Comment on Cardiff set to impose SUV parking premium after council approval
FishFace@lemmy.world 2 days ago
It’s not really an SUV premium; it’s a heavy vehicle premium. This makes some sense, as heavier vehicles tend to be bigger and therefore require more space to park. But it would make more sense to have vehicle weight feature as part of car tax and actual vehicle size feature as part of parking permits, since that’s the variable that affects how much parking they require. Using either of these as a proxy for pollution (as is alluded to) is an awful idea, as electric vehicles tend to be larger and heavier than equivalent petrol ones.
luisgutz@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Not to mention that road degradation grows exponentially with the weight.
For instance, the damage caused by a 1 tom car is the equivalent of 160,000 cycle trips! And a 2 ton car will damage the road 16 times more than a 1 ton car.
KitB@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Given how much heavier freight vehicles are than any passenger car, what percentage of road damage do they cause, given the damage seems to grow at O(n^16) ?
KitB@feddit.uk 2 days ago
I assume the exponential doesn’t hold up for some reason, maybe because of the amount of wheels they have. Otherwise it would seem that an LGV (maximum weight to cross borders in the EU is 44tonnes), then at that rate of growth it would deal 16^44 times as much damage as a normal car, which is a large enough ratio that I think it would be safe to say that either the road would be immediately obliterated under any vehicle of that weight or normal cars do so little damage that it would be misleading to represent it as anything other than zero.
To be clear: I’m not trying to say you’re wrong. There’s another option for the growth rate, given the two data points given, that probably makes more sense. I just found it amusing to entertain the thought and go through the process.
KitB@feddit.uk 2 days ago
Seems to be polynomial growth, actually: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
Which makes more sense, but still; a 44 tonne lorry is doing 44^4 times as much damage as a 1 tonne car, which is 3.7 million times as much.
tal@lemmy.today 2 days ago
You know, that does make me think thst laybe with BEVs coming out, they should maybe use a stronger road material.