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It makes sense to move away from an indirect tax (taxing transportation fuel to fund roads) to a more direct tax. Taxing vehicle miles is still somewhat indirect, versus taxing value added use of the roads. Value added use would be things like passenger miles, cargo miles, etc. Another approach is taxing impact uses, which would be something like gross weigh per wheel x miles.

expect $0.10/mile as a new national toll charge for passenger vehicles. don't expect the gas taxes to be reduced or eliminated, just redirected to something else like ethanol subsidies

 

The nice thing about charging for weight in registration fees and miles in fuel taxes are the ease of doing it. There is no capacity for cheating. Many states like mine have mandatory yearly inspections, which allows the government to track mileage. But do we want the government to track us individually and make up a tax bill. That seems an awful lot like big brother, especially since the roads need to be there for commerce and safety - ambulances etc, whether we travel 2,000 miles per year or 30,000. Tracking also allows the government to grow bigger, but provide no new services, IMHO a very bad idea. The main reason the governments do not want to add to fuel taxes are these are listed at the pump, and politicians do not want to do this unpopular but correct option. Why allow them to track us, simply because they don't have the cajones to raise the fuel tax?

That is the other problem with giving the government more power. Let's just stick to fuel taxes, and removing the ethanol subsidy and adopting a federal oil tax would allow the federal government to give some money back to the states for roads.

 

rather than making up an individual tax bill, it could just be implemented as a $10K tax on new passenger vehicles (100,000 miles @ $0.10/mile). After 100,000 miles the vehicle has to be "recertified" and taxes collected based on the projected mileage remaining on the vehicle.

 

Thanks for posting this. Read this also this morning. Hope that we can keep this civil enough to prevent it going to the Pancake House.

I tend to be one of those that know that taxes are a way of life, and there is no such thing as a free lunch. Do I like paying more because of taxes? No, but I do believe that I need to pay my fair share.

For the sake of this discussion, lets divorce any talk of taxes collected on gas sold being used for anything else other than upkeep/expansion of roads. That can be taken to the Pancake House.

Key point in the article is that the Federal gas tax has not increased in two decades. Using Westegg inflation calculator, the Federal gas tax should be about 28 cents per a gallon (based on 1992 till 2010).

Add to that increased fuel efficiency in the past twenty years. According to this site (RITA | BTS | Table 4-23: Average Fuel Efficiency of U.S. Light Duty Vehicles) between 1992 and 2009 or 2011 depending on the numbers one wants to use - cars are 11 to 17% more efficient today than in 1992. Using the 11% figure, we should be paying at least .205 in Federal gas taxes.

My take is that the Federal and state governments need to peg their gas taxes based on inflation and increased fuel economy. Yes at first there will be pain at the pump. But I do think that in the long term the benefits out weigh the pain at the pump. Maybe then we will get past our addiction to cars that can do 0-60 in 8 seconds, and those of us that owned/own SUV's "just because we might need them".

As to electric only cars. The answer for now is tougher. They do need to be taxed at the Federal and state level for the use of the roads and highways. The best way would be a tax at the charging level, but right now that is impractical to implement.

Add to that counter intuitive incentives for hybrid and EV drivers of HOV access. I smacks to me of government subsidizing sales that benefits corporations and those that can afford them to thumb their noses at those that can't or won't afford the price of entry.

Happily here in Northern Virginia we gave up the "free pass" to HOV lanes for Hybrids. Why should I be able to speed along the road saving fuel and emissions, carrying just me alone? I sat in traffic a few weeks ago on I66 from Tysons to Crystal City during rush hour and was happy that I showed 78mpg for the trip in crawling traffic.

In the end we need to change the way we think about driving. As much as the rise of gas prices back in February and March of this year spurred sales of the Prius and other high mpg vehicles; do wonder how increased gas taxes would have spurred a long term shift in the thinking of what we drive.

 

Amen!

Registration fees for what we drive are a part of the equation. The miles are the important part. I oppose ANY electronic tracing of my miles.

Another amen here!

 

Because of the high costs of new vehicles, the average car on the road is now 10.8 years old. Newer cars often produce lower pollution and are safer, which makes it seem like bad public policy to encourage people to keep older cars longer. Japan actually makes the taxes higher on older vehicles. There is nothing wrong with taxing registration fees at the federal level, but most of the shortfall is at the state level, and each state can easily change these yearly fees, including basing them on vehicle weight or pollution levels. The federal gas tax has not changed in almost 20 years, and the increase to pay for roads may actually help hit cafe goals. Adding federal incentives to keep older cars in the form of higher new car taxes is counter productive to those goals.

 

Taxing based on weight and miles would put the onus on the vehicles that cause the road damage, if implemented correctly.

According to a GAO study, the damage from ONE eighteen-wheeler is equivalent to that of 9,600 cars.

http://archive.gao.gov/f0302/109884.pdf

Right now we are all helping pay for fixing that damage through our taxes. Putting that tax more directly on the vehicles would cause them to increase prices for those using the trucking service, which would place incentives for decreasing the use and/or weight (which would then decrease the damage) or finding better ways to make or use the roads.

Segue...

I wrote up a research proposal for a civil engineering class last month for testing "self-healing concrete" to help prevent road damage and the formation of potholes. This concrete is referred to as Engineered Cementitious Composite (ECC) concrete and is reinforced with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) microfibers.

