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To fix the potholes and crumbling roads, federal, state and local governments rely on fuel taxes, which raise more than US$80 billion a year and pay for around three-quarters of what the U.S. spends on building new roads and maintaining them.
I recently purchased an electric car, the Tesla Model 3. While swerving down a particularly rutted highway in New York, the economist in me began to wonder, what will happen to the roads as fewer and fewer cars run on gasoline? Who will pay to fix the streets?
Will toll roads become universal to bridge the funding gap?
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How Electric Cars Could Make America's Crumbling Roads Even Worse
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @02:45PM (21 children)
If the fuel tax doesn't generate enough income, they will make up new taxes or raise existing ones to make up for it. Don't worry, if there is one thing the state consistently succeeds at, it's finding something to tax.
The most obvious tax would be one on electricity. Or maybe on energy in general.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @02:58PM
Buy a shovel with your tax savings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @03:48PM
In our state they just add a annual surtax of $75 for hybrids and $150 for electric. They probably won't fix the roads anyway.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:27PM
Not really, if they were good at taxation, there wouldn't be billions and billions of dollars that goes untaxed due to massive loopholes in the tax code.
What they're really good at as avoiding taxing the rich and paying for things that benefit the poor and middle classes.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:38PM (4 children)
if there is one thing the state consistently succeeds at, it's finding something to tax.
Yes, the odometer. This is not a difficult subject. The hassle will be having to pay the entire new "gas" tax all at once. Maybe a monthly payment plan is in order. Or I-PASS sensors placed on every corner.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @10:19PM (3 children)
Taxing miles is not as correct as taxing energy. An electric car can report the number of kilowatt hours it has used as easily as the number of miles driven. The energy used is a better proxy for road wear than miles driven is.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Tuesday February 26 2019, @10:30PM
The kilowatts are irrelevant to road maintenance, they're the electric company's business, and that's who will collect that tax. If there has to be a multiplier on miles driven, it would be the weight of the vehicle. The odometer is already in place, they take the the readings when you renew the plates. There's no need for extra complications.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @02:01AM
except road wear per vehicle is by miles driven. They could have a fudge factor by vehicle (going up by power of 4 by gross vwhicle weight), since road wear (aka road usage) goes up by that factor.
The fuel tax is a crude proxy for road usage. Miles driven per some factor of gross vehicle weight would be much better than gas tax.
Bigger vehicles tend to use more fuel, and also contribute more to road wear.
now cue all the SUV and pickup truck crybabies and other edge cases... suck it up, buttercups.
At least in some states or areas, there is already an annual or semi-annual vehicle inspection infrastructure in place. No need to over-complicate it like Oregon was proposing to do (obd-II dongles with GPS that phone home periodically). Of course it'll piss everyone off for various reasons.
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday February 27 2019, @11:46PM
Road User Charges in New Zealand
We already charge RUC's for diesel vehicles in NZ; since diesel doesn't have the road tax in the pump price the tax is paid per kilometer driven. Different weight classes have different RUC values. I used to drive a diesel station wagon RUC was ~6.2c/km when purchasing in 20,000km lots (the admin fee is static so bigger purchases are better up to a point); this rate applies to all vehicles 3500kg and below.
Large trucks have much higher rates.
The problem is not difficult to solve. Charging per km traveled is much fairer then building the tax into something else. I have always thought we should remove the road tax from petrol and make all road tax via the RUC model; that way a hybrid driver pays the same tax / km as a V8 driver.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
In California electric cars will pay an additional fee. $100 a year. Starts in 2020.
Road Repair and Accountability Act of 2017 (SB1)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @07:04PM
It was upheld in a referendum also. [ballotpedia.org]. As a concerned CA voter, I looked into this and found that our road spending per mile was comparable to Utah's. Some conservatives were arguing that we spend too much, but I think the driver of our spending has more to do with challenging terrain than liberal government--we have Utah's mountains, snows, and fires and probably more mudslides. Those same sources were also advocating the idea that they wanted us to be closer to the bottom in per-mile spending rather than the top. When I looked into that, I found Mississippi. You generally don't want to be like MS. Sure enough, articles on MS roads are talking about crumbling bridges and such. That's a recipe for disaster in CA, so I believe I was quite rational in agreeing to keep this tax.
