People with such vehicles already naturally pay more in fuel taxes. An actual productive solution to any safety concerns would be mandating some kind of sensor or camera retrofit, optimally with a tax credit for anyone who has to do it.
It's not just safety concerns in general (though it could be in DC): the other problem is that road damage is approximately proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. So doubling the weight of a car causes 16 times the road wear. And a car twice the size takes up twice as much road room and parking area too. So there are externalities with bigger vehicles that are beyond that of mangled pedestrians and which their owners could reasonably be required to pay for.
Of course, these are even more true of large trucks, which we would find much more difficult to eliminate, even if we wanted to. So it's always going to be a matter of judgement how to proceed.
A person having to pay the intrinsic cost of usage does not affect whether they are adequately paying the extrinsic cost of their usage.
There was some minor fuel tax benefit to the state, but with ultra-heavy electric vehicles like a electric Hummer, there's not really any penalty/paying of dues for having obnoxiously sized, dangerous vehicles.
The electric Hummer’s battery weighs more than my first car. It has a curb weight over 9000 pounds.
Heavy cars do more damage when they hit things, emit more brake dust, and cause more damage to roads. Exploring ways to reduce (or appropriately tax) their use should be celebrated.
Cheaper economy vehicles will use metallic brake pads that emit lots of dust. More expensive luxury vehicles (SUVs and trucks) use premium ceramic pads that wear much less per mile. EVs and hybrids add regen and don't need brakes to stop unless it's under emergency braking. It's absolutely not apples to apples, and people need to understand that fact.
Uh, what? All else equal, a heavier vehicle will emit more brake dust. Basic physics says so. If you want to claim otherwise, bring a source.
It may be the case that electric cars, thanks to regenerative braking, do not emit more brake dust than a lighter non-electric car, but that's not what the parent comment here was saying.
>It may be the case that electric cars, thanks to regenerative braking, do not emit more brake dust than a lighter non-electric car, but that's not what the parent comment here was saying.
It's definitely uncommon, and the ones you do see around typically have out of state plates. Some are people commuting in from VA and MD, and others are just slow in registering their vehicle, or have a second residence elsewhere and keep the registration there. As the article notes, DC is expensive already when it comes to vehicle registration, so people avoid it when possible.
I think if you asked DC whether they'd rather continue to be funded by federal income and burdened by the national politics that constantly dictate what they can and can't do - or whether they'd prefer to enjoy the same level of freedom that other US cities enjoy they'd choose the former. In fact I don't think - I know - DC statehood has been a hugely locally popular movement for quite some time.
Just because you bought someone a coffee after punching them in the gut doesn't mean they appreciate your patronage.
Probably to give your argument as many points in its favor as possible - which is quite difficult considering how absurd your comment was. You originally said "436 states here we come" - even going by the lowest bar we currently have we'd only have two additional states.
Only 28 of our current states have a population above the median population of all US states and territories. I don't think the other 22 states would be wild about that admission standard.
> I don't think the other 22 states would be wild about that admission standard.
We have a well established process for asking states about this sort of thing, the US Congress. They don't seem to be wild about the minimum populous state standard, we should ask about the median populous state standard.
A better option would be to transfer the residential neighborhoods of DC to existing states, and keep only the area around the Capitol and White House under federal control.
I actually completely agree - I think that it'd be far more fair to residents of the DC metro area if the whole city was just merged into either VA or MD (ideally the entire metro area would end up being moved into one of the states entirely - so maybe MD would be granted Arlington and Alexandria - or VA would get a chunk of MD... but either way I think it'd be far better for DC if it weren't this weird quasi-federal zone.
I also don't think that proximity really confers any undo influence at this point - so if the federal buildings just became federal property within the state of VA/MD similar to thousands of other federal properties that'd probably be fine.
> A better option would be to transfer the residential neighborhoods of DC to existing states
The Virginia part was already retroceded in 1847, less than 60 years after the creation of the district; retroceding the Maryland part is a pretty common Republican alternative to D.C. statehood since pressure began for it (though it is opposed by both Maryland and D.C. residents who have 232 years of separate history.)
27% of the people in DC work for the federal government. If you're looking to criticize people for living off of tax dollars, there's a lot less honorable ways of doing that than working a 9-5 in an underpaid public service job.
And given that most of "DC" is actually just Arlington - this cost increase is going to have a minimal effect on heavy weight cars... especially since I'd assume a higher proportion of people owning these cars would be frou-frou suburbanites that likely don't reside in DC proper anyways.
Why would they even bother with that? The extra money each year is basically a fill up or 2. If $100 gas pump trips don't dissuade them, why would a measly $175 a year?
You can also tax based on engine volume, in order to penalize gas-powered vehicles more and still penalize curb weight indirectly. Probably a formula combining the two would be ideal.
Displacement taxes are terrible. There are many instances of large displacement engines (e.g. modern GM LS/LT series engines) that are lighter and more efficient than comparably performing smaller turbocharged engines. Penalize heavy vehicles that damage pavement, or vehicles with poor pedestrian safety, or gas guzzlers, but don't penalize one aspect of engine design (displacement) that isn't directly harmful.
I propose we tax vehicles based on their 0-60 time. Soft tire compounds and abundant wheel torque and available power are directly correlated with tire wear and tire wear directly translates into particulate pollution.
This tax would also have the side effect of being slightly more burdensome on particular demographics that are most likely to come up with half baked "let's tax X" ideas that fail to pass even the most cursory analysis as these demographics tend to drive fast high performance sedans.
Edit: Just to be clear, lower number = more tax. Work vans pay little, high performance toys pay a lot. This is a semi-satirical proposal.
