People need to see public transport as "roads that don't need cars".
Semis cause 1,400x more wear than cars [1].
Maybe. Reduced transportation costs to businesses permit lower cost goods to end consumers. Your car transporting you to work isn't your only reliance on the road grid.
If the road maintenance cost of transporting the potatoes is priced into the potatoes, then the potato company might opt to transport the potatoes in a different (cheaper) way.
But if the road maintenance costs appear free or near-free to the potato company, they have no incentive to care about it. Also it makes drivers who don't eat potatoes subsidize the potato consumers.
If road taxes are directly tied to the things causing wear, then every company causing that wear has an incentive to find a transport method that causes less wear (assuming that the additional cost of that transport method is lower than the cost of the road wear - that's why some people argue that using markets is better than using rules; if you've properly priced the market, the market will balance between road and rail based on cost.)
That's why it's important to make sure that all externalities are directly tied into the cost of whatever is creating those externalities.
That's actually not true. Capitalism always works, no matter the problem. However, free markets don't account for externalities, and in some cases supply/demand constraints create unacceptable non-economic problems. Thus, to avoid the effects of non-economical problems then it's preferable to create economic incentives that reflect the non-economic constraints.
Then again, if everyone in my apartment complex splits a water bill, there's not much incentive for me to use less water.
If it's truly the heavy vehicles ruining the road, and so we somehow charge the much more, then perhaps measures will be taken to address that cost...
I'm not sure the potato subsidy is worth distorting the transport economics.
The problem is that non-truck solutions cost more relatively due to government intervention, messing up the market's ability to find more optimal solutions. This one is simple, it doesn't even require you to think about carbon taxes to do the math. It's direct costs, subsidies to a certain technology. Don't pick winners and losers, create an environment where capitalism can function and find the actual best solutions.
Charge trucks for damage they directly cause to roads. Simple.
"Talk about a ‘superload’! Check out what just crawled along Washington highways"
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/talk-about-a-superl...
If the potato trucks had to pay for the full cost of roads, then they would be incentived to drive that cost down.
Aligning incentives is important.
More realistically, potato prices would go up to reflect operational costs.
Which is the entire point. To incentivize people to change their behavior.
Net result would be better prices for local farms, less road maintenance needed, no impact to the end consumer overall (less taxes to support less roads).
Buying less stuff > spending tens of extra hours per week getting from place to place.
Honestly, I feel the same way, since most time I spend driving I spend sitting in traffic or something.
However, there really is an element of freedom. You can drive where you want when you want. It's just that the average person sits in bumper to bumper traffic.
When I need to clear my head, I still hop in the car and go for a drive with music. Not also afraid to admit -- I've had some of my most cathartic, emotional-cleansing crys in the vehicle by myself.
In this day and age where there are fewer and fewer places to go to truly be alone with one's own thoughts, sometimes my vehicle is my own personal sanctuary.