We need to start taxing vehicles based on the damage they are responsible for.
The 4th Power Law is a principle in road engineering that states that the damage a vehicle causes to a road surface is proportional to the fourth power of its axle load. This means that even small increases in axle load can cause exponentially greater damage to the road.
A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.
The solution is to tax trucks 31,000 times more than cars. Improve walking/biking/trains/public transportation. Private cars should be a luxury which is made a necessity with zoning laws.
"The solution is to tax trucks 31,000 times more than cars."
OK, so what about consequences of that solution? With such taxes, I would expect the count of trucks to drop to ~ zero. Which, for many places in the world, means an abrupt cessation of any large-scale logistics.
Maybe big trucks could be replaced by a huge fleet of smaller trucks, but that also means 20x as many parking spots, drivers (there is a shortage of professional drivers almost everywhere) and much more congestion on the highways.
There aren't that many places that could shift their entire logistics onto rail. Even here in Czechia, where the rail network is about the densest in the world, we don't have much free capacity left on the main railway lines, and existing trains are chronically delayed.
A Prius causes about 50,000 times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 16 billion times more damage than a bicycle.
A truck causes 31,000 times more damage than a Prius.
The solution is to tax trucks 31,000 times more than cars. Improve walking/biking/trains/public transportation. Private cars should be a luxury which is made a necessity with zoning laws.