So you want to tax the lightest cars and give a pass to large trucks which have a poor 0-60 time? Just like the comment you are replying to, you're taxing the wrong metric. Need to be more direct in taxing the problem.
> You can also tax based on engine volume, in order to penalize gas-powered vehicles more and still penalize curb weight indirectly.
It's basically what many countries in the EU do. France leading the charge (buying for example a Ferrari with a shitload of horsepower will be accompanied with a one-time tax of $40 000 USD (well, EUR) you have to pay to the state) and, no, people paying 200 K EUR for a brand new car are not happy about paying 240 K EUR so the tax "works".
It's also why the "downsizing" of ICE is happening: much smaller engines, but with turbos. And they do consume less fuel.
Of course now that all the EU countries pushed like crazy for sales of hybrid and EVs, they're now coming up with new legislation in the work that is going to take weight into account (because EV batteries tend to be heavy and they have to find a way to tax EVs).
I mean: those in the EU who bought an EV are kinda getting ripped of... The price of electricity is through the roof (in some cities like Brussels it simply doubled YOY) and they'll now be facing soon a tax on weight (it's going to be a EU directive so all the countries will have to adapt).
What a way to thank people for not buying gas guzzlers!
> The price of electricity is through the roof (in some cities like Brussels it simply doubled YOY)
Belgium probably buys a lot of France nuclear and France has been retrofitting their reactors and there have been a lot of them off-grid for the last year or two. Add to this the Ukraine war energy issues and lack of alternative sources and you get a short-term mess.
Belgium and France really need to look at how to get their respective countries more solarized like Germany - then use solar+batteries to balance the crazy electricity spikes.
I think the regulatory approach of making these sort of vehicles more expensive is a good one. I'd love to see this approach be adopted at the provincial level where I live.
There's going to be businesses that need this sort of vehicle and particular hobby enthusiasts will be willing to pay much more to have one, but regular people doing typical activities absolutely do not need these and we should dissuade them from buying vehicles that are so much more dangerous and polluting than others.
Yup. I was definitely surprised at the puny suggested increases.
If they are goint to increase registration costs, it should also not be merely "if >6000 Lbs, increase $500", but a formula steadily increasing the cost so that mfgrs don't merely post the 'official' curb weight 10Lbs under the threshold. So, something more like $10/year for every 100 Lbs over one ton curb weight.
It'd be even better to do this via fees combined with a congestion tax system. This has worked very well for many cities to charge road use tolls higher in congested times, therefore motivating people to not use vehicles if they can avoid it. In this case, just increase the costs based also on vehicle weight, so the heavy vehicles have higher fees even at 3AM. Plus, this will avoid people avoiding it by registering their beast at their out-of-city home, or their brother's address or something.
even tradesmen don't need trucks with these monstrous front grilles that block visibility. kei trucks, transit vans, etc do not have this problem and are used by millions.
Potentially - the truly rational response is to incorporate the additional fees into your operating costs and if you're running a plumbing business those costs are going to be amortized across a whole lot of clients and might end up being pretty negligible.
You'd likely see more stratification between the DC and adjacent markets though - some proportion of the plumbers based in Arlington might refuse to serve DC proper to avoid the fee (if it were somehow enforced on them, which seems difficult given they're relying on registration) - but that'd lower supply and possibly give plumbers who do remain in the DC market more command over their price.
Either way, when you're talking about running a business, if a 500$ expense is going to break the bank you're probably teetering on the edge of insolvency anyways.
I distinctly remember seeing one day in Palo Alto, a pristine pearl-white lifted F250 alongside a battered old Ford Ranger that was actually carrying tools in its bed.
The Ford Ranger was no larger or heavier than my sedan.
To put this another way, hopefully these fees could pressure manufacturers to produce vehicles that are just as useful, but don't create as bad externalities (pollution, danger).
The Ford and the Fiat city vans are popular in the US with fleet buyers. Their load capacity is a bit lacking compared to the old school minivans they get compared to but nevertheless they are popular.
Absolutely not. Cars allowed people to access areas they would not be able to.
Look at why sprawl occurred, it was not started by cars, it started with trains. The trolleys would allow for undeveloped land to be used, reducing rents that had been increased by demand. Then came the car. Instead of being dependent on the trolley to get you from place to place, you could allocate resources to get there. Economic activity boomed after that. There may be some difference on the implementation of automotive vehicles, but they are not a mistake.
If cars had been kept as an additive to public transit then I might buy your position but a lot of public transit systems were specifically destroyed at the direction (and with subsidies from) car manufacturers.
Trains and trolleys did allow for some suburban growth - but the sprawl didn't come into being until cars became the norm for transport... specifically, commuting by train and using cars for leisure could have been the world we live in, rather than this hellish landscape where cars are the norm for getting to the work or picking up groceries.
This may differ from your world view but please just compare the west to east coast where most of the eastern cities were built first without cars in mind and only later expanded - vs. a lot of west coast cities that have always been car first.
I might not use that hyperbole myself but if you've ever had to sit through LA traffic day in and day out it's really not that hard to imagine why people get upset about it. Yeah if you live in the middle of nowhere it's a different story.
To me, the "hellish landscape" is the NYC subway system (arguably the best in the US).
While I live in NYC and not LA, I'm a frequent visitor to LA. I'd gladly sit through LA traffic over riding the NYC subway. Sitting in my own personal, clean, climate controlled space, listening to music I enjoy.
I've never been to NYC but I never realized how much I would prefer a good public transit system until I visited Seoul. I probably wouldn't use a car much if at all if I lived there. I suspect NYC is still a pretty low bar for what public transit could be, best in the US isn't saying much when most cities have practically nothing to begin with.
