this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2026
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Fuck Cars

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So many people have no idea the gas tax doesn't come anywhere near covering the cost of car infrastructure (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) by Vanou@sopuli.xyz to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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This is a common carbrain argument

"I already pay the gas tax"

The problem is that it's false.

In a recent study, researchers Stefan Gössling, Jessica Kees, and Todd Litman calculated the social costs of driving. They found that the social cost is about 30-40% higher than what car owners are actually paying

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921003943?via=ihub

That cost is paid by non-drivers.

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[–] lol_idk@piefed.social 17 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

It’s a shame we let those damned bikes take up so much room, and for free too.

[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

And my brother was telling me how bikes don't pay enough of their fair share of the road tax and all that ...

[–] fonix232@fedia.io 3 points 4 hours ago

Doing a bit of napkin math here, but presuming an 80kg person in a 1200kg car vs a 15kg bike (commuter and mountain bikes are in this weight range), accounting for average speeds of 50 and 15 mph...

By my count, to do the same amount of damage to the road, as a single car of the above specs, you'd need somewhere between 30 and 50 thousand bikes travelling down the same road, in 4-5 columns.

And that's a pessimistic estimate.

[–] azimir@lemmy.ml 25 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a study that shows the full environmental cost over the decades it takes for the cars pollution to be handled by the world?

[–] ladicius@lemmy.world 20 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Including fine particles that mostly stem from car tires as far as I know.

[–] nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Only because they’ve drastically cleaned up engine emissions and oil/grease leaks. Not to mention removing lead, and then MTBE from gasoline. It’s interesting watching old movies and seeing how black the middle of concrete roads used to be from oil and exhaust soot.

Not to say that tire microplastics aren’t bad, just that it was so much worse before, that they weren’t worth focusing on.

Possibly also the average weight of cars nearly doubling isn’t helping.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

Plus there are always new and fun chemicals added to tires

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 11 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

The cited article is correct but the summary of the meme is bad.

"I paid for the roads with taxes." Is the text in the meme.

The text claims the meme says, "I paid for everything bad about cars with gas taxes."

[–] Jiral@lemmy.world 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Thing is, you haven't paid it with your taxes either. A lot of the costs haven not been paid yet at all, much of it is financed by debt, and also those who don't use the road in the region pay for it nonetheless.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That’s splitting hairs - usually the debt is financed by defining a revenue stream to pay it

[–] Jiral@lemmy.world 1 points 10 minutes ago* (last edited 5 minutes ago)

Umh, with public debt its not so simplistic, at least if you look at the bigger picture. Budget deficits (that also can have rising financing costs further down the road) can hide exploding and unsupported infrastructure costs for decades and then there are local budgets and bankruptcies of municipalities etc and last but not least there is also simply insufficient road infrastructure maintenance because not even debt can stem the weight anymore.

Also, if you don't need those roads but have to pay a lot for them, that is certainly not splitting hairs either. Hard to imagine for some but even in the US there are places were substantial number of citizens don't use cars very much or might not even own one (even though they could afford one). In better developed countries than the US that number can be even very substantial in urban environments.

[–] Cheese_man@lemmy.world 17 points 10 hours ago

Politicians keep passing gas tax holidays too, to keep people happy.

[–] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

I've never heard anyone make this argument myself, I guess someone has at least once.

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

This month, I bought tires and my insurance renewing: still pretty expensive after being subsidized by 35% by everyone.

[–] phdepressed@sh.itjust.works 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

You're not actually subsidized, the companies are. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[–] lntl@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 hours ago

: (

[–] ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Fuck cars all you want, but you're an idiot if you think you don't need roads as a distribution network for your way of living. Be glad some of the maintenance is supplemented by a fuel tax for now.

[–] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 5 points 3 hours ago

What compels you to to type a comment of this nature? You know we are not advocating for the total abolishment of roads as a concept. What is the point of mentioning that they are a part of the distribution network? It does not argue for more or less cars, but for some reason you ask me to be glad that a tax is paying for a part of it's maintenance, when its maintenance would still be paid by taxes- just other taxes. It would presumably also be significantly cheaper to maintain if we did get rid of most cars and replaced them with alternative transportation, especially bikes. The roads are primarily not being used for logistics.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk -1 points 7 hours ago (4 children)

That's a no brainer. Of course not.

Should it be? Everyone benefits from the roads even if they don't own or drive a car, because I can assure you that every single item in your house has at one point been transported on a road. Roads are primarily made for freight and it's also the large trucks that wear out the roads so the roads need to be maintained. So it should be the large cargo trucks that paid for the roads, right. But then the cost of freight would have to increase. That'd be great, because freight is way too cheap when companies can offer free freight. There's no such thing as free freight. It costs somebody something. Higher freight costs would mean that people would either consume less, which is bad for the economy, or worse, that they'd simply start driving more themselves, which is bad for the environment.

