Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by blihp on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @07:40PM (#19259860)

Are you sure about that? I see garbage trucks, delivery trucks (package, furniture, appliance etc.), lawn service trucks, salt trucks, snow plowing trucks etc day-in, day-out.[1] And to do their job, they probably need traverse 95% of the paved roadways on a regular basis. Granted, you don't typically see 18-wheelers tooling around most neighborhoods[2] but there is quite a bit of truck traffic through even moderately populated urban and suburban areas every day.

[1] If your argument is that these are all 'light' vehicles, my city disagrees with you. They recently cited road damage from the variety of garbage hauling services as a reason to limit our options. Not that I entirely buy that as the only or even main reason they did so... local politics and all that.

[2] However they have been known to use secondary streets when they shouldn't.

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Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by shereadsthenews on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @08:03PM (#19259980)

We're talking about California. There are no major cities in California in possession of snow plows and salt trucks. A garbage truck goes down the street once per week, yes. The overwhelming majority of traffic on most city streets is cars and light trucks. The main cause of damage to most city streets is the mere passage of time, and rain.

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Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by btilly on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @08:20PM (#19260045)

We are talking about California. What rain? :-P

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Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by jacobolus on Tuesday February 26, 2019 @09:19PM (#19260319)

Thankfully CA is now finally pretty well drought free, after getting pretty decent rain the past couple months. https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article226462260.html

Drought map https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/StateDroughtMonito...

Reservoirs are doing well http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=rescond....

Of course, this is an El Niño year, so we’ll see whether we return to severe drought in the coming years.

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Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by Pxtl on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @12:35AM (#19261131)

The salt and plowing trucks are part of the maintenance of the road needed for the cars. You defeat your own point here.

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Re:Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free u... by blihp on Wednesday February 27, 2019 @12:54AM (#19261183)

Not at all. I was making the point that there are lots of trucks on most roads all the time, not that they aren't necessary.

Also, while salt makes the road drive-able in the winter, it actually does long term damage to the road (increases the number of freeze/thaw cycles.) Similar with plows: they increase the rate at which the road surface deteriorates. While they both are necessary to keep roads operable for vehicles in the winter, they are the opposite of maintenance longer term as far as the road surface is concerned.

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