Ah cool makes sense, thanks for the comparison. I have definitely noticed that outside the obvious downsides of most American public transit (mainly, longer commute, often still stuck in traffic, having to pay close attention to the schedules at all times, etc), the commute options are also often noticeably dirtier or filled with a lot more homeless people who are sometimes not totally there mentally and that's certainly something that would have to be addressed to see mass adoption. Obviously I think public transit should be open to everyone regardless of socioeconomic background but practically speaking it also needs to be palatable for most people, not really sure what the solution would be.
Just out of curiosity, have you ever been to Tokyo? I feel I've heard good things about its public transit but have only visited so briefly I didn't get much chance to use it myself.
Yes, have also visited Tokyo a few times. The Tokyo subway is also fantastic, certainly mountains better than NYC’s. But I’d rank Seoul’s as slightly better still.
FWIW many discussions that criticize any aspect of NYC’s subway system often gets shut down with “but we have 24/7 service and they don’t”. Personally, I feel 24/7 service is a contributing factor to the NYC subway’s problems.
I'm looking at it from the perspective of what I consider truly hellish. Is suburban sprawl bad, sure. But let's be honest, how does any of what was shown in that video compare to a warzone, a slum in an underdeveloped country, or some polluted Superfund site?
If you're going to use provocative words you should be prepared for some pushback when people challenge the appropriateness of the terms you've chosen.
Well - there's been an excessive discussion focused on my usage of the term "hellscape" and seemingly no pro-car discussion to my actual comment. It feels quite nitpicky to swoop in to criticize a specific term used without actually discussing what that term was contained within.
I'm not even particularly pro-car. One does not have to disagree with your broader perspective in order to be critic of your word choice. I see your frustration as something that comes with the territory. When you use hyperbole in your rhetoric you risk people taking issue with the specific allusion and proceeding to refute it. Probably because refuting that hyperbole can be seen as diminishing the rest of your argument.
I'm looking outside right now and the landscape is far from hellish. Public transit is a great option for many trips and cars certainly have some downsides, but it sure is nice to be able to drive my car to pick up bulk groceries at Costco.
Oh, taking a car to get to Costco is awesome. When I lived on my own and shopped via walking I'd still occasionally borrow a friends time to do a big run with them to pick up canned goods, flour, etc... the stuff that's heavy and that you buy in bulk.
But in America, if you want half a pound of pastrami you're probably going to have to get in a car to get it unless you live in one of the few areas that still follows that sort of dense city planning.
It will be interesting how the American suburbs will fare in the upcoming years. With interests rising and home buyers getting more careful, the Ponzi-esque scheme of buying a house in a suburb might collapse [1, 2].
American culture is partly unthinkable without cars because of planning and zoning failures made decades ago. Why don't have suburbs a lot of small super markets and other stores? Why does everybody need to drive miles and miles to get a gallon of milk?
What is the alternative? Live in the city in dense, tight, expensive housing?
FWIW, many suburbs do have supermarkets and stores in their downtowns/mainstreets. I can walk...10 minutes or so to my local supermarket. But I choose not to do so because I can drive there and buy a week+'s worth of groceries and supplies in one go. I don't think most suburbanites hop in the car to get a single bottle of milk.
As much as there are people that prefer living in cities, there are people that prefer living in the suburbs.
A young twentysomething single me would have preferred living in downtown Manhattan and wouldn't have minded living in a 300 sqft studio, meeting friends, partying, partaking in cultural experiences that only a major city can offer.
Thirtysomething married me finds that scenario unappealing. Having a SFH in a quiet suburban street with a backyard to BBQ in, a garden to tend, lazy weekends with no cultural activities whatsoever, and a car(!) to drive around in is what I want... short of being extremely wealthy enough to have the best of both worlds.
Western Europe doesn't have the problems of America's suburbia. You just don't see the solutions because you are trapped in the mindset that cars are ubiquitous and alternatives must therefore be bad.
As I said, it will be interesting how well the American suburbs will be able to function. They function only because of heavily subsidized infrastructure and the poor parts of town are the ones paying.
Yes, the Netherlands have a large amount of single family homes without the need for American-style suburbs. Over 56% of all Dutch citizens own at least one house, 69% of all residential buildings are owned by the people living in them. Those houses are mostly not oversized like American houses and have less land attached to them. For comparison, the home ownership rate for the US is about 65.3%.
Everything points to the American way of doing housing and infrastructure is wrong and could be done cheaper and easier if American city planners were to look at other parts of the world.
Sprawl is a symptom. You are fleeing from the city core because there are uncooperative individuals owning land and real estate. You cannot improve the city without their consent, so you flee and run away from the corrupt rent seekers.
The intersection between the "cars bad" crowd and the "cars should be regulated in a multitude of specific ways" (which has the side effect of driving up the size and price of the minimum economically viable new car) crowd is absolutely maddening. If cognitive dissonance were a physical object I would bludgeon them with it.
I would love a future where we can have cheap super-sub-compact EVs and small utility vehicles. But as long as these Karens get to hand wringing every time they see someone hauling lumber on the roof or they a family pile out of a 1991 Civic said future is but a fantasy.
Better yet - just make gas super expensive and you get European style approach. Suddenly mass transit sounds a lot nicer when you can't get $2 gas anymore to subsidize a car that is listed as gallons per mile.
