- In Europe the petrol taxes pay for road maintenance. Only electric vehicles operate at a loss.

- Train capacity is much, much higher. You couldn't have the density of France, the Netherlands or even NYC without most people travelling by train. LA struggles with 1/10th of the density.

Europe is a large disparate continent, but I don’t know any country (neither Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Estonia, Finland or the UK) that covers road maintenance costs with fuel levies.

In fact in the UK you would be forced to aggregate all fuel and road tax and offset it against road maintenance because there is no direct correlation to be made, as tax is “one big bucket”.

The majority of the planet are going from one point of interest to another at a relative constant rate- but yes people are spread further and further- ironically this is helped by requiring huge parking space everywhere anyone needs to go, and needing huge houses so you can park multiple cars outside. Its a self-reinforcing problem.

(This is most evident when comparing cities like Malmö in Sweden with Orlando, FL. Malmö has a higher total population but approximately 1/20th the road surface).

In germoney, IF i remember correctly, it is supposed to be like that. Seeing the state of the overall..well..corruption of autobahn bridges, roads and the "private" company governing it seems like its either not enough or the bucket has holes OR the money goes elsewhere. Pensions maybe, maybe gas power stations, who knows?

> Its a self-reinforcing problem.

Problem? It is THE BEST solution we have. Any suggested alternatives are worse and less convenient.

I can cycle anywhere in my city in 15 minutes- and anyone else can too.

Yes, it gets cold in the winter in Sweden- and I sometimes have to wear rainware. But the lack of noise, huge highways and being able to walk if necessary is such a crazy feeling of freedom that you can't possibly imagine.

I literally mean, you cannot imagine.

Being able to drink a beer, and then walk with a friend in the evening with my bike in hand, being able to park anywhere at any time, and being able to replace/fix my bike with no money (or, even buy a new bike without crazy paperwork or registration or licensing for my ability to drive it).

Not having anxiety about paying for parking, fuel or ensuring that I have a place to park, not to mention the lack of abusive road-rage folks.

I've lived in other places, and I've visited supposed "car-utopias" where everything is built to "great" standards and honestly the quality of life is just many orders of magnitude inferior. I've never been to the US and stayed in a nice quiet house without it being 30 minutes drive (in stop/start traffic and with aggressive drivers who cut you off) from anything of any value.

So, no, it's not the best option. It's the best option you can think of.

> I've never been to the US and stayed in a nice quiet house without it being 30 minutes drive from anything of any value.

I'm in Canada, not the US, so maybe it's slightly different. But where I live seems quiet. Comparable to the country at worst, where I lived on a through-road to a beach. It's a suburb but I could walk to a grocery store in like 10 minutes, if that counts as something of value.

> in stop/start traffic and with aggressive drivers who cut you off

The stop and go can be bad during rush-hour near major highways, true. But aggressive drivers sounds like a one off bad experience, or lack of experience driving. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but they're an exception not the norm.

> So, no, it's not the best option. It's the best option you can think of.

I'd argue a general solution is better than one that only works for some people.

I wouldn't consider a 25 minute commute while being exposed to freezing rain or heatstroke weather to be the best in any way.

Before I could afford to live in the city, I had A 40 minute commute when the roads weren't closed from snow. That's basically impossible on a bike.

To be completely fair, I've travelled the length and breadth of the US over the course of 15 years and a dozen trips. Bryan, Ohio- NYC- Philly- Montclaire, NJ- SF, LA, Seattle, Orlando, Miami and Daytona...

I've had, what I consider, enough experience to feel like I know what I'm talking about here.

However, I haven't been anywhere in Canada except Vancouver and Montreal (and: downtowns there exclusively) so you could be right that there's something I'm missing, though you said 25 and I said 15, and I'm going to summon that one thing I said before: it was a 40 minute commute because everything has to be made so far from everything else.