There's no winning scenario as long as everything is dependent on roads, even when you don't use the road yourself.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

A scenario closer to winning is instead of only building infrastructure for cars, we build a comprehensive transportation system where people could choose the best mode for any given purpose.

You might ask yourself why everything is dependent on roads and whether that even makes sense?

And if you disagree with the idea of car and truck owners paying their fair share, perhaps a different proposal?

[–] Octavio@piefed.social 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I'm not OP so I can't be sure, but I think the point is not that gas tax should be increased to the point where it pays 100% of the cost of supporting automobile traffic infrastructure. I think the point is that when carbrains say we shouldn't spend tax money on active transportation infrastructure and we say, "Whaddya mean, we spend tax money on car infrastructure," and they say, "nuh-uh, that's paid for out of the gas tax and we already paid that," they are full of shit.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Yes of course the car brains are full of shit in that claim. Fuel tax was never intended to do that.

I also don't assume my electricity tax pays for the roads where I drive an EV, but perhaps I should ask for a tax refund for the fuel I buy for my lawnmover since I rarely mov the road.

[–] magiccupcake@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

That's not a good thing. Road freight being subsidized means it gets unfair advantage over more efficient transport when it makes sense. So taxes are being used to subsidize inefficient means of transport, at least some of the time.

Making freight pay their share would make them examine how to be most efficient, instead of not caring since they don't pay.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 6 points 6 hours ago

Exactly. Freight should be more expensive.

Companies can only offer free shipping, because their cost is negligible on their end, because the shipping companies have too low prices. It causes over-consumption and more freight.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

Roads are primarily made for freight

[Citation Needed]

That's such an obviously false claim, i only need to front window to see how laughable, but it's also ahistorical, too.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Road maintenance is for freight.

The roads are built for the heaviest users and besides the natural frost damage, the only reason why roads wear down is heavy traffic. Roads that are only used by personal vehicles can last a lifetime while the larger cargo routes needs repair constantly and complete overhauls every 5 years or so. That's where the costs of road maintenance comes from.

We can bitch and moan about cars and traffic all day for all kinds of reasons, but when the question is about who should pay the insane price of road maintenance, the arrow points in one direction: Cargo.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Aye, that is the historical progression: We built roads and highways for automobiles, and the logistics companies took advantage of the subsidized "free" ways. We should absolutely make them pay for what they use. It may seem like this system is "good for the economy," but this kind of subsidy distorts the supply/demand equilibrium and creates deadweight loss. Furthermore, the effect it's had on logistics favors just-in-time inventory systems, distant manufacturers, and large, centralized distribution centers. Wal-Mart and Amazon are one visible result.

Perhaps if we priced the cost of transport into the price of goods, it would be better for most people, as manufacturing and distribution (with the associated jobs) moved back closer to the consumers?

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 2 points 4 hours ago

Yeah, also if road transport cost the actual price, more goods would be transported by rail and water, which is much better for the environment.

"We can't afford rails, large infrastructure bla.bla." Ah.. Okay .. but how then can we afford to replace the current roads every 5 years? It's like everyone just take roads from granted because it's a socialized cost.

[–] lobut@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Did they mean train tracks?

[–] SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip 3 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

I remember driving out West in Arizona and New Mexico, the Interstate paralleling the train tracks. There were at best a handful of trucks on the road, while I'd see these mile-long trains out of the ports of LA or Long Beach every half hour, or less.

I also walked on a section of the original Route 66 that they've preserved in Flagstaff. The U.S. numbered highway system was conceived and built for private cars. As was the Interstate Highway System.

IME, "roads are for freight" is one of those things people just say because it sounds good, and they want it to be true at some level, even though it's so obviously false if you just look around. (I was out there to buy a boat, and buying a tow vehicle and driving it myself was much cheaper than any LTL freight service.)

[–] theneverfox@pawb.social 1 points 5 hours ago

Because the rail companies have taken a short -term approach of eliminating competition and min-maxing current profits instead of investing in infrastructure, the rail isn't really competing with road freight

Rail freight displaces what is can carry, and the rest is done by road. The mile long train cars are moving a lot of goods, but if you parked by the side of the highway and counted semi trucks you'd see tons of them

Technically, the highway system was designed for military response and to stimulate the economy... But if you look at what it's used for? It's totally fair to say it's to transport goods