Featured New Jersey has it right

• Has higher overhead, but I'm okay with it being optional that don't want miles driven out of state taxed.
• Several states already have such as part of inspection and/or registration; its annual for Pa, and was so for NJ when I lived there. There are already systems in place for preventing odometer fraud.
  
• States with higher registration fees and/pr tax the value of cars already have systems of dealing with this.

• I'm not calling for the abolishment of fuel taxes. However, raising them doesn't address how to fairly tax plug ins for their road use, and while I don't doing so is needed now, it will in time.
• The difference in personal vehicle weights doesn't lead to a measurable difference in damage done. These are roads designed to carry 18 ton trucks for years. If applied honestly, a full size SUV will pay about a dollar more than a subcompact. Winter does more damage than that weight difference.
• Many recent toll roads are operated by private entities, with the gathered funds going to profits. even in the case of public ones, the toll income doesn't go to help pay for roads outside of the tolled area. Toll plazas also increase congestion, and transponder pay systems are intrusive like a GPS for mileage taxes.

 

- Penalizes travels out of state. Traveling though fuel tax states would produce double taxation.

First two already done here.

Tolls on existing paid-for roads? Voter mutiny! And illegal on roads funded in part by federal money, such as the existing interstate highway system. Once the bonds for the local funding portion are paid, any tolls must be removed. BTDT on our original 520 bridge across Lake Washington, though a citizen had to file a lawsuit to get the toll booths shut down. (The new 520 bridge is tolled, and isn't even close to being paid off.)

 

[QUOTE="Trollbait, post: 2971709, member: 12239”]

• The difference in personal vehicle weights doesn't lead to a measurable difference in damage done. These are roads designed to carry 18 ton trucks for years. If applied honestly, a full size SUV will pay about a dollar more than a subcompact. Winter does more damage than that weight difference.
• Many recent toll roads are operated by private entities.

[/QUOTE]

I think a point lost on “weight” being included as a registration metric is that it is one of the legal ways of segregating vehicles into taxable categories without specifically taxing luxury/size.

I think it important to pay to play in congested areas when your cars “footprint” is larger than average, there was a study posted that a rather large affect on traffic density could be made if every vehicle on the California highways were compact instead of “average”. Further less parking and infrastructure is needed for smaller vehicles thus less road costs.

Further even though no one likes it
lower fuel economy vehicles have a large negative effect on a wide array of metrics of which the environment is no small part but even infrastructure costs, spills and other metrics tie into this. Conserving fuel certainly shouldn’t be discouraged and waste encouraged.

lastly privatization of public duties is a scourge on society, in my state the DMV outsources it’s duties of “taxation “ to a private for profit think tank removing any hope of accountability as toward why one car pays $185 but the next $75.

A private politically motivated entity decides how much you should pay.

 

Does this include removing commercial trucks from the highways? Simply reducing the maximum vehicle weight from 80,000+ pounds to just 10,000 pounds would produce a major savings in highway infrastructure costs, both construction and maintenance.

Though cost of substitute transport for goods would be a separate topic ...

 

There is no requirement for a linear weight scale. A log or polynomial scale works for me.

Bob Wilson

 

The weight damage is very definitely nonlinear. It varies with the 4th power of axle load, so a 4th degree polynomial is needed.

 

Not saying I favor Miles-driven, but one method that New Hampshire considered was charging cars an annual regsiation fee based on EPA MPG, so a Prius would owe more due to 50 MPG rating. Essentially assume everyone drives say 12500 miles per year and prorate the fee based on EPA MPG.

Repubs want miles-drven as they can't stand the idea of fuel efficicent cars pay less. They feel if a rural person has to drive many miles with a pick-up truck, the rural drivers should not have to be severely punished with a high gaso tax.

 

The irony is that they miss how much of a rural entitlement that cheap gas is. It takes quite a bit of money to build and maintain all those hundreds of miles of rural roads and I doubt the amount that rural residents pay comes close to covering it. If they had to pay the true cost, it's likely that most of them would either have to move or would severely curtail their driving.