Kei cars don't have good crash performance. Even the North American Camry has extra structural reinforcement that the Japanese domestic doesn't because of laxer regulations.
a couple other comments have touched on something ive thought about alot recently;
as ev adoption continues we are going to observe more asymmetry between older cars which are lightweight and relatively lower to the ground, and massive EVs with giant battery packs and high hood lines [0][1]
a hummer EV's battery weighs 3000 lbs and the entire vehicle weighs 9,000 lbs. a 2005 Honda Civic coupe, which is generally very reliable and likely to still be in operation 17 years later, is 2,600 lbs. the civic doesn't stand a chance in a collision with the Hummer.
of course the hummer might be a relatively lower volume vehicle but the f-150 and silverado are #1 and #3 respectively in volume; their ev counterparts are going to be all over the roads in short time. and they have similar increases in weight over their ice counterparts, 6000-7000 lbs each.
i hope i'm wrong but i don't see how the number and severity of traffic fatalities go anywhere but up for the next 5-10 years.
To clarify for non-EU readers, that's 3,500kg fully loaded (gross vehicle weight), not just curb weight. Everything over 3,500kg requires you to get a special license and regular medical tests by a physician.
Many USA states allow up to 26000 lbs (11800 kg) on a regular driver license. (Which is awarded after one casual road test when you were 16 and each state thereafter accepts your prior license as proof of skill). Commercial operations like Amazon delivery intentionally order trucks right up to this 26K limit to avoid having to hire CDL holders (commercial driver license) and follow DOT regulations.
I want to appreciate your comment, and this may be off-topic possible pedantry, but the text formatting in your comment makes me so conscience of way the text looks "off" that it gets in the way of your message. Basic and common English syntax like capital letters would just go a long way to making things easier to read.
There's no style guide for internet comments and you don't know anything about another poster's potential second (or third, or fourth) language competence, disability or deficits, accessibility aids they are posting through, etc.
If you can't handle it then you'll miss some content, the same way you'll occasionally see comments in here posted in a language you don't understand. Do what feels reasonable to extract the information, or just accept that you won't and move on. I guess downvote if you really wanna.
Socially enforcing a high standard of what is essentially typesetting does nothing but discourage people from contributing who may have thoughtful responses but not the time or ability to edit them to your standards.
> ...but the text formatting in your comment makes me so conscience of way the text looks...
not to be pedantic but my text formatting makes you "a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations..."[0] is certainly interesting commentary. perhaps it should be interpreted as a compliment? thanks.
Time to invest in tire companies! A family member got quite a shock when buying winter tires for their car, the extra weight of the battery necessitated higher rated and more expensive tires.
Which is why you need BEV rated tires. My 2017 FocusEV (with > 50k miles) has it's OG tires from 2017 and recently had a tire guy tell me "no it's got a lot of life left" when I thought about replacing them.
The bigger Prius models weigh as much as a light truck used to (when light trucks were still available). It isn't just the supersized EVs that are contributing to the bloat.
thinking back to the GM EV1, in my imagination the future was a place of efficiency and continuous improvement. some of these new EVs feel like we've gone back to the excess and somewhat laziness of the 90s (badge engineering, inefficient, grotesque).
models like the VW XL1 and BMW i3 were so exciting, as we shifted towards alternative drivetrains we could sort of "reset" what the auto market had evolved to in the last 25-30 years. they're certainly not mass market vehicles but other models could have followed their lead.
> as ev adoption continues we are going to observe more asymmetry between older cars which are lightweight and relatively lower to the ground, and massive EVs with giant battery packs and high hood lines
The EV equivalent of "honda Civic" will still be lighter and lower to the ground then the f-250.
I'm thinking back to my time in high school, when I would see rich 16-year-olds drive up in massive SUVs or trucks. The justification parents had for buying them was that putting their kids in large cars would protect them should they ever get into an accident.
I wonder what will happen once parents like that start buying the kids of today those massive cars. Of course they will be electric.
The Hummer EV is a luxury vehicle with a very long range.
I suspect that mass-market EVs will have a combination of a shorter range, and use some tricks to keep the weight more manageable. Structural batteries, which integrate the battery into the frame, lower weight because the bulky part of the battery is now part of the frame. (Instead of a separate frame and battery.)
Your comment deeply upsets me. Perhaps you need to be taxed for your comments that upset others. We should also tax low-quality off-topic comments as well?
Trying to take trucks or guns from old Americans is kinda like trying to pry sheep from New Zealanders. They'll be fighting for their extensive form of animal husbandry down to the last shagging body.
This tax isn’t assessing externalities; that’s something you’d build into the gas tax.
This is a yearly punitive sin tax assessed because someone feels a moral imperative to coerce the behavior of others.
> “You can’t ban sales of these things,” says Mary Cheh, a D.C. councilmember who developed the new fee structure, “but you can make them pay their own way.”
My 3 ton pickup truck is my sole vehicle, and has been driven a total of 19,000 miles over the past eight years.
That’s an average of 2,375 road miles per year, over eight years.
In absolute terms, I’m doing a lot less damage to the road and producing a lot less pollution than the individual commuting to work every single day, even if they’re driving an EV (charged by our existing non-renewable infrastructure!).
My truck will also last me for at least another decade, further avoiding the massive carbon footprint inherent in building a new vehicle.
It’s reminiscent of our sugar tax. I now pay an extra 60 cents for a diet, sugar-free soda when we go out for hamburgers, because restaurants are required to collect the tax if you could get a full-sugar soda at their soda fountain.
In a city that was already the healthiest in the country, and has absolutely no obesity problem.
Assessing the cost of externalities is fine.
Useless laws that do nothing — other than soothing the anxiety and moral panic of their authors — externalize the cost of doing so onto the rest of us.
You don't seem to understand how road damage scales with vehicle weight. My car weighs somewhere between the smart and the prius so let's take the average which is 0.20 (wouldn't surprise me if this is 2x more road damage than I actually do). The Chevy Tahoe weighs less than your truck and is at 3.57 or 18 times worse. I have driven 100k miles over eight years which is five times more than you, what a coincidence 0.2 times 5 is 1.0 which means you did 3.57 times as much road damage as me. If we accurately weighed our vehicles I am sure that number could go up to 7 and higher. What really annoys me about your comment is all the virtue signalling you do. Ignorance is not a get out jail card.
