What really annoys me about this is that we had good rail infrastructure here in Germany, then it got privatized in the 90s, which made it shit over the last few decades, which means everything is transported via trucks now, which just puts those costs onto the more expensive roads. Like, that was just a bad decision even before the public cared about climate change.
It’s the whole neoliberal “sell everything not nailed down” approach to government infrastructure that was taken right across the Western world, even from ostensibly left-wing parties. Turns out you can get some cheap money from selling things off and get to brag about a surplus. Who cares that you eventually run out of things to sell and are left with expensive infrastructure and services that only private companies can profit from, that’s a future government’s problem!
Sell things that you’re making profit off of to make money quickly instead of making money long term? Genius!
We all love complaining but when looking at the big picture, Germany still has great rail. Could it be better? Yes, it’s wasted potential. But as someone from southern Europe, this is great. But can’t wait to move to a better place.
I always find this so funny, like people are talking “needing to innovate to solve the climate crisis”. like, FFS, WE’VE HAD ELECTRIC TRAINS FOR OVER 100 YEARS!
They don’t even need batteries! They just need a power line and a little hook!
Adam something has been saying this for ages now… We have the solutions, the problem is greed
Adam Something is a dick though. His urbanism-videos are well-meant but they’re mostly him stating obvious facts angrily, and he’s openly a European militarist and a Russophobe.
Edit: found this post saying “nuclear war actually isn’t that bad guys”
Aren’t we all Russophobes at the moment? I think you need to be more specific.
Russophobe = racist towards Russians. You can be critical of the proto-fascist regime in modern Russia without engaging in racism towards Russian people themselves, in the same way that I condemn the American government and institutions for the invasion of Iraq without blaming the citizens and without cheering every time an American soldier was killed.
Wait… Less rolling resistance is superior to more rolling resistance? How come?
Different efficiency in the engines? Energy sources? Manufactoring costs?
Thanks for posting this. We knew this for a long time, didn’t we? How did Trucks ever win out in long range land-based transport?
Massive subsidies.
Railroads have to pay to maintain the tracks they run on. They also have to pay property tax for owning the rails and land.
Trucks run on public highways that the government pays for. Trucks do pay taxes, but not nearly as much as they would need to to cover the wear they cause to the roads.
If all freight had to fully fund their own infrastructure, overland cargo would be almost exclusively carried by rail, even more so if they had to cover the damages of their carbon and particulate emissions.
To add to this for people who don’t know, road wear scales at a power of 4 with the weight.
So if a vehicle is 2x as heavy it causes 16x as much damage to the road
The average car weighs approximy 4000 lbs.
The ford f-150 is about 5000 lbs, which causes 2.4 times the road wear as the average car.
A big rig with no trailer weighs about 20,000 lbs, which causes 625 times the road wear as the average car.
An truck with an empty trailer weighs 30,000 lbs, causing 3,200 times the road wear as the average car.
A truck with a medium load weighs about 55,000 lbs, which causes 36,000 times the road wear.
A truck operating at the federal weight limit of 80,000 lbs causes 160,000 times the road wear as the average car.
But it gets worse. The average car driver drives 13,000 miles per year. Long haul trucks drive an average of 100,000 miles per year. They are commercial vehicles driving during most of a workday. Trucks drive 8 times further.
In comparison to the average car, a truck hauling medium loads causes around 288,000 times more road wear than a normal passenger car.
Trucks cost more to register than passenger cars, they pay slightly more in tax, but nowhere near the 288,000 times they should.
Trucks are economonically viable entirely due to the massive subsidies they get for being grossly undercharged for the roads they run on.
Edit: On reflection my numbers are probably too high, and extrapolating the available studies to big rigs is probably unreasonable. Trucks have per axle/tire weight limits. Bigger trucks have more axles. A truck with twice the weight distributed across twice the number of wheels will probably be closer to twice the wear than what I predicted. Not enough to negate the conclusion, but real numbers are probably not quite as high as I predicted.
NAZIs, I guess?
(No, seriously: Nazi Germany invented Autobahns to help blitzkrieg tactics, then Eisenhower saw the strategic advantage and copied them to create the Interstate Highway System, then everyone else copied the US.)
While the Nazi’s rolled out the Autobahn, it had little to no military significance. Interior movements biased trains to reduce fuel costs. And how exactly would an interior road help a blitzkrieg tactic into another country?
By bringing quickly the men and resources needed at the border with little to no time for the defenders to prepare?
No they didn’t, they took credit for the previous administration: https://www.dw.com/en/the-myth-of-hitlers-role-in-building-the-autobahn/a-16144981
