Streets.mn

This is admirable, but doing the math I don't think it's worth the energy.

$6 is what they get for 25 liters of pee. $6 buys you 120 calories at 5 cents per calorie (1). It takes 24 calories to lift one kg one meter (2) 25 liters of pee is 25 kg, so it takes 600 calories to lift 25kg of pee 1 meter. So in order to earn enough money to cover the needed food intake to move the pee you could only lift each batch of pee 0.2 meters.

Put another way, if one moves each batch of pee more than 0.2 vertical meters total during the transport process (or equivalent energy consumption) then there is a net loss, they would have eaten more food energy than is saved.

This is assuming that the $6 you get for a batch of pee is within an order if magnitude or so from its true value. I.e a batch of pee is worth to the world between 6 and 60 dollars given the market price they're paying.

1 - https://streets.mn/2018/09/05/what-is-the-cost-value-of-a-calorie/

2 - https://answers-to-all.com/language/how-many-calories-does-it-take-to-lift-1kg-1m/

2 things.
First, pretty sure it’s been discussed here previously(edit: and is down thread), but I believe the wear on the road is like the 4th power of the weight.[1] here’s a chart describing it. with that considered, I don’t think it makes sense to even really charge passenger vehicles in the US, when we have huge fleets of 80k pound big rigs on the road(and the limit is uncapped with overweight permits)—charge them.

Second, the problem with tires is that depending on what and where you drive you’ll use them considerably faster. I live a few miles down a very windy chip-sealed[2] road, that I have to drive down any time I go anywhere. As a result(best I can tell) my tires tend to go bald 10k-20k miles early. Chip seal is used because it is cheap, seems regressive that I’d be taxed at a higher rate for a poorer road.

[1] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chipseal

The damage to the road is proportional to the fourth power of the axle weight.

Take a look at this chart:

https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/

and this article

https://www.denenapoints.com/relationship-vehicle-weight-road-damage/

From the article:

"Or where an 80,000-pound 18-wheeler full of cargo is compared to a 4,000-pound passenger car, the truck is 20 times heavier than the car. But taking the 4th power of the relative loads, the semi would cause 160,000 times more road damage than the car. (But my simple calculation is not taking into account the effect of any weight distribution caused by the greater number of axles on the big rig.)"

Even taking into account the number of axles, say, five on the lorry and two on the car we have 2 000 pounds per axle for the car and 16 000 pounds per axle for the lorry. That is a factor of eight, 8^4 is 4096, still a large number.

No, I'm not misunderstanding. I talk with traffic engineers on a regular basis on how the MUTCD is a large barrier towards safer streets. Pavement markings, including lane widths, bike lanes, counter flow bike lanes, HAWK signals, transit lanes and crosswalks affect the street design.

My largest personal pet peeves with the MTUCD is the requirement for far side signal heads. Far side signal heads cause crosswalk encroachment. If signals were near side only like in EU, crosswalk encroachment would be impossible because you lose sight of the signal head.

https://streets.mn/2021/04/30/thinking-outside-the-pedestrian-box/

If you check out my second link in my first comment from NACTO, near the bottom there is a table of various cities and their specific issues with the MUTCD. Mine (Madison, WI) is here: https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FHWA-2020-0001-0258

I get your point, and don't disagree with it, but the analogy you used is still off. In the case of fuel taxes, they're mostly used to fund road maintenance. Since the amount of road damage (and therefore maintenance cost) increases exponentially/geometrically with axle weight[1], it doesn't make sense to tax cyclists because the amount of cost they incur is negligible. On the other hand, it does make sense to charge electric vehicles extra $$$, because they incur road wear but don't pay for it via fuel taxes.

[1] https://streets.mn/2016/07/07/chart-of-the-day-vehicle-weight-vs-road-damage-levels/

I agree, it seems like we’re headed to the everybody suffers equally instead of everybody is benefited equally

Perfect example from a link from yesterday: The removed a crosswalk because it was cheaper to be in compliance by removing it than fixing it [1]

Said another way, nobody…from the traffic engineer to the city counsel…cared enough about the people impacted, that they lobbied or changed the system in such a way that would help the impacted person. Their inputs were ignored or overruled.

[1] https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-we-need-to-prioritize-dignity/