Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Now look at trucks (18 wheelers) and try to decide if they're cheaper than trains when factoring in infrastructure maintenance.
I was an over the road trucker for a bit, and this was one of the first things that struck me. Going through Chicago is a literal river of trucks 24/7. Absolutely no reason 90%+ couldn't be a train. Just fucking embarrassing really. We let the money management bros into the train system and this is what we get.
It's not a literal river
Figuratively literal means figuratively. It’s even in the dictionary now, sad to say
Doesn't the figurative use of literally date back to shakespear? afaik its acceptable so long as its actually attatched to an appropriate metaphor.
I hope you’re right that there’s at least a qualification, but people don’t seem to know that.
I like to think I’m open to new words joining the lexicon, new meanings as society develops but Its still hard to accept this one.
“Literally” is so overused as hyperbole that we’re going to give it the opposite meaning? wtf? Actually, it’s like a swear word and loses its punch when overused. The act of acceptance of the opposite meaning takes away from its use in hyperbole
It's in a dictionary, not the dictionary. There can be mistakes in a dictionary. It was someone's judgement call. Dictionaries are not prescriptive and you can't really use them like that, anyway.
A big part of this is about who pays for the infrastructure. In the US at least, most roads are paid for by the public whilst railways are paid for by the company that owns them. To make matters worse, while the cost of making a 13 lane highway is externalized, many states charge taxes per track mile, which incentivizes single-tracking.
Essentially what you end up with is that if you're sending goods by train, you're paying for both the maintenance of the train tracks and the roads the trucks use, whereas if you send them by truck you're only paying for the road maintenance. This is a direct government policy that selects for trucking over rail, despite the inefficiency.
This is why I think large companies with lots of trucking should be paying a lot more taxes for roads and bridges. As it stands now, ordinary citizens are subsidizing them while they turn around and raise prices off the back of this. Corporate welfare for nothing in return
But you're not even paying that. You're only directly paying the vehicle tax on the truck, its fuel and amortized operation and maintenance costs. But the vehicle tax doesn't even come close to covering the cost of the damage the truck causes to the road infrastructure. You pay the difference indirectly in other taxation that is a subsidy to the trucking industry, and also taxation that subsidizes the fossil-fuel industry.
So the bias against rail transport is even greater than you indicate.