I'm quite happy to pay a surcharge and/or higher fuel tax on my vehicle rather than the proposed alternative, namely tracking us to get mileage data. Fuck that. I prefer privacy.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday February 27 2019, @01:25AM
Roads in the US get repaired? I thought they just got a bit of hardfill and tar shovelled into the bigger potholes and then signed off as all OK.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @06:47PM (3 children)
I have an electric car in WA state -- bastards charge me an extra $100 every year for registration: https://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=46.17.323 [wa.gov]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday February 26 2019, @11:13PM (2 children)
The Bastards! Making you pay for you fair share of infrastructure maintenance! What kind of non-libertarian tyranny do you live in, anyway? May I suggest the Libertarian paradise of Somalia [youtube.com]? The answer to Socialism. And now you have cholera.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:15AM (1 child)
Is it really a fair share though? How many miles of gas is that equivalent to under the gas tax? What if the electric car owner drives 100,000 miles a year, or zero? No, a flat tax like that is nowhere near a "fair share."
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:41AM
Doesn't matter. The fact that you raise this question is proof positive that you are cheating on your taxes, and pose a classic case of the "free-rider" problem. So even though it will cost us more in resources than we gain in lost revenue, we will hunt you down, to make an example of you, for the sake of others and the system as a whole. You want taxes to be completely "fair"? Do you think than any human society has the ability to calculate that? No, they do not. So instead, we err on the side of overtaxing the rich, since they can afford it, and going after squeaky wheels such as yourself. We're coming for you capital gains, Chuck! And your falsified mileage! Expect us.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @08:31PM (2 children)
Tire tax. Each tire has specific characteristics, and it is know how much tires wear with general use.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2019, @08:49PM (1 child)
Tire wear is a bad metric, very slight changes in driving style can make huge differences in wear. My SO accelerates moderately while unwinding the steering wheel after a city corner, this is a common behavior. I wait until I'm nearly straightened out before accelerating moderately. I also lift the throttle when I see a red light ahead, coast down and minimize braking. I get nearly twice the tire mileage that she gets. I adjusted my driving style at some point in my middle age after working with tire experts at a couple of different tire manufacturers.
It's the combined turning and accelerating that makes all the difference to the front(drive) tires. But it's hard to see that this would have any appreciable effect on wearing out the roads faster?
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 27 2019, @07:51AM
Alert! AC claiming SO! Alert!!! Obviously not correct. Disregard all comment. Besides, sounds like he is a terrible driver, and deserved to be taxed for the excessive tire wear his bad driving causes? Maybe we need a tax on Break Pads*, so that those who use their brakes more often, due to bad driving habits, could pay for the roads for the rest of us! Hooray!
And they do have an appreciable effect on the roads, when I plow their sorry asses and excuses for vehicles into the blood pavement because they pulled some stupid stunt like accelerating before being lined out. Sorry about your SO, but they really, really, needed to go.
(*Pads that break, when you brake. Then there are those than which they're breaking and not signalling turins and florins in the rigamarrole of the spelling of the English, when, one dare not call it a "language", really. )
(Score: 1) by bussdriver on Wednesday February 27 2019, @01:15AM (1 child)
Physics says velocity and mass are the biggest problem. Drive slower = make a cheaper longer lasting road. duh. HEAVY fast movers cost us the most. SHIPPING companies get measured by their capacity, not the vehicle weight. Don't like that? then buy local... we've been subsidizing teamsters at the expense of trains for generations now.
Electricity is a NECESSITY, it should have zero taxes.
BEST: stock trading sales tax. We all pay tax for real labor and real products and real services; but stock trading (gambling) pays no transaction taxes. Corporate profit taxes-- as labor goes down and is automated income taxes shrink; while corps make more due to increased productivity. Also, outsourcing benefits them less if they are taxed on those gains (more so if the # of external jobs is a factor. they can't hide people jobs while robot jobs are easily hidden.)
Local:
property tax. location dependent; dirt road? then you pay less. few people on your road? then you pay more.
State:
You pay tax every X years on your car anyway; either new plates, stupid stickers for your plates or a new car sales tax. Make & Model of the car is known. WEIGHT + odometer (impact of odometer is tiny but is multiplied by weight; commercial stuff already tracks miles.)
Federal:
new car sales tax.
income tax.
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday February 27 2019, @05:10AM
Never sold stocks, have you? There's an SEC fee on each sale. It's negligible, but it does exist.
(Score: 2) by sonamchauhan on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:59AM
> Or maybe on energy in general.
Or electric vehicles.