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Comment by lifeisstillgood | Hacker News Reader

I have two teenagers both of whom are (in my opinion!) quite capable of safely handling something like an e-rickshaw around UK streets … as long as the rest of the traffic is also similarly light weight.

In my “fantasy political manifesto”, I think roads should be (re)arranged so that every child can walk or cycle to school. My new amendment is to add local light electric traffic (those god-awful scooters) and something like these rickshaws, on physically seperate but parallel routes.

Yes a 15 minute walkable city is nice, but a 15 minute drive opens up almost everything

Pay for it by taxing the wealthy btw. Delenda est carthago

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I agree, but investing in separated infrastructure will soon pay for itself - it's easily the best value for money for improving traffic flow whilst also improving people's health (if they choose active travel) and reducing NHS costs.

However, I don't think e-rickshaws will take off in the UK as our roads are already too crammed. Two wheelers (e-scooters and e-bikes) make more sense as they can avoid getting caught up in the four-wheeler congestion.

Also, there's some kind of fake culture war in the UK against any non-car-shaped transport option.

Two-wheeled cargo bikes are already starting to get popular in my area (although I imagine plenty of people see them as an annoying hipster affectation). People ride them pretty carefully -- taking the entire lane, etc -- as they're often carrying children.

So, I'm not so sure electric rickshaws couldn't take off.

Yeah, I see a few cargo bikes round my area (Bristol) too.

I'm not sure what the licensing requirements would be for e-rickshaws in the UK, though. I imagine you'd need registration, MOT and insurance for a non-pedal vehicle and that would make cargo bikes far more economical. If we had pedal e-rickshaws, they'd likely be limited to the same power as e-bikes and only for assist which would make them less popular and I can't see manufacturers being interested in making them.

> physically seperate but parallel routes.

That's the challenge. Seperate, but equal is hard. Routing separarated multiple everything to everything paths for at least three classes (walkers and slow? cyclists, light vehicles and fast? cyclists, cars) gets really difficult where there are intersections, because either the separate paths cross at most intersections, or you're building an awful lot of tunnels and bridges.

As a cyclist, there's also a major conflict within cylists with regard to speed. When you're cycling only a little faster than walkers, it's fine to be on a pedestrian trail, but somewhere around 15 mph, it's not really good for either cyclists or pedestrians to be combined; at that point, IMHO, it's better to be with faster traffic.

Amsterdam manages to have intersections with cars, trams, bicycles, and pedestrians signaled separately and it’s working out pretty well!

Amsterdam is an absolute nightmare to be anything that participates in street traffic in. I've genuinely never met anyone that didn't think this was the case outside of some fringe elements that live inside of Amsterdam (and if I'd have to guess are just used to it).

I don't live there, have been there, had no problems and don't understand why you had any.

In other words a completely unique traffic management solution is hard for people who have never encountered it before.

Sounds like the real problem is a lack of familiarity than anything inherent to the design.

Amsterdam is dramatically lower density than the environments anywhere in Asia. And dramatically more orderly than anywhere I’ve seen in India.

> as long as the rest of the traffic is also similarly light weight.

This. I'd love to use an electric bakfiets to move my kids and myself around, but I'd be doing it on roads where people are moving around 1-2 tonne pieces of steel inches from the bike... The safety engineering of these bikes (and rickshaws) are just nowhere near a car, and unfortunately in my environment I cannot ensure sufficient distance.

Is bakfiets an international word or are you Dutch, but if so aren't most Dutch roads/routes pretty safe for (electric) (bak)fietsen?

Bakfiets is used here and there internationaly, bakfiets.nl is a brand that was pretty dominant ten years ago.

I'm Dutch. Many Dutch roads are, but also here there's a difference between urban and more rural environments. My particular environment has fietsstroken on an N-weg (which is signed at 50 km/h, but people often drive faster) as only option. These stroken were painted before 2006, when their advised minimum width was set at 1.5 m (they're still 1 m). I don't even cycle comfortable there myself, and I've lived in France for years which also didn't have great infra or friendly motorists. I've tried to argue (and will continue to do so) with my municipality for a separate bike road (or trail even), but since we're in a valley and between private land owners and legally untouchable nature areas, that bike road would need to come out of a car road. Since everybody drives here, that's not going to happen unless fuel prices triple or something.

I know it is important that bicycle infrastructure feels safe otherwise people will not start biking. From my own experience safety is usually not a problem, bakfiets are visible in traffic and the kids are obvious in most cargobikes.

My point is that the safety engineering is pretty good because the threats are so much smaller. Cars need protection because they move in very dangerous ways. Infrastructure is important because there is no way to be safe from a car crashing into you at 50mph.

