I’m not quite sure what you mean by “regulation”. Increasing the cost, such as by mandating higher and more comprehensive insurance, or instituting a gas tax are both regulatory measures.

Great question.

The better pitch is to consider the “tax” like an additional permit with increased costs, including mandatory more expensive insurance. It’s the cost of doing business, wrapped into your overhead. The disparity between the large pickups and the smaller sedans of yesteryear are staggering; imagine if you could buy and operate a semi truck with the same costs and licensing as a sedan. Trailers parked in front of your house completely obscuring the street, or taking up extra spots at the grocery store. People who don’t know the size of their vehicle knocking over signs and mailboxes. More roadkill, dead pets, and pedestrian fatalities because there are so many blind spots for such a big truck.

Obviously, pickups and semis are still quite different in size, but the point is that pickups and large SUVs are now so much bigger than sedans–bigger than what we built our streets and bridges for–that they present additional danger.

• Larger vehicles cause more wear and tear on the road just by driving on them
• collisions and accidents are more destructive and fatal due to the more deadly shape and weight
• blind spots are bigger, making the vehicle more dangerous for anyone outside of it
• effects of distracted driving are compounded
• irresponsible drivers get to drive these larger vehicles without any additional barrier to entry

In short: these machines can be used to perform specific tasks, but they are not the same size, shape, or weight of our lived environment. Additional regulation is needed to offset the real effects on people and infrastructure (e.g., more difficult licensing, higher registration fees, higher tolls, etc.).

By the time you get in the car, parked it, you have arrived there in the same time,” said Dr Fuller.

This lie?

Speaking solely for myself here: I used to have a mental block that prevented me from calculating travel time by different modes equitably. If it was a 10 minute drive, or a 20 minute walk, my calculation was anchored to the 10-minute drive as the “real” amount of time, and so the 20 minute walk always felt like a waste of 10 minutes. I think it’s easy to fall into this trap, especially when our lives are busy and we’re trying to save time anywhere we can. But a 20 minute walk is 20 minutes less I have to go to the gym, and 10 minutes less that I have to be hyper alert and driving a 2T vehicle around other people.

Additionally, this mental block existed for me around time spent parking and walking from my car to my destination. Obviously I had to walk from my car, so my brain saw that as +0 minutes. But when I calculated it, I found that I was often spending meaningful amounts of time on this leg:

My urban office is 6 miles from my suburban home (metro area approx 2.5MM people). Even with a highway for half the trip (which gets clogged with commuter and freight traffic during rush hours) the drive is approximately 20-25 minutes during light traffic, or as long as 40 minutes if traffic is particularly heavy. I have to park in a garage, which involves circling for a spot, and then have a 15 min walk to my office. On a good day, 35 minutes. On a bad day, almost an hour.

But taking my ebike (which I only bought because of the many steep hills between me and work) through back roads and sidestreets, it’s 35-40 minutes door to door. Now I get 35-40 minutes of exercise without having to go to the gym, and my vehicle is parked right at thr exit to my building. Plus, I can charge the ebike with company electricity instead of having to pay for gas for my car.

Yeah that’s totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off

It pisses a lot of people off when they can’t park right next to their destination. But that already happens. There is a limited amount of space at places people want to be, so someone will always have to park farther away. Circling the nearby streets for parking is also annoying as fuck, and a huge waste of time.

DS9 writers modeled the Cardassian occupation of Bajor (in part) after the Israeli occupation of Gaza. The book A Different Trek goes into detail if you want direct sources and a fuller discussion of how the Jewish-American writers and actors involved with the show didn’t think it was “ironic” as you put it.

Yes. Specifically trains and ebikes.