Where the shear strength of standard concrete is only one-tenth of one percent, ECC concrete has a shear strength of 3 1/2 percent. A test using ECC concrete versus regular concrete on a bridge slab in Michigan showed maximum crack formation width of 3.8 mm for standard concrete versus 50 μm in the ECC bridge slab. Since potholes typically start as cracked sections of concrete that are subsequently "picked" out by vehicle tires, ECC concrete could be a boon for preventing potholes and the damage and inconvenience they cause to vehicles and drivers.
The basic materials cost of ECC concrete is approximately three times that of standard concrete. I believe that this cost may be recouped through future avoidance of maintenance costs and avoidance of damage claims from motorists. The Road Information Program (TRIP) estimates the annual repair cost from bad roads per vehicle to be $402.

 

There already is a special federal tax on heavy vehicles - over 55,000 lbs - and this is by vehicle weight. Unlike personal vehicles these are exclusively for business, and mileage is tracked. I have no problem with taxing these by mileage, but also have no problem keeping the current system and simply raising the tax amounts if it is inadequate.

 

Are they paying 9,600 times what we in little cars pay?

I think that we should also consider demanding that the governments build us a better road for the money that we pay.

I understand that the construction industry might not like roads that last longer and do not require constant repair work.

However as a motorist who is helping to foot the bill I have had it up to my keister with slaloming down the road trying to balance not hitting potholes against not hitting other cars. The traffic congestion caused by shutting down lanes of the road several times a year to patch the potholes is another pleasure that I've had my fill of.

Build us a better road. It ain't rocket science.

 

Since cars don't pay any tax in this catagory, yes. If you include all federal taxes no, but diesel which they use is taxed higher than gasoline. I have no idea if current levels provide their fair share. Most damage is no local roads, not highways and the heavy trucks don't spend a great deal of time on local roads. I am all for having them pay their fair share of costs whatever it is. These costs are simply added to the goods being shipped.

I agree with the first point, I doubt construction is asking for inferior roads though. They will build whatever the government pays them to build.

The condition of roads varies greatly from state to state. I have no idea how to stop lanes being shut down for repairs, but my current state partially because of weather does a better job with lower fuel taxes in repairs than many high tax states. Something very wrong is going on with the management of these projects.

 

Good luck on this, though I will be making calls to the Federal and state level on the gas tax issue. Better yet is to make well crafted letter with the data I have provided so far. Then you don't have some intern repeating some Party line - but have the written word to make the case for sensible taxes to fund our roads... Better to vote out the fools that want to just pad their pockets.

With what I said above, the Federal gas tax should be at least 10 cents higher than it is today. State taxes are harder predict...

Yesterday I was on Georgia Avenue in the Silver Spring area of Montgomery County Maryland. There were deep ruts that heavy vehicles that use that road made. So weight based fees are very much needed as well.

 

Read my post a couple above--the section on polyvinyl alcohol reinforcement for concrete. It's already out there--it has had testing for use in bridges and dam structures and is already in use in Japan and several other countries.

We used to lead the world in technology. Now we rest on our laurels and watch the more technologically advanced countries of the world pass us by.

 

That concrete sounds very interesting. How does it compare in cost to asphalt? Last I recall, it was like a 2:1 or 3:1 for regular concrete vs asphalt costs, and the concrete takes longer. The majority of the roads here are asphalt, except some highways.

I would rather pay extra in fuel taxes to get better roads that last longer. It's been a 6 year, never ending construction zone near my house. Granted, part of that is the interchange improvements happening now.

 

This makes sense and was always inevitable at some point. It will slow the adoption of alternative vehicles to some extent.

 

From what I've read, the cost is 3x regular concrete. The ECC concrete is estimated to last twice as long as regular concrete.

The labor costs of tearing out, prepping, and repaving, plus all the human costs of hours and fuel lost stuck in the traffic disruptions renders the materials cost almost irrelevant.

If the durability claims are anywhere near accurate then we could save a lot of money and aggravation. I'd certainly be willing to pay a little more upfront in order to save money and aggravation on maintenance.

It really needs to be operationally tested on roadways more so that accurate cost analysis can be done to determine whether it is appropriate for projects. It is difficult to believe that this reinforcement product that has been around since at least 2005 has such limited operational test data available.

 

my experience is that a lot of older cars, especially trucks, have been replaced with new commuter vehicles but the truck stays in service for the weekend duty and the teenager's first car. nothing wrong with a 10mpg f250 being used to move a friend's furniture or haul the horses to the rodeo and then driving the prius to drop off the kids at school and go to the office.

 

Certainly the fleet has been aging rather quickly. Keeping old trucks also happened in 1990.
The Vehicle Fleet - Our Nation's Highways - 2000
Average age of U.S. cars up again in 2011, may now head down

Adding $10K to the price of every new car will definitely cause more aging of the fleet, worse mileage, and less safety. It also should push major layoffs in the auto industry and suppliers, one of the few bright spots in the recovery. Its a very bad idea.

 

ChipL pretty well nailed it as far as I'm concerned.
Governments tend to have two, sometimes conflicting, goals in taxation.
The first (obviously) is revenue generation. The second, though, is social engineering. Tax to discourage. Since the government is spending massive amounts of money to increase the nations fleet fuel economy, the fuel tax still seems to make the most sense. And Chip made the most excellent point that the tax should just be a percentage of the retail price - i.e. a sales tax, thereby eliminating the need to revisit the issue constantly.