Safety engineering takes a parameter: the environment you want to be safe in. For bakfietsen, the parameter chosen clearly wasn't on kilometers of fietsstroken on through-fares where to most likely collision isn't with another bakfiets or cyclist, but with a car. And it would be very difficult to do so, without turning it into a mini-car I suppose.

The imprisonment of children might be the worst thing about auto dependence. We have British friends who moved to the Netherlands for this very reason, actually, though Brexit makes it tougher.

You could literally pay for it using the money you save on car infrastructure.

So basically Peachtree City, Georgia: https://youtu.be/pcVGqtmd2wM?si=dLa_-qk7A8JtiPyI

Where would you put physically separate routes?

With kids attitudes are more of a problem.When I a kid a lot of kid used to come to school by public transport, but parents are a lot more protective these days.

My teenager does quite a lot by public transport and walking. The main problem is services are not frequent enough between towns (in Warwickshire).

IMO we should tax cars by weight and size, and restrict parking spaces for larger cars.

> Where would you put physically separate routes?

Reduce two-lane roads into single lane roads and make better use of the "removed" lane to transport people via bikes, scooters and even rickshaws (I don't see the advantage of having a three-wheeler when a decent cargo bike would work better).

> quite capable of safely handling

Tuk tuk are three wheelers and handle like a reliant robin and can tip over quite easily .

E-scooters does the same thing better as you hint and they can be rented too . It doesn’t help all that much today .

Could we take matters into own hands and incorporate a new city somewhere from scratch? Or coordinate moving into an existing almost-willing city and take over the government?

I am curious if this could be done with something like California Forever. There are some examples, like Houten in the Netherlands, where the city was planned almost from the ground up with active transport in mind. You also have https://www.bloommerwede.nl/, which is being built completely car-free near the middle of Utrecht.

Calling what is essentially Kanaleneiland "near the middle of Utrecht" is pretty disingenuous. There's not a whole lot of room to go further south without ending up in Nieuwegein.

That aside, the costs of initiatives like these will be enormous. They need to be financed with (or so projectmanagers tell me) those "XL penthouse" apartments and other larger offerings. There are basically no takers for that, not in the least because they'll be significantly north of 1 million euros. Even the affordable housing is generally pricy (think 350000+) and anything in those price ranges will be in the absolute minority.

If there is anything at all around 300000, it will be specifically for a so-called "middle income bracket". This is a very hard to attain bracket unless you are a two-person family with a relatively high but not very high income. For average incomes this bar is very hard to clear.

All that to say, it is clearly not made for most people in the country. Aspirational neighbourhoods meant only for rich people are available in many countries (as a specific enclave). It's part of what you pay for in such a location.

Ten minute bike ride from Utrecht central seems pretty good to me. And yes, nice things cost money when there's a shortage. The trick is to keep building until there isn't a shortage. If bloom merwede had been available when we moved we might not have overbid on a rental and paid a year of rent up front to get a place in Hilversum (which is much less nice and more car focused) instead, thereby freeing up our home for someone else.

This first needs money. And with sufficient attention, the cause can attract culture warriors who weaponize the state bureaucracy against the efforts. See: de facto banning solar power stations in Ohio. So this probably has to happen in a "friendly" state.

> Pay for it by taxing the wealthy btw.

What a fresh and novel idea. Top 1% of earners in UK account for more than a third of income tax btw.

Wealthy = net worth

Top 1% of earners = income

Additionally, what proportion of total income does the top 1% account for? For instance, if they make 1/3rd of all income then paying 1/3rd of all tax is an amazing deal for them. if they only make 1/20th of all income, maybe less so.

This is correlated though. If someone has $100MM in investments, then it's probably producing eight figures a year in interest and dividends, which are "income". Nevermind, a person at this wealth level likely has a high-income job.

I personally treat all capital appreciation as income for the purposes of net worth tracking.

So what's the problem with taxing a deci-millionaire?

Why do you think they aren’t currently taxed?

Why do you think they're taxed enough?

Passive income (rent from assets) is taxed less than active income.

That makes no sense.

Society benefits by rewarding people who work. And society benefits by dissuading people from not working and collecting rent.

Cite? Not true anywhere I know.

They can write off expenses in some cases, and capital gains are rightfully treated differently, but those are not the same situation.

Why are capital gains not passive income?

In the US, we even have a lower tax rate (the capital gains tax rate) for dividends if you have held the asset for more than a year.

Even step up basis when assets get inherited is a bad incentive, not to mention the $13M federal gift tax exemption.

