I don't find trucks and commercial vehicles getting a pass all that strange, they are far more essential than passenger vehicles.
I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.
I consider most roads and basically all highways as meant for them, passenger vehicles are the luxury.
> In the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938, Congress asked the BPR for a report on "the feasibility of building, and cost of, superhighways... including the feasibility of a toll system on such roads." The BPR based its report on data collected from extensive highway planning surveys that had been conducted around the country beginning in 1935. The origin-and-destination surveys showed that transcontinental traffic was limited, with traffic heaviest around cities and in interregional movements. Given the low income of most motorists, toll roads would have a traffic-repelling character. As a result, most routes would not carry enough traffic to generate sufficient revenue to pay off bonds needed to finance their construction.
Instead, the BPR recommended construction of a network of toll-free express highways. The BPR's description of "A Master Plan for Free Highway Development" was its first description of what would become the Interstate System. Based on the survey data, the BPR explained that the primary justification for the network was passenger traffic, particularly congested city traffic, not interstate trucking. In fact, the report made little reference to trucks. [0]
Commercial trucking would not start to take foothold over rail until the 1960s, primarily under President Johnson.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal-Aid_Highway_Act_of_195...
That doesn't mean every single last meter needs to happen via truck (lots of deliveries in urban areas can happen via foot or scooter) but ... at one point you need to get the 200 cartons of milk to the supermarket.
We could simply use rail.
The idea that folks on bicycles should be subject to gigantic, badly designed commercial vehicles while going about their business is absurd and a product of decades upon decades of lobbying.
Sure, Just In Time is partly to blame for this. But if your stock intake deliveries now become a monthly event, you need to build a warehouse that holds about six weeks worth of raw material. That's cost.
And unless these folks on bicycles delved for and forged the metal for the bikes themselves, assembled the self-made parts and walked all the way to the Caribbean to get the tree juice for rubber tyres, chances are, a truck brought the bikes to them.
It’s worth looking at Switzerland where they have many electric spur lines that do handle the last mile.
On scale rai is cheaper, but less you use the infra and less you transport at one time more expensive it will get.
Obviously you are not talking about the market price?