We already have rules and codes for automotive manufacturers, and well as road construction standards, that allow for a wide range of vehicles for the public to pick from. Yes one could get out their calipers and measure the impact of each individual persons vehicle, but that's not how by an large people want to live. People want to be free to choose the vehicle that is right for them. The way to deal with this is to focus on traffic as a whole - with average and median statical loads when creating said standards rules and codes. The reason people don't like you getting out your calipers is because you are discounting the value of freedom of choice, instead using road wear as an excuse to justify enforcing your opinion on others. Those who engineer infrastructure have no problem dealing with a range of vehicles. This is more to do with virtue politics.
In DC, a lot of the luxury vehicles are provided by corporations, almost all of whom are sited in/around DC to exert influence on the government.
So the people making these sorts of rules will not be affected by them, and they are just making a moat around the luxuries that they want to enjoy so that they have status over the common folk.
Kind of like politically connected and wealthy people wanting to get rid of gun ownership. They will still have armed body guards provided by the state or that they pay for.
Heavy vehicles cause significant road damage, scaling the tax based on vehicle weight is actually very reasonable. I personally would rather turn your comment around.
"Paying for the road damage I caused is something I don't like, it should be illegal"
That is how capitalism works. Just make doing the right thing illegal. People complain about the homeless problem but don't talk about how they made it illegal to not have homeless people. They spend insane amounts of resources, like $60k per year per tent, because that is the best option that is still legal.
I do not know in USA, but in UE norms demand roads to be able to normally operate ad SEVENTH time the expected mean load, so I doubt than an "oversize" car (not big truck) would made significant wearing to public roads.
IMVHO the issue is another: we can't sustain cars in cities anymore because there are too much cars for roads and parking infra. There is no "classic" solution for that: cities can only be just public-transport + only needed vehicles (emergency/work-related etc) to work and being NOT designed for such usage they can't easily be adapted => cities are dead end, we can only rebuild them and we already know that since anything change at a certain speed doing such enormous challenge will be pointless, for when it end we will end up in the similar issues for newer/mutated needs and gears.
Long story short IMVHO we need some "hub", where people live nearby, BUT little kind an on-purpose only like "this is a place where only students and teachers live for their relative active 'duty', here is just a metallurgic area there are a residential part for workers, but just for their working times and all have relatives and homes elsewhere" etc. Tough to achieve but I see no over evolvable option. So far only moderately dense Rivieras have shown life and sustainability. Low density areas became too expensive, high density untenable.
Aside we probably can't sustain anymore entertaining a modern country-wide road network, some countries like Finland here and there have barely admitted something alike, witch means we need something else to move. Small flying drones can be ok for private travel, no I'm not joking, actually a small flying car can cost as a road-born car, on similar scale, the far reduced infra costs compensate extra energy costs BUT that's can work for low weight transports. For logistic is a bit of a nightmare and for that so far I hardly see solutions behind a disperse economy where most of heavy and abundant stuff are local and local only witch is not much achievable. Another is waterways but they are usable only on the sea and large-enough rivers, witch means in too limited spot.
If you’re designing a pavement structure based on the AASHTO Guide For the Design of Pavement Structures (1993), then you wouldn’t include anything other than trucks (semi-trailers, single-units, and buses) because passenger vehicles produce negligible wear. Even the devil’s own ride, the Ford F-250, produces 1/1350th the wear of one loaded semi-trailer.
Given this is D.C., I would assume this is just a manifestation of petty malice toward symbols their council associates with people on the “wrong” side of righteous causes.
I see that differently. Ballpark, that car causes 16 times the road wear of a car half its weight. Assuming comparable road usage, why wouldn’t its owner pay more to the government?
And that ignores other externalities such as pollution, risk to pedestrians, etc.
I think city councils should even seriously consider banning such cars from busy city centers, like quite a few cities (mainly in Europe) do with older Diesel engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-emission_zone)
An empty bus weighs 20,000lb or more. That’s around 80X the wear the trucks this bill targets causes, and you probably can’t put 80x more people on the bus. Why not axe the public transportation nobody with a choice actually uses?
> Other state and local leaders alarmed by “truck bloat” would be wise to study the D.C. law, which represents a first-of-its-kind effort to address the negative externalities — or costs borne by others — associated with larger, heavier SUVs and trucks
> Vehicle with curb weight of 4,500 lbs or less with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less - $90.88
> Vehicle with curb weight of 4,501 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less - $144.33
> Vehicle, Truck, pickup truck with closed or open bed, or van with a gross weight of 16,000 lbs or less or with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more - $213.82
> Truck or vehicle with a gross weight of 16,001 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more - $481.10
This has been around for as long as I can remember, and there are a number of vehicles (especially minivans) where the lower trim levels pay one fee but the top trim level pays more.
> Notably, no exception is available for residents claiming that they need a heavy-duty truck or SUV for their work
This only vaguely alludes to why some people drive ginormous SUVs. If you "own your own business" you can deduct a truck from your taxes.
My wife works with a doctor who "owns his own business." His family drives giant SUVs because it's cheaper than driving a normal car. The family across the street from me owns a franchise, and both parents drive giant vehicles. One of them is a truck that they use to tow large boats as part of their business; the other is never used for actual business purposes. (But it does have a commercial plate.) They have two kids.
You can always deduct the vehicle if you own a business. I have a small business that generally grosses only a few thousand per year, but I deduct all business use of my personal car.
