Roody

The battle over fluorocarbons was something the human species can feel mostly proud about. People responded pretty quickly to complex scientific evidence of danger, there was global cooperation with sharing of the expenses and hardships, and rational plans were developed that led to as good an outcome as could be expected.

Contrast this to the current debacle that is our response to the clear danger of global climate change, or even the lesser threat of crumbling infrastructure. Have we forgotten how to work together to achieve mutually beneficial goals?

Ekdog

Agreed. There was a group of less than perspicacious people who pooh-poohed the idea of doing anything about it but, fortunately, wiser heads prevailed.

Mobile 155

Chewy,
So to be clear you are saying car owners should pay the true cost of driving including the part of the infrastructure they use? And Bus riders should pay the true cost of operation the bus? And cyclist should pay the true cost of using the part of the roadway they use all based on the true cost of the equipment, roads and infrastructure?

cooker

I don't know about Chewbacca, but personally I am in favour of that. If you subsidize a resource or service, people overuse it, and if there are harmful consequences, they get multiplied. I think there are some social programs that should be subsidzed, like health care and education, however even there, you always have to be on the lookout for irrational and wasteful patterns of use, like if everybody is getting a 'free' PhD in Latin and nobody is going into engineering.

chewybrian 

Well, it might not be popular with cyclists, but it is not unfair. However, if we (cyclists not using cars) got back all the money we are already spending to prop up car use by others, then we would surely end up ahead after paying our share for using roads on a bike.

I have to think on that one for a while. I don't think subsidies are good policy, but it seems tedious and somehow wrong to tax walking or cycling.

Mobile 155

Well I can agree with your reasoning. I don't believe people will vote for it but if car owners have to pay for the car and the road use then mass transit users should have to pay for the true cost of mass transit. I don't think there is any way to track usage by cycling or walking so what they contribute to the general fund will have to be as good as it gets.

I do worry that increased cost to trucking will increase costs of goods and food stuffs. Trucking is a business and they pass fuel costs and operating costs to the customer who in turn pass the costs on to the consumers. Last time diesel increased substantially I had gone on vacation and by the time we came home and I went to the store, bread, cereal and fruit had increased by at least 25 to 30 percent. I live in a semi farming, Dairy and ranching area so eggs, cheese and Vegetables, milk didn't get quite as big a hit.

cooker

The truth is that we actually already are paying those higher (true) food costs, just not all at the grocery checkout. If poor people need a food subsidy, let's give it to them, not to the trucking industry to partially pass on to them.

jgadamski

I lived in Tacoma during the Oil Embargo in 1973 (?). I witnessed work car pools and folks trading in their big American cars for tinny little Toyotas.. some people went crazy but most just figured how to make things work. It will be like that should some major interruption of gas supplies or transportation grid. Regardless of how I answer a reporters question, if I need to go to work to feed my family, I'm gonna get there.

Mobile 155

There you have an answer many of us can relate to. During that time the large urban areas in Southern California were on an odd even rotation to get gas to drive. I bought a 500 cc motorcycle because we could get gas every day even if I didn't need it. Some of my fellow worked bought large PU trucks, added another 40 or 50 gallon tank in the back, filled up on their day, parked the truck in the garage and used it to fill their car the rest of the week. But even if I did ride my bike once in a while the motorcycle was the most logical solution to my transportation needs. I never once considered mass transit because it doesn't go where I want when I want. It doesn't come to my house and it doesn't stop where I work. As I said I had bicycles back then and I did ride them but only when I felt like it and only when I wanted to leave the house early and get home late.

Back then a motorcycle got about 40 mpg and was freeway legal. If you wated to go to Tommy"s Burger in LA at 2am you could jump on the bike and get there and back by 4 in the morning. Mass transit stops way before 2 am. Or it did.

I even moved to Seattle for a while and rain or not kept my motorcycle. Then I discovered Bellevue and suburbia. Unlike Seattle I could park a bicycle on my front porch without locking it up and chances are it would be there when I came out to ride it. I wouldn't be bothered as much about cutting back on driving as I was back then, I only have to drive to take my wife to the doctor or out to visit friends or shopping so I only drive about 5000 to 6000 miles a year and I cycle about 7500 to 7800 miles a year. So to me if they drop the fuel tax and charge by miles driven I would score. and if they do it by how destructive the vehicle is I might get a CanAm trike. Score again. I still would like a EV if they could get more than 125 miles per charge and at a better price than Tesla but that is another topic.

I-Like-To-Bike

No wonder, your pet ox would be gored.

Dave Cutter

Oh... okay. I thought you were posting about an American plan.

Dave Cutter

Good and bad... without some religious moral guideline is entirely subjective. Your make-believe gradient level of coerciveness is also... completely subjective. You appear to advocate a tyrannical rule.... by a like-minded tyrant. And... you think driving a car is destructive?

What? What was the name of that "battle" you mention? I was a mature adult at the time.... and was even in the military... yet I don't remember any such conflict. Nor... do I remember that "global cooperation with sharing of the expenses and hardships" you post about. Are you sure that part of history wasn't a dream you had once?

Dave Cutter

Yes.

Mobile 155

I think something that is missed in all of this speculation about a car free world is that without cars and trucks there would be far less need for roads as we know them today. I have been to Africa, Kenya to be more specific, and have seen what happens when the supporting government pulls out and leaves the roads to non car users. They simply stop paving them or repairing pot holes. The Buses are forced to drive on dirt roads or on the shoulder of the highway because the dirt is smoother than the roadway. The truth is if they want the infrastructure of the kind of roads we now have and the truck services we now have the users will have to pay for it. If there are no car and truck users why build roads that will service buses?