 

As a conservative and usually a Republican, I call horse hockey. I have no such desire and it's dehumanizing to ascribe those notions to other people just because you've never net them. It's vile no matter who does it or who they do it to. On the one hand you have liberals saying that conservatives want to push grandma off the cliff and make the planet uninhabitable. And on the other hand you have conservatives saying that the liberals want to turn this country into another Venezuela. Both claims are false and despicable.

 

I sat in on BiPartisan Policy Center transport meetings, so I know a little about the party positions on where to get tax dollars for road improvements. Sorry if I have over emphasized but I believe that is the gist. I am nor Repub nor Dem. .

 

Do any of the studies of this adjust for the differing tax status of the lands and their management?

Where I come from, the rural areas contain a high proportion of lands that are owned by tax exempt entities, Uncle Sam and Uncle State, but still need road and management services. These entities pay no property tax or sales tax or business income tax. And their labor and operations are paid not with private monies, but with Treasury monies. They are tax consumers, not tax payers.

Considering the greatly different levels of development -- private lands tend to be highly developed, while government lands are typically un- or lightly-developed, I don't know how to make reasonable adjustments for comparison. But simple per-capita tax flow comparisons are clearly not reasonable.

There is one obvious cure to this disparity: sell off these government lands to private entities that will pay taxes. Let them develop it for private benefit. Many on one side actually support this. But many on the other side decry this loss of valuable and sometimes precious public resources and assets.

 

This is NJ, what Repubs?

 

did chris move?

 

Out of the governor's mansion. Comrade Murphy's in there now.

 

No repubs therefore mile-driven gas tax is non-starter in NJ, probably, is what I saying to OP.
If NJ did do miles-driven, that would be very interesting trend setting for Dem state, but I am not holding my breath.

I do not really have a problem with per gallon tax as that favors fuel efficiency. But then they need a fair fee for alternate fuel vehciles.

 

I don't remember how they wanted to do it at the time, but it was the Democrats in NJ that first brought up taxing EVs several years ago and it was shot down. I posted the article at the time, but I can't find it now. I do remember it was Tesla owners that raised hell about it.

Found it.
State senator amends plan to have N.J. motorists pay by the mile, targets electric cars only - nj.com

 

Hybrids and plug ins weigh more, so this runs into making the efficient cars pay more than the inefficient.

I like this as footprint is already defined for CAFE.

The problem with this and weight is that exemptions will be made, which will defeat the intent. I had to pay a higher truck registration on my Ranger. Friend with a Tahoe was only charged the cheaper car rate because Pa classified SUVs as "station wagons".

Which is why I wouldn't call for completely getting rid of the fuel tax.

Privatization would be an issue with GPS monitored mileage, as that seems to be what proposals I've heard were going with.

The profit motive means less of the collected fees going to what they are intended.

[/QUOTE]Fair is easy; choose a standard for the energy content of a gallon of gasoline, and use that to base a tax rate on the alternate fuel. The problem becomes on of collection with refueling that can be done at home. This is how Pennsylvania does it, and plug in owners are suppose to be filing and paying taxes on the car's electric use under that rate, but people don't for numerous reasons.

The issue isn't just with electricity, but also with biodiesel, WVO, and natural gas through home fill stations.

 

More charging stations for NJ, so tax the charge.
New Jersey Towns Codify Support for Electric Vehicle Bill

 

Overall, it would probably be good. But I am seeing some not so great provisions
Bill Details: New Jersey Legislature - Bills

Specifically, they are proposing a BEV/PHEV rebate based on EV miles rather than battery size (like the feds):

Oh, and PHEV are eligible for the rebate, but only until the end of 2022:

Taken together, the Prime would only get a $625 rebate only if purchased between passage of the bill and the end of 2022 (so, at most if you buy between those two years).

I also have reservations regarding this statement:

As my experience with paid charging stations is that their payment structure makes it super expensive for PHEVs to charge.