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by hansvm 2069 days ago
> I would prefer every road to be a toll road and get rid of the general taxes that used to go to roads

Off-topic I know, but I'd only like to see this if the tolls were reasonable with respect to the maintenance of the affected stretches of road. $0.50 per car per mile more than pays off a typical 4-lane interstate in a year, yet tolls are often an order of magnitude larger and drawn out for 20+ years.
2 comments
ashtonkem 2069 days ago
A fair toll road system would basically ban semi trucks, since they’re the ones that do the overwhelming majority of the damage.
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hansvm 2069 days ago
That's an interesting idea. I wonder how workable it would be to automate tolling based on axle weight.
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greenpresident 2068 days ago
Germany has a toll system for trucks only:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LKW-Maut

From Wikipedia:

> Germany's LKW-Maut is a toll for goods vehicles based on the distance driven in kilometres, the emission category of the vehicle and the number of axles.

It's meant to compensate some of these damages caused by high weight. If I remember correctly, road damage scales at a power of four of axle weight. It's billed semi-automatically (wireless stations along the road + device in the truck) and you don't even notice it as a normal driver.

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majewsky 2068 days ago
Legal side note: Germany also has a vehicle tax that roughly scales with the size of the vehicle. But this only applies to vehicles registered in Germany. Because of the European Single Market, a lot of trucks running on German highways are registered in foreign countries (esp. Eastern Europe since drivers from those countries draw smaller salaries). The toll was enacted specifically to ensure that those foreign trucks contribute towards road maintenance as well. It does apply to German trucks, too, because the EU has rules against laws that discriminate against foreign EU citizens.
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ashtonkem 2068 days ago
It's incredibly easy for trucks; they're already licensed and weighed. Most trucks in the US already have something in the cab to handle signaling the driver to pull in to the weigh station, implying that adding tracking & billing wouldn't be too hard. We're also starting to see GPS & LTE in the trailers too, to fight theft, so that's an easy integration point.

It's a bit harder with cars, since there's a lot less infrastructure to track usage, and people would rightfully balk at the invasion of privacy.

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rrrrrrrrrrrryan 2068 days ago
Just wanted to point out that carbon taxes are effectively per-mile tolls, but just on vehicles with ICE engines.
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