The difference, IIRC, is that instead of amortizing the cost over years, IRS Section 179 allows you to expense the entire cost of a 6,000+ lb. vehicle in a single year. So if you own an Escalade like my neighbor, that's an $80,000 tax deduction in one year.
It's certainly tempting and I'll probably do exactly the same thing once my business makes enough income for it to make sense. The tax code is a thing: use it to your advantage.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 211 ms ] threadOf course, these are even more true of large trucks, which we would find much more difficult to eliminate, even if we wanted to. So it's always going to be a matter of judgement how to proceed.
It sounds like there must be some good and interesting physical reason for this. Do you have an intuitive explanation for it?
There was some minor fuel tax benefit to the state, but with ultra-heavy electric vehicles like a electric Hummer, there's not really any penalty/paying of dues for having obnoxiously sized, dangerous vehicles.
Heavy cars do more damage when they hit things, emit more brake dust, and cause more damage to roads. Exploring ways to reduce (or appropriately tax) their use should be celebrated.
This is false.
> Heavier vehicles emit higher levels of brake and tire particles
"Therefore, future research is needed to better understand the overall impact of vehicle electrification on brake and tire wear emissions"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brake_pad#Materials
It may be the case that electric cars, thanks to regenerative braking, do not emit more brake dust than a lighter non-electric car, but that's not what the parent comment here was saying.
>It may be the case that electric cars, thanks to regenerative braking, do not emit more brake dust than a lighter non-electric car, but that's not what the parent comment here was saying.
That's exactly what parent said.
And of course once moving, fuel consumption is surprisingly insensitive to weight.
Just because you bought someone a coffee after punching them in the gut doesn't mean they appreciate your patronage.
I'm sure many locales with 670k residents would love to become states, that'd be a pretty sweet deal.
We have a well established process for asking states about this sort of thing, the US Congress. They don't seem to be wild about the minimum populous state standard, we should ask about the median populous state standard.
I also don't think that proximity really confers any undo influence at this point - so if the federal buildings just became federal property within the state of VA/MD similar to thousands of other federal properties that'd probably be fine.
The Virginia part was already retroceded in 1847, less than 60 years after the creation of the district; retroceding the Maryland part is a pretty common Republican alternative to D.C. statehood since pressure began for it (though it is opposed by both Maryland and D.C. residents who have 232 years of separate history.)
https://wallethub.com/answers/ci/can-i-register-a-car-in-a-d...
https://dmv.dc.gov/node/1118861
Even if you didn't, nobody would want to register a vehicle in DC unless you absolutely have to. It is not cheap or convenient.
This tax would also have the side effect of being slightly more burdensome on particular demographics that are most likely to come up with half baked "let's tax X" ideas that fail to pass even the most cursory analysis as these demographics tend to drive fast high performance sedans.
Edit: Just to be clear, lower number = more tax. Work vans pay little, high performance toys pay a lot. This is a semi-satirical proposal.
Larger heavier vehicles need more energy to get around.
It's basically what many countries in the EU do. France leading the charge (buying for example a Ferrari with a shitload of horsepower will be accompanied with a one-time tax of $40 000 USD (well, EUR) you have to pay to the state) and, no, people paying 200 K EUR for a brand new car are not happy about paying 240 K EUR so the tax "works".
It's also why the "downsizing" of ICE is happening: much smaller engines, but with turbos. And they do consume less fuel.
Of course now that all the EU countries pushed like crazy for sales of hybrid and EVs, they're now coming up with new legislation in the work that is going to take weight into account (because EV batteries tend to be heavy and they have to find a way to tax EVs).
I mean: those in the EU who bought an EV are kinda getting ripped of... The price of electricity is through the roof (in some cities like Brussels it simply doubled YOY) and they'll now be facing soon a tax on weight (it's going to be a EU directive so all the countries will have to adapt).
What a way to thank people for not buying gas guzzlers!
Belgium probably buys a lot of France nuclear and France has been retrofitting their reactors and there have been a lot of them off-grid for the last year or two. Add to this the Ukraine war energy issues and lack of alternative sources and you get a short-term mess.
Belgium and France really need to look at how to get their respective countries more solarized like Germany - then use solar+batteries to balance the crazy electricity spikes.
There's going to be businesses that need this sort of vehicle and particular hobby enthusiasts will be willing to pay much more to have one, but regular people doing typical activities absolutely do not need these and we should dissuade them from buying vehicles that are so much more dangerous and polluting than others.
If they are goint to increase registration costs, it should also not be merely "if >6000 Lbs, increase $500", but a formula steadily increasing the cost so that mfgrs don't merely post the 'official' curb weight 10Lbs under the threshold. So, something more like $10/year for every 100 Lbs over one ton curb weight.
It'd be even better to do this via fees combined with a congestion tax system. This has worked very well for many cities to charge road use tolls higher in congested times, therefore motivating people to not use vehicles if they can avoid it. In this case, just increase the costs based also on vehicle weight, so the heavy vehicles have higher fees even at 3AM. Plus, this will avoid people avoiding it by registering their beast at their out-of-city home, or their brother's address or something.
You'd likely see more stratification between the DC and adjacent markets though - some proportion of the plumbers based in Arlington might refuse to serve DC proper to avoid the fee (if it were somehow enforced on them, which seems difficult given they're relying on registration) - but that'd lower supply and possibly give plumbers who do remain in the DC market more command over their price.
Either way, when you're talking about running a business, if a 500$ expense is going to break the bank you're probably teetering on the edge of insolvency anyways.
The Ford Ranger was no larger or heavier than my sedan.
My last car was an Equinox...I believe they refer to it as a small or midsize crossover? It's much larger than that old truck in every metric.
And the new Rangers are as big or bigger than older F150s. Seems we're going the wrong direction on car design...