The answer most often is people will simply have to grow food on their roof or yard or community garden. But do they do that now or are they zoned to do that? are people fighting to raise chickens in the urban centers? No they are perfectly happy to eat food, by clothes, and hard good delivered by truck, ride in cars that somehow aren't cars because they are rented or called Taxis or borrowed.

I don't see any of this as a American plan nor do I believe it ever will be. It is just the first time I have heard that the ones wanted car owners to pay their full share also want bus riders to pay the full cost of the services as well. I can't believe they will ever get such a plan past the voters or the majority but it is the first time I have heard someone admit mass transit doesn't pay their fair share as well. It was refreshing.

cooker

See eg.
https://books.google.ca/books?id=zue...%20ban&f=false
see page 309: "Reversing a policy decision, the White House said today it would support a new international fund to help poorer countries phase out chemicals that are destroying the earth's ozone layer" New York Times 1990

Dave Cutter

I don't know why people hate history like they do. I was actually very active in the “good works” of the environmental movement. Which by the way... occurred more than 20 years before (your reference) to the 1988 release of "Don't Worry, Be Happy". I really don't believe you were involved in the movement... since you don't even know when it was.

And you apparently don't know much about scientific processes ether.... cause that ain't the way we do it.

But the movement has evolved with great help from Al Gore. And environmentalism has morphed into a modern religion. And... nothing more. No science, just forum posts, and heart-felt beliefs.

cooker

I'm not sure of your point. Right now we have huge highway capacity in North America to accomodate large numbers of single occupant cars as well as other road users If cars and trucks paid a much higher per mileage cost, and as a result drivers opted to drive less and commute by other means, or live closer to work, or carpool, and maybe more goods were shipped by train or more products were manufactured locally to control transportation costs, then traffic volumes would drop and road construction and maintenance costs could go down and maybe even at some point road capacity could be allowed to shrink. But I don't see why the roads wouldn't be maintained for the level of use they saw. It would be a lot cheaper to maintain a road system with fewer vehicles. And the US and Canada are in a much better position to maintain their infrastructure than Kenya is, so I'm not too worried about declining to that level of service.

Dave Cutter

Oh yes... that great beacon of truth... the New York Times. Fit for lining the bottom of the finest bird cages [in 1990]. Link flaming has to be the worse of [internet] public bad habits.

So... did you post under the wrong name? Are you also Roody?

cooker

If by "link flaming", you mean backing up your claims with actual documentation, it's clear you're not a fan of that.

If you were active in the environmental movement in 1968, good for you. I'm sorry you lost interest.

I wasn't actually intending the song reference as a literal historical fact (I don't actually know if you've ever actually sung it, doh!) but more as a satirical reference to the dismissive tone you often adopt in your posts - "stop worrying so much, people, we're all going to die anyway". But chronologically, it is not too far off the discussions to phase out fluorocarbons in the late 1980s.

I'd love to hear more about "how we do [science]". Can you enlighten me?

Mobile 155

When we were told back in the 70s that were would be out of oil in 30 years people assumed that we would indeed see no new resources for oil and started looking at smaller more fuel efficient vehicles. Indeed the public bought more fuel efficient vehicles and we didn't run out of oil. But more fuel efficient vehicles lost tax revenue and so road infrastructure started to deteriorate, it is even alluded to by Roody. Now if they indeed could find a way to decrease car ownership even more than taxes collected would be even less and would lead to more deterioration. Who then would pick up the falling revenue? As the auto industry and after market parts industry slows down and more and more people are forced into the service industry the ability to pay increased taxes and fees decrease and decay becomes rampant. Look at Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore. Look at Stockton and San Bernardino. the loss of tax base equals a loss of ability to fund infrastructure. It is a bit like killing the golden goose.

It is not a wild assumption it can be seen in Greece, Spain, Itally and even Puerto Rico. When the tax base is gone so is the income.

The point is if people were to stop driving cars the government couldn't collect gas taxes or pay per mile fees either. So from a financial standpoint cars do benefit society as a tax base that can be lost.

Walter S

I don't see deteriorating roads around here. Tax revenue seems to fund them just fine. And more fuel efficient vehicles are generally accompanied by higher fuel prices too, which tends to protect the tax base. And fewer drivers means less wear and tear and a commensurate reduction in the need for upkeep.

Roody

I think it's very good that we subsidize roads from other income sources. The roads provide enormous added benefits to everybody in society, far beyond whatever is spent on them. Science, medicine, industry, education, art, sports, entertainment, commerce--all human endeavors rely on good transportation. A community with good transportation is going to steal talented people in all these fields from a place that allows the roads to crumble. I can't think of anything better for governments and taxpayers to spend money on. Nothing else so truly benefits everybody in society (including carfree people) in both the short term and long term. and something that benefits everybody should be paid for by everybody.

User fees are fine up to a point. I believe in a balanced approach to transportation funding. Bus fares support around 25 % of costs. Gas taxes support about the same percentage, perhaps little more. That seems about right to me.

Walter S

I agree. But roads are good if they meet an actual need. I've seen too many empty multi lane highways in South Georgia. It's an ugly waste.

gerv 

This is a great observation. Sometimes, in the process of flogging a phenomena to its finest point, we forget the broader picture. However the road infrastructure is funded, it has a wide range of benefits...

cooker

I agree with the general benefits - but the way they are planned and funded now is highly distorted and destructive. Massive funding goes into facilitating sprawl, and much of it does not come from the people who benefit from sprawl like the real estate developers and big box stores, or the people who take advantage of "free" ways to live many miles from work. I don't blame them for their choices - I just don't want to pay for it. And once such a vast and distributed and high capacity network is built, it becomes a huge ongoing burden on everybody to maintain it.