A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Tolls should be proportional to vehicle (maximum) weight. Doesn't matter where, it's a good way to charge tolls.
Even from a highway-lover perspective it makes sense - the damage vehicles do to the road surface increases with axle load exponentially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
I think vehicle taxes should be proportional to vehicle footprint and empty weight.
Footprint because larger cars need more parking space, which is generally at a premium in cities. I get that many people need a car but we really don't need people to fight over where to cram their giant SUVs when they usually need to move one or two people and very little cargo.
Empty weight because most cars are nowhere near fully loaded most of the time. And if you spend 99% of your time driving around with one or two people plus maybe a half dozen kilos of cargo there's a big difference in road wear between a car that weighs one ton versus one that weighs two.
Wanna pay less car tax? Get yourself a kei car. Wanna drive around in a battleship with wheels? Pay up for the road wear and space you take up.
If you think that's too onerous for people in rural areas who actually do move stuff regularly you can introduce a truck rebate for vehicles registered in rural areas. (Note: This assumes a system where the car has to be registered where the owner lives.)
Footprint because larger cars need more parking space,
That only matters if you actually have differently-sized parking spaces, like Japan does for its kei cars. Otherwise, even the smallest hatchback takes up exactly the same one whole space as a big SUV.
That's part of why this community is "fuck [all] cars," not "fuck big trucks."
That assumes uniform marked parking spots. A lot of cities make heavy use of roadside parking where your car takes up as much space as it's long plus what's needed to be able to pull out. With roadside parking there's a big difference between a 3 meter ultracompact and a 5 meter SUV. Likewise, wider cars might take up space on the road and/or the sidewalk.
Even with marked parking spots long cars may exceed the length of a parking spot that was perfectly adequate when it was designed. I have something like that near me. There are parking spots perpendicular to a road and long cars routinely obstruct the sidewalk because otherwise they'd be obstructing the road.
I'm all in favor of having way fewer cars around in general but I also want the cars that are there to coexist better with everyone else.
No, it also matters for some admittedly unfortunate street layouts. E.g. here in Oslo we've had some one-way streets with parking on both sides, where we've had to remove parking on one side to allow buses and emergency services continued access in the age of SUVs.
Anything that has some sort of geometric constraint gets worse with big cars, and having an extra disincentive on huge cars is good.
edit: Car size creep will also eventually find its way into parking requirements, and parking norms, terrible as they are, require a certain amount of parking spots, not area dedicated to parking, which will make construction even more expensive.
Most parking garages do have compact car spaces, but otherwise street parking and parking lots are standard sizes.
Although for areas with open street parking (no metered spaces) the smaller cars allow more people to park
so are we going to import chinese evs yet? no no subsidies for ev companies.
They do more damage to the roads, are louder, and take up more space.
They also kill more children because visibility is shit.
He might want to make this toll expressly about that because the SUV loophole has pushed everyone intobuilding them, and there are small SUVs with visibility on par with cars, and monstrous SUVs with horrible visibility. You can't realistically discourage people from buying SUVs in this market, but you could nudge them into buying smaller SUVs with better visibility.
A hero to urbanist, the enemy of suburbanites. Let the war begin
The people outside of the city didn’t vote for him. They don’t matter.
I liked when new Jersey sued New York because of the tolls. I wouldn't be surprised if they do it again
I have family just outside the city and they insist on driving in. I keep telling them just take the train. They're like "no we'll get lost". It's a train. It goes two directions. Follow the sign for New York.
He should! Those fucking monsters are huge!
just do it by weight. if you weigh more u get charged more it should be the same for air planes and all cargo of course. math is math.
Except that electric cars are quieter and leave no emissions, but batteries are heavy.
I get this is !fuckcars@lemmy.world but I would still prefer not to punish electric cars as much as fossil fuel powered ones.
Why not? The heavier batteries are still damaging the road and more dangerous at speed. Just apply a weight levy separate from any emissions levy, that way we don't accidentally encourage huge electric SUVs.
Surely smaller, lighter electric vehicles with max. 100 mile range should be encouraged in cities. I was in a car-free town in Switzerland (Zermatt) over the summer where most of the vehicles were small electric golf carts.
Have a rate multiplier based on fuel source.
Weight, engine sound, exhaust, and size. That combo of things is what everyone else is having to deal with and the money to mitigate the damages and build around them should be paid by them
Do it. SUVs and Trucks in a city make about as much sense as working a ranch with a Prius.
Well I'll be damned. 😂
Get rid of the shiny, personally owned SUVs first. The black Escalades carrying a single driver causing gridlock while I try and get a delivery truck through.
I support this, but I'm curious to know how he defines SUV. I drive a sub compact SUV (Subaru Crosstrek) because it's the closest I could get to a station wagon; they literally do not sell station wagons on the American market anymore.
The only reason I bought a car in the first place was because my wife and I decided to have a kid and we needed a vehicle with some cargo room. We bought the smallest, most fuel efficient option in the market, so I'd be annoyed if I gpt tolled the same as the jack-ass driving a Ford F-150.
oooo, don't say that too loud elsewhere or you'll have angry people claiming that the Outback is still a wagon, despite not having been one for over a decade now.
I also had this trouble replacing my third gen Outback. I went with a 2012 Elantra Touring, which has very similar cargo capacity (but lower towing capacity). but it's hard to come by 14 year old cars that aren't rust buckets.
I can still get a newer BMW, Volvo, or VW wagon, but they're outside of my budget and/or offensive/dangerous (distracting tech, LED headlights, etc). because fuck people who just want a Toyota Matrix, I guess. the VWs were probably the closest to my low budget in the used market
Yeah, there are still technically some wagons on the market, but they're $75K luxury vehicles. It's weird, because I only see people with that kind of money driving sports cars or luxury SUVs, but I guess someone is buying them.
Tunnels types love their big black throbbing Suburbans.
Fuck those things. If you really need to seat 7 people, suck it up and buy a minivan.
People buy bigger cars simply for the tax deduction for their business. My wife has no real need to drive a 6,000 gross weight vehicle but the government awards you with accelerated depreciation for only vehicles over that weight
just more evidence that most people are selfish and will act selfishly even if that has negative consequences for everyone else
Not going to argue with you there
I drive in the metro area about once a week-ish. I hate it. The fleets of livery/car hire/cabs clogging every major route is infuriating. Half are empty and just repositioning for whatever fare they’re picking up. All of their owners fight and lobby against imrpoved public transportation or better train service from the metro airports.
I mean its a start, but what about landmines?
There are landmines in New York?
You sound like someone who's never stepped on an NYC landmine!
Ayyy I’m ‘splodin’ ovah here!
Wonderful. This needs to happen in Australia, pronto
Last time I stayed in Manhattan, there was some sort of organized ride, where modified pickups kept driving by, making tons of noise. It was interesting at first but …… never. Fucking. Stopped.
charge the ugly giant CYbertrucks, or giant TRUCKS more.
YES.
Maybe also levy Uber / Lyft and other "gig" vehicles which clog the roads.
Link to article?
Won't this increase cost of goods entering the city by trucks, idk if that is how things work.
Deliveries aren't coming on pick-ups, which is what "truck" usually refers to in American English.
I think this only applies to people using pickup trucks as passenger vehicles, which is an epidemic in the US because of a dumb legal loophole. Not to commercial trucks.