Bracelets for Bike Lanes?

The Wogster wrote:

Peter wrote:

The Wogster wrote:

Peter wrote:

The Wogster wrote:

But they get away through the light truck loophole. A big hole we got
there.

The logic is that a truck needs load handling and trailer towing
capacity, but how many SUV's haul more then 45lbs of groceries. If
government does anything, limit commercial vehicle plates to
businesses, then change the fuel tax, so that commercial vehicles
pay say $1/Gallon, and personal vehicles pay say $9/Gallon....
Wanna see how fast many SUVs will get replaced with Insights and
Smarts (both of which are over 60MPG)...



I think it's more likely that you'd see the creation of huge numbers
of new "businesses" like "Sue's Soccer Transport." The SUVs would
still be going on the same grocery store and school runs, but now
they'd have commercial plates.


There is a lot more to creating a business then trying to hide SUV use.

For example, transportation based businesses often need extra
licences, you might need a vendors permit, and a school bus drivers
licence, you might need to repaint your SUV that wonderful diarhea
yellow, that school buses are painted, and you may need extra safety
inspections.
You may need to install extra safety equipment. In other words, you
might need to drive a "short" bus to get away with it. In other words
the state can make it a big pain in the don-key.



State regulations can make lots of things a big pain (as I check over
my 1040), but it's silly to think that creating a new regulation will
only have the intended consequences and won't also cause people to
look for ways to evade them.

In the case cited originally by donquixote above, the government
enacted the CAFE standards but created separate classes for 'passenger
vehicles' and 'light trucks'. One predictable result was that car
makers switched many of their previous sales of passenger vehicles to
the light truck category by creating SUVs and minivans. It's naive to
think that there wouldn't be a similar shift to evade your proposed
$8/gallon price differential between commercial and personal
vehicles. I'd also note that there are lots of vehicles operated by
businesses today that are driven with regular licenses, no special
paint jobs or safety features, etc. Enacting a raft of regulations to
make it "a big pain" for individuals to use the commercial vehicle
loophole would also create a substantial burden for many current
businesses.

Okay the problem too many cotton picking SUV's on the cotton picking
road, a vehicle whos primary purpose seems to be to turn copious amounts
of gasoline into copious amounts of CO2 and NOX gas....

My personal solution was to give my 40 mpg car to my daughter and
instead get around on my 30 miles/Whopper[TM] vehicle instead. My CO2
emissions are greatly reduced, NOx is essentially nil, but CH3 may be up
some. With the current price of gas my fuel costs have only gone up by a
small amount. And refueling is more enjoyable.

Solutions, include more vehicles under CAFE, but that will hurt truck
load capacities, and hurt businesses. Okay higher gas taxes, well that
will hurt business, so exempt business, but that will result in people
creating fake businesses to evade the new gasoline tax.

Gotta better idea?

A higher gas tax, or the more comprehensive carbon tax, strikes me as a
good idea but by itself would hurt the economy. So it should be
balanced by corresponding reductions in other taxes (income, corporate,
etc.) to make the overall package revenue-neutral. Sure, some
businesses that are fuel-intensive would be impacted, but the whole idea
is to encourage changes in how we live and produce things; so
encouraging businesses to move from fuel-intensive methods to more
conserving methods is part of the plan.

Of course raising energy taxes has no chance politically.