Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I don't think the idea is to have a market of roads to chose from. It is to make the existing car market more efficient by fixing the externality of other people paying for the damage you do to the roads by your choice of (heavy) vehicule.




Heavy semi-trailer trucks disproportionally damage the roads, if they'll pay a fair share groceries could become unaffordable.

Is it true? We, the people, currently pay for roads, we would pay for them in the alternative system - so the total amount of the money we need to pay would not change, only some prices (or taxes) would go down and others would go up. Either we care about having food and we would pay high prices for them (with money we saved elsewhere) or we don't care and we wouldn't pay.

> Heavy semi-trailer trucks disproportionally damage the roads

Which is another reason why freight should be delivered by rail. Yet haulage companies have no incentive to maintain an efficient rail network, when they could exploit a subsidised road network instead.


Then switch to subsidizing groceries instead of the the delivery method.

Virtually everything is delivered by freight and freight is responsible for almost all road wear and tear.

You would have to basically subsidise everything.


Unaffordable?

What’s the total cost of all road maintenance vs amount spent on groceries? How about vs all groceries plus all home goods?


OK, unaffordable is overstatement but increase in transportation costs will translate to some increase in prices and given that food is already around 25% higher (with some items 50% higher) than before COVID this increase will not be welcomed.

Even though it may change with technological developments, are you aware that EVs are the heaviest vehicles on the market, by somewhere around 140% the weight of ICE vehicle equivalents?

Model 3 is lighter than BMW 3 series ICE.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: