The implication here is that motorists do fund the roads. They most definately do not; VAT and excise duty on fuels and vehicle excise duty are all general taxation - not ifs or buts about it - it's the law. As regards road damage by heavy vehicles, my understanding is that damage to tarmac varies with anything from the fifth to the seventh power of axle weight, which is huge so yes, on the big roads, the damage is almost entirely due to HGVs. This is why they have multiple wheels and axles so they're 'road friendly'.
Bicycles to pay road tax
- Thread starter trevor brooker
- Start date
Whatever HGV operators are paying via whatever mode of tax collection, the allocation to road maintenance clearly isn't enough! All those little squares and oblongs patches applied to roads to fix holes made by utilities or other, simply dent into new potholes after a few traverses by HGV wheels - they should resurface ten yards or so of entire road instead, for a stronger and longer lasting repair? I admit, my knowledge of tarmac is a little sketchy, but the same seems true of whoever is making those utterly useless little road "Repairs". I'd cycle on pavements, but those can be even worse!
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I think road pricing is both inevitable, and desirable. With electric cars costing just 4p a mile to fuel - compared with arounf 15p for a typical petrol/diesel car - traffic will grow. By the way, taxes aren't 'allocated' on the basis of where they came from.
I'm sure you know that hydrogen as a fuel is a disaster in the making. 98% of hydrogen produced now is made by steam reformation of methane gas (one carbon atom and four hydrogen ones). Methane is the cleanest hydrocarbon fuel we have right now. Splitting that one carbon atom from the four hydrogen ones we have in every molecule of methane is VERY energy intensive, which will make the hydrogen not only expensive, but also more carbon intensive than just buring the methane in car engines. Not only do you have to deal with the carbon atom in every molecule (CH4) you also have to heat up massive volumes of superheated steam to mix with the methane in a big high pressure reactor, so in the end, we get more carbon out of the process, the methane's carbon and the heating carbon. What will be done with this? Well, the petrochemical industries smell gold here, they will still get to sell their methane (modified) but they will also get to monopolise the very expensive supply of hydrogen. It is a disaster both for the consumer and the environment, in my view - easily sold to useless classicist, Bojo..... UTTERLY useless pillock.
Then we might make the hydrogen by from water by electrolysis, except it is vastly expensive and even the best electrolysers use 100KWhrs of electricity to make hydrogen containing 80KWhrs of energy - and where will all this electricity come from?
A good website which shows live data on where National Grid is getting its power from can be found here: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/
Most of our power is generated by efficient and clean methane powered gas turbines...... Are we REALLY going to use that power to make vastly expensive electrolysed hydrogen to put in the gas mains and cars?
We need a LOT more careful thinking on this and engineers evaluating solutions rather than petrochemical industry salesmen blagging daft Bojo into wasteful schemes.
Not wishing to derail this thread completely, BUT
For those that don't know, this guy Harry is Jeremy Clarksons real life neighbour and like JC, is both a farmer and a car enthusiast, with youtube channels Harrys Farm and Harrys Garage.
Here Harry talks to the boys at JCB with their own new British designed and built Hydrogen engine, and for me puts a totally different perspective on the whole Hydrogen debate: Where the benefits over electric may be - much lighter weight, extending running time, and faster refueling time being three obvious advantages, especially for buses, tractors, earth moving equipment etc where those aspects matter.
Problem is most of us buy stuff which arrives and moves around on trucks, so we are going to pay eventually either way. Charge hgv drivers more, cost of goods goes up. Would we do better on rail / canal? Well, rail would be easier to electrify I guess, bur (post beeching) doesn't go to enough places.
Hydrogen.. Good if made from excess solar/wind energy. Dreadful if made from methane or coal (yes, you can turn coal and water into CO2 and H2.. Is it a good idea? Only if you own a coal mine, and have no kids).
28 minutes - I'll have to watch the video later.
Short answer though - climate change: solutions have to be sufficient for the radical carbon reductions needed. In very limited ways, hydrogen may be OK. For Joe public to use in big fat cars? No. In small thin cars? Only if it is advantageous over full lifecycle compared to other options. So far it isn't.
This is not a climate change forum, so I won't say much more here, just one more principle: part of the answer is going to be e.g. moving less earth, rather than moving it with a different fuel. That's the kind if mindset change needed.
Good video, well worth a watch. But falls into the very common trap of ignoring the carbon emissions comparison of the various approaches. Without that it is just a qualitative illustration of something that is technically possible, without the quantitative analysis that would say whether or not it is a good idea.