My personal opinion is;

A) People drive to nice train stations which great parking or make use of a wide bus network (which runs infrequently to very low density neighbourhoods)

B) People cycle where they can.

C) the roads are used for deliveries, disabled people and when people need to transport their own heavy goods on the occasion it's required,

D) Minor enforcement based on ANPR (need an expensive permit if it's parked for an aggregate of 10h over a month downtown and a minor limit on how many trips can be made) To keep the roads free for those who really need it.

I know public transport gets a bad rap, but that's because the public transport system available in NA is somehow pretty scary and filled with the worst of humanity. Rubbing shoulders with people doesn't have to feel awful, it does when there is overcrowding and a separate social safety issue.

> in the UK you would be forced to aggregate all fuel and road tax

Just to be clear, there's no specific "road tax" in the UK - it was abolished in 1937. Instead general taxation (e.g. income tax) pays for roads.

Your point about places becoming further apart has been made by Cory Doctorow who refers to it as "geometry hates cars".

> Just to be clear, there's no specific "road tax" in the UK - it was abolished in 1937.

While this is _technically_ correct, most powered vehicles on UK roads have to pay Vehicle Excise Duty, which is popularly known as "road tax".

And is a totally different thing, and doesn't fund the roads.

The "road tax" misconception is why I feel the need to point it out as it is inaccurate and is used to weaponise hate against cyclists (e.g. "Don't bloody pay road tax"). In reality, most cyclists also drive (not me, though), but everyone who pays income tax is funding the roads which I agree with as they are shared infrastructure. However, it does mean that drivers are being subsidised by non-drivers.

Of course, with the 4th power weight relationship with road damage, ordinary cars are not really causing much damage compared to buses and trucks, so maybe it's better to state that we're subsidising logistics companies.

> The reasons for this are complicated and nuanced though.

Is it? People love to have personal sovereignty over their transportation, given the choice.

I don't know why it's treated as an exclusive choice. IMO they complement each other well. Take public transport where convenient, else take the car.

You have to understand that road wear cause by personal vehicles is governed by the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

"The fourth power law (also known as the fourth power rule) is a rule of thumb which states that the damage to the road caused by a motor vehicle increases in proportion to the fourth power of its axle load. This law was discovered in the course of a series of scientific experiments in the United States in the late 1950s and was decisive for the development of standard construction methods in road construction."

"Example: Car (total weight 2 tonnes, 2 axles): load per axle: 1 tonnes vs Truck (total weight 30 tonnes, 3 axles): load per axle: 10 tonnes. [...] The resulting damage differential between truck and car is 15,000 to 1"

PS: this is something electric car proponents don't talk much about. In France, we're getting a "car weight tax" too (https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F3...).

> PS: this is something electric car proponents don't talk much about. In France, we're getting a "car weight tax" too (https://www.service-public.gouv.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F3...).

I hope trucks transporting fuel for ICEs get equal treatment.

Are you stupid? This is to steer consumer choice. The truck doesn't have the choice to be heavy or not.

Also, I just learned that this law doesn't concern fully electric vehicles yet...

worth noting that many electric cars weigh 2 tons or thereabout, like the car in your example. internal combustion cars tend to be lighter than that

The rule you linked to basically shows that whether a car weights 1.5 tonnes or 2 tonnes (an EV version of a car model usually weight about 25-30% more) is completely irrelevant to road damage when you have heavy freight using the road as well. The single 30 tonne truck from the example above gives the equivalent road wear to 15 thousand 2-tonne EV's.

Cars a tool of state control and not public transport? If the government wants to surveil someone it’s much easier to see exactly where they tapped their card on and off, and if they want to stop people getting somewhere all they need to do is tell the drivers to shut it down rather than set up a bunch of roadblocks.

ANPR is much more effective than trying to track public transport usage, this isn’t even contestable.

Blocking a bus route has a large knock on effect, same for trains, and nobody is taking a bicycle away from you either.