yeah, but what they pay isn't proportional to the damage they cause. I'm not advocating any changes, the opinion I expressed was because of the bonehead reply by someone saying they ought to register and tax bicycles. LOL..Ah, yea, their registration IS more, in most states anyway, and they use a lot more fuel hence pay more gas tax than most.
Texas bill that introduces $200 fee on EVs to fund roads just passed
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edyvw
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I wasn’t referring to that. Certain type of rain reacts differently to certain surfaces. Surface in VA works there, but in TX it might be death wish when it comes to performance of vehicles.In Virginia I think the problem, at least with the 2-lane roads, is not so much the climate (well, it rains here) as it is the poor drainage. It's common to have ditches right next to the pavement and it's common for them to overflow onto the pavement. Hitting a puddle of standing water in the road at 45MPH can be quite exciting....
The poor drainage contributes to pavement deterioration. I think at some point it maybe cheaper to fix the drainage than to keep fixing the asphalt that prematurely fails.
The reason I am familiar with this is that some 25 years ago I worked on a project with British military. We had to repave road and road itself was built very well, it just needed resurfacing. Local engineers gave basically formula what to use. However, British engineers wanted asphalt they are using in Britain. Both countries have a lot of rain, so it is not amount of water, but how does asphalt reacts with that climate. It was British way. 2 people got killed within few days. Than they had to go back to mill the road to keep cars on it.
The surface they use was more durable, but doesn’t react very well with local conditions.
There is A LOT of variables going into building road. I will just mention, that doesn’t excuse Louisiana. That is just on State.
I renewed the license for my Mach E for 5 years the end of last year. Cost for 5 years, $ 62.69. That does not go very far in maintaining roads. I did not know about the reduced license fees for EVs until after I had ordered it, so it was NOT a factor in my purchasing the car. An annual road maintenance fee would not ruin me, but it should be based on mileage. I only put 5k miles a year on my Mach E.
So, this is super duper complicated.
Here in CA where everything is expensive... the state has TONS of money but the roads SUCK. I have only driven in other states occasionally, but my experiences there are that the roads are better. Especially the highways which I'm assuming is what the state is responsible for.
So, I think adding taxes and fees for efficient vehicles that won't contribute financially via gas tax, while in a way makes sense, doesn't actually result in better roads. If that's how it worked, California roads would be perfect. But they're not.
In my mind they could simply add something to the state tax return based on weight of the vehicle and annual mileage. It's not a perfect solution but would be more direct in terms of how a driver contributes to road wear.
What we really need is more transparency with how the money is spent and what the "gas taxes" and "EV registration taxes" go towards and how much of it actually goes to road maintenance vs wherever it actually goes.
Here in CA where everything is expensive... the state has TONS of money but the roads SUCK. I have only driven in other states occasionally, but my experiences there are that the roads are better. Especially the highways which I'm assuming is what the state is responsible for.
So, I think adding taxes and fees for efficient vehicles that won't contribute financially via gas tax, while in a way makes sense, doesn't actually result in better roads. If that's how it worked, California roads would be perfect. But they're not.
In my mind they could simply add something to the state tax return based on weight of the vehicle and annual mileage. It's not a perfect solution but would be more direct in terms of how a driver contributes to road wear.
What we really need is more transparency with how the money is spent and what the "gas taxes" and "EV registration taxes" go towards and how much of it actually goes to road maintenance vs wherever it actually goes.
Well, sure, but if the rain can't drain, there's gonna be pain.
Are they responsive to complaints about potholes and traffic signal problems etc?
Here in Virginia, a couple of years ago I called VDOT to report that the traffic signal near my dad's house was not working correctly. It was not detecting left-turning vehicles and would not change to green for them.
I ended up making a left turn against a red light every day for a month because VDOT took that long to fix it. I called them at least 4-5 times over the course of that month.
Most places would consider that sort of failure a major problem to be fixed in 24 hours or less.
Also had an issue with the pavement sinking/buckling badly at an intersection near my house. Here again, it took VDOT weeks to get someone out to fix it. Once they got there, it was fixed in less than one day.
I've noticed NO improvement in this regard with the increased taxes and registration fees. VDOT is still about as fast as a garden slug on quaaludes when it comes to dealing with problems like this.
This made my laugh. Anyway, the thing is, when they do fix stuff, it's not done right. Take Highway 37 for example. I used to commute over that daily. Anyway, that road is in horrible condition. At some point they paved part of it. I was so excited. Well, they only did portions of it, and within two weeks, the new paving was just as bad as the old stuff. I'm sure they spent millions on that and it was a waste of time and money!
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Probably the largest component is weight per sq-in of contact on the road, and you are right, a bicycle would cause very little because a 200lb person on a bike with a 3" wide tire is putting down say 11.11lbs per sq-in, assuming a 3x3" contact patch.
An axle with no load rolling down the road is causing very little wear because the contact patch is considerable with very little pressure on it, so you are imposing very little displacement of the asphalt surface. distilling it down to number of axles doesn't adequately capture this.
A 5,500lb pick-up, like my wife's, has a P285/45R22 tire, which is an 11.2" wide tire, we'll say 11" for the sake of this exercise, and the patch is say 8" long, so 88sq-in, 15.6lbs per sq-in.
We are assuming a uniform pressure distribution for the sake of this exercise, it of course won't be, the centre of the contact patch will be higher pressure than if you were to measure it forward or rear or the centre.
An 80,000lb fully laden semi has a typical tire size of 295/75R22, so an 11.6" tire. We'll say the patch is 6" long due to the higher pressure, so 70sq-in. Assuming a triple axle trailer and double axle cab that's 22 tires, 52lbs per sq-in.
So, the semi would cause 3.5x as much wear as my wife's truck.
Of course this changes based on the dimensions of the tires on the semi and the number of axles. A triple axle dump with the same tire dimensions as our semi and loaded to 42,000lbs is putting down 60lbs per sq-in, almost 4x our 1/2-ton truck example.
Does a fully laden semi burn 3.5x as much fuel as my wife's truck? Approximately, yes. So it's pretty comparable.
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I've got a road near me that was repaved from end to end maybe 3 years ago. The pavement started to fail within a year (sinking/alligator cracking) so they came back and redid a few sections. Now, there's even more places where the same thing is happening.
I think these are the same kind of people that would paint right over a dead bug on a wall.
So insanely excessive then. Thanks. It’s $100 here in Wisconsin. It shouldn’t be more than $50.
This is exactly my concern. My other car gets 35mpg. I’m going to make frugal choices to use less resources and then get charged for it? At that point just up the gas tax and make everyone suffer a proportionate amount for their decisions.
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A crown Vic weighs over 4,000 pounds. A Chevy Bolt weighs 3,500 pounds. A Camry weighs 3,500 pounds. Should those that drive heavy beaters pay more?
There is no fair. Just winners and losers. If your wins outnumber your losses, it's all good.
Yeah, it's so complex, it's never really going to be fair to everyone.
No, heavy cars = more gas used more taxes paid, lighter cars = less gas used less taxes paid. EV = no gas tax paid.
The weight thing on an EV wasn't the best comment I've made true, it's probably negligible differences. Doesn't change the fact that EVs should have to chip in relatively equal amounts for road maintenance.
I guess not breathing in our tailpipe emissions at a light isn’t worth anything.
Not really, no.
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