The suggestion that existing car makers should seriously consider just making their existing engines run on hydrogen together with the 'someone else's problem' approach to hydrogen infrastructure are the daftest bits.
A niche solution to unavoidable heavy machinery? Perhaps. Mass market alternative? Not a chance.
That repeat happened due to my inability to make a tablet do what is so easy on a laptop! Sorry.
Harry's theory is all very well, but it just won't happen. Blue hydrogen is out of the question on climate change grounds. We won't have the electricity after supplying e-vehicles (cars, trucks and buses) and replacing gas for home heating to make the green hydrogen needed.
And we don't even have the start of a hydrogen infrastucture but certainly do have with e-vehicles, 42,000 public charging points growing at huge rate, plus 345,000 home fast charging points growing very rapidly now.
Hydrogen will figure in public transport as London is showing after a decade of trials and more H-buses now on order, but they are only intended for the minority longer routes. Pure e-buses will cover all the shorter London routes.
The hydrogen for the London buses is currently being produced at Air Liquide's plant in Runcorn, harnessing waste hydrogen as a by-product from an industrial chlor-alkali plant. Oxford-based Ryze Hydrogen is responsible for transporting the fuel to the fueling station.
But of course that is blue hydrogen too limited in quantity for mass use.
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When these so called 'smart meters' are everywhere, they will be smart enough to know when an electric car is charging, and adjust the pricing.
I think this is the book that shows how the roads were designed for cycles
https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
https://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/
A study by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found that essentially, road damage was related to the 4th power of the relative loads. So 2 to the 4th power is(2x2x2x2 = 16 times as much road damage.
If a bike and its rider weigh in at 200 pounds, and the car at 4,000 pounds. The weight of the car is 20 times greater than the bike and rider, and the road damage caused would be 160,000 times greater.
Where will the hydrogen come from????????
Please do look beyond the sales pitch. The idea that we can make hydrogen (or more accurately release it from its chemical bonds with carbon in methane, or oxygen in water) as a cheap marvel fuel is UTTER BULL ****. As I said above, vast amounts of energy are needed to break the hydrogen from its chemical bonds with water or methane and in the case of methane, you still have that carbon atom to dispose of, PLUS the carbon you burned in order to make teh superheated steam needed in the methane to hydrogen and carbon dioxide reactor (steam reformation of methane to hydrogen and co2).
If we had endless amounts of surplus green energy (and we CERTAINLY don't) we could release hydrogen from water, but this is currently very expensive and very wasteful.
From a 13 amp socket, no they won't.
And as for smart meters everywhere, that's laughable as the power companies know. Large numbers all over the country don't work because they cannot, simply because there isn't the mobile phone signal at the meter that they depend on.
Hardly any of them work where I am for that reason, people go out into the street, even going up the hill to get a signal when they need to make a call.
The whole smart meter scam has been a huge waste of 18 billions of our money, all to be added to our bills. Just watch the electricity bills soar upwards from now on.
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I imagine what they will do is have a tapered tariff. So up to so many kWh/day is at standard rate, then above that it is charged at a higher rate.
All living organisms on earth will need factor 1 million sunblock:
We must rapidly decarbonise transport – but hydrogen’s not the answer
We need to rapidly reduce global emissions before 2030. Developing hydrogen for low-emissions road transport won’t happen fast enough.
theconversation.com
Hydrogen fuel could widen ozone hole - Nature
Likely leaks blot green power's perfect reputation.
www.nature.com
Researchers find 70 percent increase in atmospheric hydrogen over the past 150 years
Earth system scientists at UCI studied air trapped in compacted layers of Antarctic ice and snow to come up with some answers and a few new questions about the amount of molecular hydrogen in our planet's atmosphere. H2 is a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, biomass burning and the oxidation...
This is what the gov think...All living organisms on earth will need factor 1 million sunblock:
We must rapidly decarbonise transport – but hydrogen’s not the answer
We need to rapidly reduce global emissions before 2030. Developing hydrogen for low-emissions road transport won’t happen fast enough.
Hydrogen fuel could widen ozone hole - Nature
Likely leaks blot green power's perfect reputation.
Researchers find 70 percent increase in atmospheric hydrogen over the past 150 years
Earth system scientists at UCI studied air trapped in compacted layers of Antarctic ice and snow to come up with some answers and a few new questions about the amount of molecular hydrogen in our planet's atmosphere. H2 is a byproduct of fossil fuel combustion, biomass burning and the oxidation...phys.org
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