Featured How to Better Improve our Transportation Infrastructure

Make railroad freight more competitive with Semi tractor trailers. This lowers emissions as locomotives are consuming less diesel per cargo mile, and empties highways, reducing needed highway maintenance.

 

Why? Putting the sales tax on the energy makes 1) Tax administration transparent and prevents the tax loopholes guaranteed to happen in a complex collection system, 2) Allows ever single citizen the complete freedom to choose how to use or avoid using a constrained and polluting resource & 3) is a direct tax on the pollution generated in making the energy.

Why the headlong rush to excessively tax everything? Shouldn't we collectively figure out what is actually needed before arbitrarily deciding to complex and excessive taxation of everything a requirement. The sales taxes already take care of this naturally since bigger things cost more. I'm afraid you have bought into the idea that lack of excessive taxation is why we have infrastructure issues.

Exactly how will this "lower" gas prices? Right now the taxation of gas is a blip on what causes gas prices to oscillate. Then exactly why would we want lower gas prices while hammering vehicles for more tax? It seem like the reverse is a more sensible approach. If someone buys a Monster Vehicle for display, then taxing them annually for something virtually never put on the road is taxing personnel choice. Meanwhile, the cost of properly taxed fuel matches the issue with the solution.

Agree....but what organization?

What makes you think we don't have this already? Identifying the needs and their priorities is done well in many places. The problem is in the politics above the folks doing good jobs here. Identifying all the proper road needs and then spending all the tax revenues on a new sports stadium for rich team owners is the type of problem faced.

Same note as above.

Now we are back to the point I'm really trying to make. We have a completely adequate mechanism for collecting adequate revenue called sales tax, gas tax, and electricity tax. However, due to political blundering, the solution proposed is a new set of excessive taxes and no change in blundering.

 

Rail is a minority carrier, if you want to hit freight you try to move thngs from truck to rail, which is not going to happen with these diesel prices, or reduce road and ocean freight emissions. Rail is already hugely efficient, but slower than trucking which is slower than air freight + trucking. Coal and oil seem to be the major portion of rail billing, where speed is not an issue. Using less coal means less freight pollution, but that has to do with coal exports as well. Building pipelines would reduce oil freight ghg emissions and accidents, but their is a billionair in california spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure we continue to have more oil train accidents and fewer pipelines.

Green Freight facts & figures | EDF+Business
Trucks are the largest source of freight emissions globally, accounting for 57 percent of these emissions. In the U.S., 70 percent of freight tonnage is hauled by heavy-duty, Class 8 trucks. -

 

Or drove CAFE improved vehicles that also use less gas.

Bob Wilson

 

Sales taxes are often a percentage tax, which go up as opec causes shortages, and go down in times like today when opec is pumping to gain monopoly control again. They are a bad idea versus flat taxes.

The problem is the federal fuel tax is too low. It was last raised in 1993, and although costs of construction has gone up with inflation the tax has not. A simple indexing to inflation and fuel economy would make a lot more sense than these yearly attempts for congress to raise the tax, them failing, then paying for short sited road bills with other tax money and deficits. I would be infavor of a $40/barrel oil tax. Its straight forward, and the extra revenue could be used to reduce payroll taxes and slightly increase social security as it would be mildly inflationary for older people with inefficient cars. The current system asks for people to buy less effieint cars and import more opec oil.

Why? Net every state requires annual inspections. People are not good at saving and budgeting. This appears to be a plan to make things more complicated. A oil or a gas tax is simple and cheap to administer, and requires no changing of habbits other than buying a more efficient vehicle, or drive fewer miles, if you want lower taxes.

The big spikes that people don't account for is OPEC oil price spikes. Flat gas taxes reduces the impact of the spikes and troughs.

Yes a higher registration fee is probably cheaper than building toll roads. If you are a light vehicle (under 5000 pounds) you don't really cause road damage. Rural people require more money for access more than city folks, but I think they should be subsidized on road access.

Nope you just raise the taxes. Our roads are crumbling because of mismanagement. Texas is the only state that doesn't have roads subsidized by income taxes and deficit spending
Road Spending by State Funded by User Taxes and Fees, Including Federal Gas Tax Revenues | Tax Foundation.

Certain ways of taxing increase the size of government more, and some of the extra tax money needs to pay for that extra government. The gps schemes for example place a much heavier burden, and cheating. For states that have annual inspections already adding a registration surcharge to heavy drivers (those over 15,000 miles a year) or a guzzler surtax is not costly. The problem here is not the gas tax doesn't work, it is that it is too low to pay for things as it has not kept up even with inflation. It would be 12 cents higher per gallon if they just had it go up with cpi. Efficiency is higher than 1993, but not all that much.

 

Thanks for keeping up with the discussion. I only have good thoughts for those engaging constructively. The point I'm really trying to make clear is looking past the needs and methods of taxation and into the actual reality behind the claims. As always, the idea that gas taxes pay for roads is just not the case. Maybe they should, but right now that is not the case at all. Likewise, I encounter folks who think electricity taxes pay for the grid (totally false as well).

Once the root issues are identified correctly, then appropriate solutions become much clearer. So here is some insight:

1) Road and infrastructure maintenance is poor in some jurisdictions. Yet some locations are well maintained. The difference is not in revenue, it is in planning. Bridge, road, and other major maintenance and repair work takes about 10 years from start to finish. Lots of permitting, regulations, etc. With dismal planning, the infrastructure decays no matter what is happening in the economy. So the idea that revenue problems cause a bridge to collapse is actually a case of government incompetence looking to blame the taxpayer. Jurisdictions that are well maintained bring up to the voters the cost and need for various bonds and taxes to pay for this BEFORE the issues occur. It is very rare to have any citizens reject bonds and funding for planned road and infrastructure maintenance clearly documented. The failing jurisdictions find someone or something to blame after the fact.

2) The size and amount of government employees hired to collect and manage each and every tax results in massive costs to the taxpayer. Putting GPS units on every car in Oregon would cost the citizens billions of dollars for all the manpower involved. Where would this money come from? Obviously to pay for all this government "good idea" and generate the additional revenue claimed would end up making it a huge tax. The only thing preventing ever increasing government from collapsing a state or national economy is some economic understanding of the cost of creating the additional government vs. the return for the cost. Unfortunately, few citizens bother to learn how our tax money is really spent.

 

One big way to decrease the wear and tear placed on roads is to create bicycle lanes that are separated from the road by a strip at least 1 meter wide, preferably with a curb and a strip of grass (or even trees) separating the bicycles from the cars. Additionally, these bicycle lanes need to connect up with places and not be isolated onto just some roads, forcing bicyclists to share the road with drivers for portions of their trip. It should be much cheaper to maintain bicycle lanes than it is to maintain the roads.

I live just outside of Washington DC, where we have some of the worst traffic in the nation. Bicycling is dangerous here because of the drivers. If we improve the infrastructure for bicyclists, it will put less cars on the roads. Bicyclists and cars really should not be forced to share the same roads when there is a high volume of traffic. They need to be kept separate.