Look at why sprawl occurred, it was not started by cars, it started with trains. The trolleys would allow for undeveloped land to be used, reducing rents that had been increased by demand. Then came the car. Instead of being dependent on the trolley to get you from place to place, you could allocate resources to get there. Economic activity boomed after that. There may be some difference on the implementation of automotive vehicles, but they are not a mistake.
Trains and trolleys did allow for some suburban growth - but the sprawl didn't come into being until cars became the norm for transport... specifically, commuting by train and using cars for leisure could have been the world we live in, rather than this hellish landscape where cars are the norm for getting to the work or picking up groceries.
This may differ from your world view but please just compare the west to east coast where most of the eastern cities were built first without cars in mind and only later expanded - vs. a lot of west coast cities that have always been car first.
The difference is extremely stark.
To each their own.
To me, the "hellish landscape" is the NYC subway system (arguably the best in the US).
While I live in NYC and not LA, I'm a frequent visitor to LA. I'd gladly sit through LA traffic over riding the NYC subway. Sitting in my own personal, clean, climate controlled space, listening to music I enjoy.
I would gladly use Seoul's subway. I only grudgingly use NYC's (and nowadays, I bicycle as much as I can to avoid using it).
Just out of curiosity, have you ever been to Tokyo? I feel I've heard good things about its public transit but have only visited so briefly I didn't get much chance to use it myself.
FWIW many discussions that criticize any aspect of NYC’s subway system often gets shut down with “but we have 24/7 service and they don’t”. Personally, I feel 24/7 service is a contributing factor to the NYC subway’s problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDXB0CY2tSQ
When I think "hellscape", I think of this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
But in America, if you want half a pound of pastrami you're probably going to have to get in a car to get it unless you live in one of the few areas that still follows that sort of dense city planning.
American culture is partly unthinkable without cars because of planning and zoning failures made decades ago. Why don't have suburbs a lot of small super markets and other stores? Why does everybody need to drive miles and miles to get a gallon of milk?
1: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-pon...
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IsMeKl-Sv0
FWIW, many suburbs do have supermarkets and stores in their downtowns/mainstreets. I can walk...10 minutes or so to my local supermarket. But I choose not to do so because I can drive there and buy a week+'s worth of groceries and supplies in one go. I don't think most suburbanites hop in the car to get a single bottle of milk.
As much as there are people that prefer living in cities, there are people that prefer living in the suburbs.
A young twentysomething single me would have preferred living in downtown Manhattan and wouldn't have minded living in a 300 sqft studio, meeting friends, partying, partaking in cultural experiences that only a major city can offer.
Thirtysomething married me finds that scenario unappealing. Having a SFH in a quiet suburban street with a backyard to BBQ in, a garden to tend, lazy weekends with no cultural activities whatsoever, and a car(!) to drive around in is what I want... short of being extremely wealthy enough to have the best of both worlds.
As I said, it will be interesting how well the American suburbs will be able to function. They function only because of heavily subsidized infrastructure and the poor parts of town are the ones paying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...
Everything points to the American way of doing housing and infrastructure is wrong and could be done cheaper and easier if American city planners were to look at other parts of the world.
There is a middle ground with low-weight, low-speed vehicles like 800 lb "golf carts" and 1800 lb Japanese micro-cars.
Japanese micro-cars like the Honda n-box slash get enthusiastic reviews from motorheads and represent a realistic alternative.
I would love a future where we can have cheap super-sub-compact EVs and small utility vehicles. But as long as these Karens get to hand wringing every time they see someone hauling lumber on the roof or they a family pile out of a 1991 Civic said future is but a fantasy.
as ev adoption continues we are going to observe more asymmetry between older cars which are lightweight and relatively lower to the ground, and massive EVs with giant battery packs and high hood lines [0][1]
a hummer EV's battery weighs 3000 lbs and the entire vehicle weighs 9,000 lbs. a 2005 Honda Civic coupe, which is generally very reliable and likely to still be in operation 17 years later, is 2,600 lbs. the civic doesn't stand a chance in a collision with the Hummer.
of course the hummer might be a relatively lower volume vehicle but the f-150 and silverado are #1 and #3 respectively in volume; their ev counterparts are going to be all over the roads in short time. and they have similar increases in weight over their ice counterparts, 6000-7000 lbs each.
i hope i'm wrong but i don't see how the number and severity of traffic fatalities go anywhere but up for the next 5-10 years.
[0] - https://twitter.com/ajlatrace/status/1495124630868213764 [1] - https://twitter.com/DrTCombs/status/1528853211582455814
If you can't handle it then you'll miss some content, the same way you'll occasionally see comments in here posted in a language you don't understand. Do what feels reasonable to extract the information, or just accept that you won't and move on. I guess downvote if you really wanna.
Socially enforcing a high standard of what is essentially typesetting does nothing but discourage people from contributing who may have thoughtful responses but not the time or ability to edit them to your standards.
not to be pedantic but my text formatting makes you "a cognitive process that elicits emotion and rational associations..."[0] is certainly interesting commentary. perhaps it should be interpreted as a compliment? thanks.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscience
models like the VW XL1 and BMW i3 were so exciting, as we shifted towards alternative drivetrains we could sort of "reset" what the auto market had evolved to in the last 25-30 years. they're certainly not mass market vehicles but other models could have followed their lead.
I'm thinking back to my time in high school, when I would see rich 16-year-olds drive up in massive SUVs or trucks. The justification parents had for buying them was that putting their kids in large cars would protect them should they ever get into an accident.
I wonder what will happen once parents like that start buying the kids of today those massive cars. Of course they will be electric.
By killing someone else instead?
Children need slow cars that take forever to accelerate to make them patient on the road and stop them from street racing.
