now you have content for tomorrow’s “the idea that X is Y is actually a myth…” post
Ya, mostly just them throwing a hissy fit whenever a city wants to build any infrastructure for non-cars
As a cyclist I have, many times. And always from people that feel bicycles shouldn’t be on roads when they are
It seems to me that the snippy responses in here are from people responding to the headline and an imaginary POV from the author. The author has thought about this stuff more than anyone commenting here has.
Similarly, everyone benefits from roads, even if they don’t drive, even if they are a house hermit. What you thought you amazon package was just teleporting? Your life saving medicine? Your food?
Everyone also suffers noise pollution, air pollution, and risks such as getting hit as a pedestrian. Extensive overbuilding of roads and sprawl is also a signifcant strain on municipal budgets which could diminish the quality of other services due to funding constraints.
Sign me up for bulldozing entire cities to rebuild them without sprawl. I’m not too optimistic about it getting approval though.
They’ve already been bulldozed, look at all the parking lots and unnecessarily wide roads. The average US town or city has had more of its area destroyed by car infrastructure than London did after The Blitz.
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California has a tax on gasoline specifically for roads, which is 59 cents per gallon of gas, and it accounts for ~80% of the money they collect for road maintenance.
I mean, everyone that lives here knows the government isnt fixing the roads often enough to justify the immense funding they get for the roads. Many roads in my area might as well be gravel due to their state of disrepair. But they nontheless do collect taxes for road maintenance specifically from car drivers only. And theyre now considering moving to charging you per-mile imstead because diesel and electric cars don’t pay that tax right now, which should theoretically result in a lower charge for everyone, but we know that isnt gonna happen. As if they dont get enough money already. Highest taxes in the nation and still isnt enough, I guess.
Does California not add the same tax to diesel? Also in Illinois they make your ev car tag more expensive.
I think you’d be properly surprised at how expensive road maintenance is. Particularly when the local government has to abide by federal regulations.
I pay more than $350 dollars every year because of that 59 cent tax. Maybe I wouldn’t feel I have a right to complain if California did not also collect taxes from other avenues, such as property taxes, car registration fees, and other fees and taxes that also allegedly pay for road maintenance, when I go outside and the roads in my area were re-paved every few years instead of once in the last 25 years I have lived in my current area in South California. Im not even out in the boonies or a low population city.
Even if I am being overly generous, at a little over 36 million registered vehicles in California, and lets just say I am an anomoly with a 27 gallon gas tank so we can say California gets less than half of my gas tax amount, which can be $125 per year, then the government gets ~$4.5 billion just from the 59 cent gas tax alone. Now I dont know about you, but that number sounds awfully reasonable to at least slurry coat a road more often than once every 25 years. Or just crack and pothole filling. Literally anything. And that is a low number I know is below the real numbers they are getting. 4.5 billion which is already alotted to be only for road maintenance and repair, and does not include any other additional income for road repair.
I don’t expect a new road every week, every year or even every other year. But 25 years (that I know of, probably longer) inbetween is way too long, by that point the road is so deteriorated that they are basically making a new road instead of just maintaining and repairing the existing one.
You know all this is public record right? You can request it and know for yourself. I can’t speak to how _your local gov associates their maintenance spending, but roadwork is still expensive.
Indeed. When I last checked into it like 20+ years ago, an average road cost ~200 bucks per foot. Shit’s not cheap
The growth ponzi scheme in action.
Because they throw their little tantys and go “fuck your bikes me and my car pay for that road!!!”
