Gas Tax Solution

[SByer]

Note that gas taxes (at least in CA) and other direct use fees account for less than 30% of current road maintenance costs. Everything else comes out of the general fund. It gives me something to yell back when I'm on my bike and somebody says something about not paying for the road.

 

[tennis_trs]

... Without much googling, you find that damage to a road is a function of vehicle weight ratio *to the third or fourth power!* In other words, a small car weighing 2000 lb compared to a Sub Urban weighing 6000 lb is a 3 times ratio, so the 4th power of 3 is over 6000: 6000 times the damage. ... 80,000 lb trucks compared to a 4000 lb EV: over 250 million times the damage. ...

Instead of 6000X and 250,000,000X shouldn't it be
3*3*3*3=81X
and
20*20*20*20=160,000X
which are still large factors.

 

[erichmond]

I live in Oregon, one of the states proposing a per mile tax on EV's. One of the authors of the proposed tax had this to say about it a couple days ago on a radio talk show. First, any tax would exclude EV purchased or in existence before 2014. This exclusion is for the life of the vehicle. (So hurry up and buy your Tesla, those on the fence). This exclusion is to incentivize people to buy EV's. The second part is that they want it to be calculated on miles driven. They don't want a flat tax, like our neighbor Washington state is proposing.

To editorialize, I have no problem paying my fair share for "road use", but I think it should be miles driven and weight of the car, as we know the heavier the car the more road wear. Second, how we report miles driven is a little problematic. Do we rely on people's honesty and submit a form with a declaration of miles driven. Maybe submit of photo of the odometer to show the miles driven in a year. Or do we put some layer of inspection, like we have to bring the vehicle to DMV to have the odometer inspected to verify the number of miles driven.

In Oregon, we have to take our ICE cars to be checked by Dept of Environmental Quality every two years, maybe this would be acceptable, where we take our EV's in every two years for an odometer inspection.

 

[vfx]

...Or do we put some layer of inspection, like we have to bring the vehicle to DMV to have the odometer inspected to verify the number of miles driven.
....

Of course that would be a a great cost at the DMV office but tht's not even the point. The thing is though, why not do it for all vehicles?! The rarely driven collector car (or broken car) has to pay the same as the delivery/taxi/shipping vehicles that use the roads most. That's not fair. And yes and add in weight too.

And 2014 is still waaaay too early. What will he increase 2013 OR EV sales from 500 to 800 units from the state's 140,000 new vehicles sold every year? You should write him to back off.

 

[doug]

A very comprehensive article for a blog. I'm glad to see that TTACs has grown-up post Robert Farago.
The Tragedy Of The Gas Tax | The Truth About Cars

Increasing the price of gas may hurt Americans’ mobility in the short term, but not having an interstate system is the more dire long-term alternative.

 

[vfx]

Well written. The comments are along party lines.

 

[vfx]

Another artificial emergency to fight over is coming

And with most of the 18.4-cent tax per gallon of gasoline set to expire Sept. 30, renewing the tax could be the next political controversy to spark a brawl in an ever more deeply divided Capitol Hill.

The federal Highway Trust Fund — the largest source of cash for mass transit and road improvements — is funded by the tax on fuel. In 2008, when high gas prices kept consumers away from the pump, the fund temporarily ran out of money, forcing Congress to appropriate an additional $8 billion to keep road projects on track.

Artificial because it's something they used to do normally like raise the debt ceiling.