Sounds like a job for a train to me, and then local dispatch to the relevant warehouses.
That travel from Port of Long Beach to the San Bernardino Valley is not easy. It is constantly congested because the 10, 110, 210, 710, 5, 15, 605, 60, and 91 all connecting POLB to the inner Southern California valleys are also the main arteries for commuters, last mile delivery, and the general populace visiting friends and family. You will get miles long convoys of 18-wheelers at rush hour all trying to get out of the coast.
But that is also a journey that includes two passes between two valleys that are separated by not-insignificant hills, so rail will be difficult.
And because no one had the real foresight to create a direct rail connection from the ports to the inland valleys, there is now a sprawling suburban jungle that will result in the displacement of at least a million people, thousands of businesses, and a good hundred schools if you attempted to do it now.
It’s damned if you do damned if you don’t. The only solution is to somehow get most commuters/passengers off of cars, into mass transit, and turn all the highways into basically trucking arteries.
For those who have never been out there, the industrial parks of the inland SoCal valleys span miles in width and length. This is not just a few city blocks of warehouses. These are practically entire towns who only exist for these warehouses.
that is atleasy my understanding of how a lot of a highway development gets funded, bussiness pay a lot more highway/road tax.
So yes, trucks do pay more in taxes, but that doesn't help the "roads are free" or the "you didn't pay for that" mantra.
Overall looking at all taxes and fees vs costs, semi trucks get a major discount vs the costs they add to the US highway system. They cause a lot of damage and take up a lot of space both from being heavy and driving a lot more miles while being relatively fuel efficient to their weight. This means not only do bridges etc need to be over engineered vs cars but they also need to be repaired more often.
States are in a bind because if they raise fuel taxes truckers will largely fill up in another state. The constitution limits what they can do about interstate commerce. Meanwhile cars are paying annual registration and property taxes on top of fuel taxes while generally being driven vastly less.
They take the money out at the fuel pump, figure out how much you owe for each mile driven in each state, divvy up what was paid and return any over payment to the owner of the truck.
I’m currently sitting in California and they add $0.727/gallon to pay for the “free” roads for example.
Also important to give truckers a quality alternative route to avoid the more sensitive parts of town. Lots of solutions available if town council wants to explore.
How could they, something like fuel tax was last raised in 1993.
Also, where is this warehouse? I’m thinking that when society collapses, that might be a great place to pick up stuff.
This is the same problem with rail lines there. There's nowhere to build new rail lines. People live and work anywhere you might want to lay track.
Trying to build tracks or roads is complicated by geography. There's tons of hills that are impractical to tunnel through and there's a fairly steep grade from the coast to inland areas. The train tracks exist where tracks are most practical.
The thing is, you can piecemeal road improvement, a lane here, a better interchange there, etc, so you're not facing too many NIMBYs at once. You can't do that with a new rail line.
> Also, where is this warehouse? I’m thinking that when society collapses, that might be a great place to pick up stuff.
It is a collection of warehouses, not one single warehouse, and they are in Ontario and Redlands, CA. You can seem them clearly on satellite pics surrounding the I-10/I-15 and I-10/CA-210 interchanges:
https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0825717,-117.4149858,56798m/...