The road wear and tear problem seems to be solvable through RUC. You'd probably destroy the transport system doing it overnight. Perhaps it would be a good start to calculate accurate costs and set the RUC rates at those actual cost rates, then apply a discount to get close to current rates. This makes it more visible, and over time you can reduce the discount while also working on building alternate infrastructure.
Dave
joined 1 year ago
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Multiple Firefox windows? I'm not that civilised, I just have 100+ tabs in the one window.
I like to have a 50GB+ swap file. Though Fedora is a bit weird with swap files as by default it's stored in RAM (Yes, extra space for RAM is stored in RAM. I... admit I don't understand the detail).
I use a shit load of RAM on Linux. You guys clearly have amateur numbers when it comes to how many applications you have open at once.
Yeah, I also see in the comments some disapproval at the freight industry not wanting to pay, claiming they get the benefits.
I disagree with that assessment. The freight companies don't get the benefit of shorter routes, what they get is competition forcing prices down on those routes because costs have dropped. The economic benefits aren't to the freight companies, it is a wider economic benefit of cheaper freight and more efficient transfer of freight that is spread across many companies and individuals. Hence why it doesn't make sense for freight companies to pay for, but does make sense for a government to invest in.
When I was using it Searx was a whole pile of tinkering 😆. I think it probably runs just fine without the tinkering, but then you want to stop with all the pinterest results so you try to work out how to filter them out. Then you learn about plugins and so on.
IIRC though, if you're familiar with docker then it was pretty straightforward to spin up an instance.
I don't have strong opinions, but I have traveled through some Canadian towns up through the Rockies, and I think if there was a big 24/7 McDonald's at the entrance to Banff it would have given the place a completely different feel. So I can understand why 30% of residents may have signed a petition to stop this.
I've jumped around lots of search engines over the years, and I quite liked running a self-hosted searx. It was a little slow (think 3-4 seconds to load results on average), but you can reduce this by picking the search engines you use carefully (it keeps stats on response time so you can adjust over time).
I'm using Kagi at the moment but searx was a favourite. I had it on a server, but in hindsight I think I would probably put it on my computer itself to reduce the lag and ensure I could always access it without needing it publicly accessible (my main PC is a laptop). Also, make sure you're using SearxNG, the original Searx is no longer maintained.
Yeah I know. But the current route just seems dumb.
I think it's best not to say it should be a longer sentence because it's similar to a marijuana one, and rather ask why we prosecute marijuana at all (I know the answer is the referendum, but it's still dumb).
The average orchestra must be worth more than the average house!
Now I have to work out how to fulfil the wish for a trumpet while not encouraging it too much 😆. Maybe the cheap plastic ones are the right path.
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There's a really key point here. Heavier trucks cause more damage, but the exponential increase is based on axle weight. If you spread the load out over more axles (keeping the axle weights the same as a smaller truck), then you no longer get the exponential increase in damage and are now in additive damage. Now obviously these trucks cause more damage than one truck (the same per axle, but more axles), but they also move the freight with a smaller number of trucks since each is carrying more.
There are other factors at play too (like the heavier trucks do need roads (bridges) capable of carrying all that weight), but I don't think allowing the larger freight trucks is generally as big of a cause of massive damage as it gets blamed for. I think it's reduced freight costs (one driver can carry more) which increases demand, and there are also other reasons I suspect freight has increased a lot, causing more road damage.
I also want to add that an under 3,500kg vehicle with two axles pays $76 per 1000km. Two axles up to 6,000kg pays $80, so you can already see something isn't right (shouldn't they be paying almost twice as much?). When you get up to larger vehicles things get super complicated and I'm out of my league 😆
Another thing here is weather. Weather causes a lot of road damage, more in some parts of the country than others. I'd guess it's probably possible to estimate what proportion of road damage is caused by weather, if you had access to the right stats. Is it fair to spread this out across RUC bands by weight (heavier vehicles pay for more of the weather damage) or should it be per vehicle? I'm just rambling now, but my point is it's probably not easy to put an exact number on how much of a subsidy trucks get, since a lot of the spread (like who pays for weather damage) is arbitrary. I think it's probably fair to say heavier vehicles are getting more use of the road and so perhaps it's ok for them to pay a larger share of the weather, etc, costs. Which leads me to your next point.
A large amount of freight is between main centres. Imagine if you could throw a rail hub near Auckland and one near Wellington and then use container trucks to get things where they need to go. Easy loading and unloading of trains, no traffic, no dealing with driver rest breaks etc making stuff late because all the trips would be short and easy to schedule a different driver for. If you put some thought into it you could have it working really well. You could work you way to putting heavy electric capability into the line.
Coastal shipping is a great option too, and we already have all the infrastructure for it.
I think reducing the amount of freight going by road is the important bit here. It does cost more to build roads that can take the heavier trucks, but I don't think we will stop building such roads even if we reduced the weights allowed.
All in all, this is a long rambly comment to say, other than some nit picky bits, I agree with you and it would be great if you could get this going for us thanks 😋