If you want people to swing hammers and perform surgeries, then don’t tax swinging hammers or performing surgeries (or tax it less).

And if you don’t want people living off their or their ancestor’s hoarded wealth, tax it so they either do something with it or dump it so someone else can. This segways into significantly higher land value taxes.

In the US, we even reward people who just sit on unproductive real estate by deferring all taxes via 1031 exchanges (you sell one property and buy another, and there’s no tax). And on top of that, you pay excessively low land value taxes for this store of wealth that the rest of society maintains and protects for you.

Because capital gains can only occur when you sell something you bought. It’s a one time event, specific to a given asset.

income occurs without a change in control of some asset, due to dividends, pass through profits, wages, etc.

They’re fundamentally different types of things happening.

For example: rent == income. Selling the house? Capital gains.

As to if they are or should be taxed at different rates is orthogonal to if they are different types of events.

I can assure you, anyone that owns a home or stocks really would like to avoid treating them the same way. Which is a huge portion of the population, not just some random 1%’er somewhere.

And ‘unproductive’ real estate still pays property taxes.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there definitely are places that will make you broke if you eat there every day.

> They’re fundamentally different types of things happening.

Long term capital gains and dividends are taxed at the same rate in the US. If a company doesn't currently pay dividends its stock price goes up because of a combination of:

a) inflation

b) the expectation of future dividends

c) stock buybacks (a dividend by another name)

So long term capital gains are mostly either dividends or the expectation of dividends.

> capital gains can only occur when you sell something you bought

The ultra-rich can borrow against appreciated assets and never sell. Their heirs inherit much of it tax free and with a stepped up cost basis.

This is getting really weird.

The only dividends that can get taxed like capital gains are qualified dividends and they’re very rare. Because they are dividends from selling capital assets in a business or the like. All other types of dividends are taxed like income.

Which is why the behavior around capital gains.

The loan situation is very very specialized, and loans that aren’t paid back in a reasonable amount of time or have no interest get considered as either gifts or income by the IRS.

For someone sufficiently high net worth, I’m sure there are ways to play various shell games for awhile in this - and if sufficiently frugal, even past their death.

But property taxes still get paid every year, income taxes still get paid on income, and capital gains still get paid when there is an actual sale.

for example, Elon Musk also eventually had to pay the largest tax bill ever as an individual to finance his shenanigans. $11 billion dollars.

How does that fit in your theory?

>The only dividends that can get taxed like capital gains are qualified dividends and they’re very rare. Because they are dividends from selling capital assets in a business or the like. All other types of dividends are taxed like income.

This is incorrect. Lots of dividend income is classified as a qualified dividend.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp

>A dividend is considered qualified if the shareholder has held a stock for more than 60 days in the 121-day period that began 60 days before the ex-dividend date.

>This is getting really weird.

It is not weird at all. We tax wealth all the time. Every state/county has a property tax, some even have a property tax on vehicles. The simplest explanation is this, does society benefit from people hoarding wealth? For how many years? 1 year, 5 years, 10 years? Multiple generations?

Would it not be better if people were forced to get off their ass and continuously earn their keep? Or at least set marginal levels for the amount of wealth one can hoard? Sure, hit the ball out of the park and earn $10M, $100M, $1B. Enjoy it for 5, 10, hell even 20 years. But how does society benefit from this person or family creating an everlasting dynasty?

So you’re saying no one should be able to retire? And should have to work forever?

Weird.

No, the government can exempt a certain amount that allows for a secure retirement. But it doesn’t need to allow for retirees to jetset around the world, buy luxury cars, and leave generational wealth behind.

> The only dividends that can get taxed like capital gains are qualified dividends and they’re very rare

"A dividend is considered qualified if the shareholder has held a stock for more than 60 days in the 121-day period that began 60 days before the ex-dividend date."[1]

I don't know where you got the idea that they're rare. You literally have to hold a US stock for a few months and any dividends from it are qualified.

> How does that fit in your theory?

That Elon Musk's impulsive behavior makes for bad tax planning? I hope I never get into a situation where my poor decisions create an $11b tax bill for me.

1. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/q/qualifieddividend.asp

Qualified dividends - huh, totally wrong on that one. Can’t be right on everything!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_dividend]

The prefix for hundred is hecto, deci means tenth.

I know that. I said what I meant. Every hecto millionaire is a deci millionaire too.

Dividend taxes are lower than income taxes in the UK. So a person getting paid £100k in wages will end up with £68k after taxes, whereas someone getting paid the same in dividends will end up with around £80k, which is around 17% more than the wage earner.

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