I suspect that mass-market EVs will have a combination of a shorter range, and use some tricks to keep the weight more manageable. Structural batteries, which integrate the battery into the frame, lower weight because the bulky part of the battery is now part of the frame. (Instead of a separate frame and battery.)
If we cannot make it illegal, it should be inordinately inconvenient.
If we cannot make it inordinately inconvenient, we should at least do something so that we can feel better about ourselves having done something.
Whether or not it actually solves the problem - or if there’s even a problem in the first place - barely registers as a concern.
I doubt DC has a lot of 6,000lb personal vehicles on the road, and I doubt a $500/year tax will dissuade anyone from buying one.
Reminds me of how Boulder instituted a steep sugar tax despite being one of the healthiest cities in the country.
This is a yearly punitive sin tax assessed because someone feels a moral imperative to coerce the behavior of others.
> “You can’t ban sales of these things,” says Mary Cheh, a D.C. councilmember who developed the new fee structure, “but you can make them pay their own way.”
My 3 ton pickup truck is my sole vehicle, and has been driven a total of 19,000 miles over the past eight years.
That’s an average of 2,375 road miles per year, over eight years.
In absolute terms, I’m doing a lot less damage to the road and producing a lot less pollution than the individual commuting to work every single day, even if they’re driving an EV (charged by our existing non-renewable infrastructure!).
My truck will also last me for at least another decade, further avoiding the massive carbon footprint inherent in building a new vehicle.
It’s reminiscent of our sugar tax. I now pay an extra 60 cents for a diet, sugar-free soda when we go out for hamburgers, because restaurants are required to collect the tax if you could get a full-sugar soda at their soda fountain.
In a city that was already the healthiest in the country, and has absolutely no obesity problem.
Assessing the cost of externalities is fine.
Useless laws that do nothing — other than soothing the anxiety and moral panic of their authors — externalize the cost of doing so onto the rest of us.
https://3kpnuxym9k04c8ilz2quku1czd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/w...
So the people making these sorts of rules will not be affected by them, and they are just making a moat around the luxuries that they want to enjoy so that they have status over the common folk.
Kind of like politically connected and wealthy people wanting to get rid of gun ownership. They will still have armed body guards provided by the state or that they pay for.
"Paying for the road damage I caused is something I don't like, it should be illegal"
That is how capitalism works. Just make doing the right thing illegal. People complain about the homeless problem but don't talk about how they made it illegal to not have homeless people. They spend insane amounts of resources, like $60k per year per tent, because that is the best option that is still legal.
IMVHO the issue is another: we can't sustain cars in cities anymore because there are too much cars for roads and parking infra. There is no "classic" solution for that: cities can only be just public-transport + only needed vehicles (emergency/work-related etc) to work and being NOT designed for such usage they can't easily be adapted => cities are dead end, we can only rebuild them and we already know that since anything change at a certain speed doing such enormous challenge will be pointless, for when it end we will end up in the similar issues for newer/mutated needs and gears.
Long story short IMVHO we need some "hub", where people live nearby, BUT little kind an on-purpose only like "this is a place where only students and teachers live for their relative active 'duty', here is just a metallurgic area there are a residential part for workers, but just for their working times and all have relatives and homes elsewhere" etc. Tough to achieve but I see no over evolvable option. So far only moderately dense Rivieras have shown life and sustainability. Low density areas became too expensive, high density untenable.
Aside we probably can't sustain anymore entertaining a modern country-wide road network, some countries like Finland here and there have barely admitted something alike, witch means we need something else to move. Small flying drones can be ok for private travel, no I'm not joking, actually a small flying car can cost as a road-born car, on similar scale, the far reduced infra costs compensate extra energy costs BUT that's can work for low weight transports. For logistic is a bit of a nightmare and for that so far I hardly see solutions behind a disperse economy where most of heavy and abundant stuff are local and local only witch is not much achievable. Another is waterways but they are usable only on the sea and large-enough rivers, witch means in too limited spot.
Given this is D.C., I would assume this is just a manifestation of petty malice toward symbols their council associates with people on the “wrong” side of righteous causes.
And that ignores other externalities such as pollution, risk to pedestrians, etc.
I think city councils should even seriously consider banning such cars from busy city centers, like quite a few cities (mainly in Europe) do with older Diesel engines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-emission_zone)
First-of-its-kind? OK
https://www.chicityclerk.com/sticker:
> Vehicle with curb weight of 4,500 lbs or less with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less - $90.88
> Vehicle with curb weight of 4,501 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less - $144.33
> Vehicle, Truck, pickup truck with closed or open bed, or van with a gross weight of 16,000 lbs or less or with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more - $213.82
> Truck or vehicle with a gross weight of 16,001 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more - $481.10
This has been around for as long as I can remember, and there are a number of vehicles (especially minivans) where the lower trim levels pay one fee but the top trim level pays more.
This only vaguely alludes to why some people drive ginormous SUVs. If you "own your own business" you can deduct a truck from your taxes.
My wife works with a doctor who "owns his own business." His family drives giant SUVs because it's cheaper than driving a normal car. The family across the street from me owns a franchise, and both parents drive giant vehicles. One of them is a truck that they use to tow large boats as part of their business; the other is never used for actual business purposes. (But it does have a commercial plate.) They have two kids.
The difference, IIRC, is that instead of amortizing the cost over years, IRS Section 179 allows you to expense the entire cost of a 6,000+ lb. vehicle in a single year. So if you own an Escalade like my neighbor, that's an $80,000 tax deduction in one year.
It's certainly tempting and I'll probably do exactly the same thing once my business makes enough income for it to make sense. The tax code is a thing: use it to your advantage.