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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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But what can you do with it?
-- ubiquitous cry from Linux-user partner
(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.