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How Electric Cars Could Make America's Crumbling Roads Even Worse

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday February 26 2019, @02:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the exceedingly-crumbly dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Phys.org:

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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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:20PM (2 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:20PM (#807011) Journal

    This doesn't work for interstate travel

    The current fuel tax doesn't really work for that either. I live and work in Rhode Island, but I can't remember the last time I bought gas in this state. Might happen three or four times a year. I cross from RI to MA and back to RI every day on my way to work, and the gas station I always stop at is in the middle of that MA portion. Most of my driving is in RI, but nearly all of my fuel taxes go to MA.

    But either fuel or tires is probably good enough for most situations...it's not perfectly fair, but that unfairness is likely to go in both directions and more or less balance out.

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  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:36PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday February 26 2019, @04:36PM (#807024) Journal

    Oh sorry, you replied to the odometer suggestion not the tire tax suggestion. That depends on how often they read the thing but it's probably "good enough" too...

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @03:43AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 27 2019, @03:43AM (#807455)

    It may not be perfectly fair but it is perfectly simple.