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We need better road pricing mechanisms for electric vehicles. If roads can no longer be funded at least by fuel taxes, that leaves an immediate revenue shortfal

We need better road pricing mechanisms for electric vehicles. If roads can no longer be funded at least by fuel taxes, that leaves an immediate revenue shortfall. Simply increasing registration fees does not consider variable levels and times of car use. Ideally we would have an open standard used by all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the Government. This could be used for road pricing and integrated into the display panel of the vehicle.

simonsarris 7y ago
Roads in the US are already >50% not funded by fuel taxes. What's wrong with tolls and other means, or say primarily taxing large trucks, which primarily do most of the wear, if you're concerned about fairness? > Ideally [...] all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the Government It is not often that one man's "ideally" is another man's "dystopia" so succinctly.
- Creationer 7y ago
  That still fails to address congestion. The problem is similar to the electricity sector - we spend a lot of money creating capacity to handle peak-loads. If we simply time-shifted some road demand, or generally reduced the peak levels of road use, it would have a non-linearly positive benefit. A rough example: people often decide to buy lunch from cafe's at the arbitrary time of 12:00 midday onwards, forming large queues. If more people bought at 11:30am, the actual time difference is minor, but demand can be handled a lot more effectively. Same thing with people arbitrarily deciding to leave work and drive home simultaneously at an arbitrary 5:00pm. If using the road at that time cost $2, and 30 minutes earlier $0.50, you can very effectively shift demand and improve overall efficiency substantially. This is speaking from the POV of road use in cities. Its also very transparent to road users how to best optimise their road usage, since travel times, congestion levels etc. can be monitored and forecast centrally and effectively, and then signalled with road pricing, instead of individual drivers needing to do all that themselves. The other problem is that by simply restricting axle weight for highway use, we ignore potential economic efficiencies. For example, a single super-heavy truck might create $100 of road damage, but deliver $1000 on economic benefits (eg. replacing two trucks). The user should be able to pay for the damage that they cause. This could be integrated into a smart road-pricing system that considers vehicle axle weight. Singapore has such a system which works very well - but it relies on a large box on the dashboard and AFAIK doesn't considered axle weight.

simonsarris 7y ago

Roads in the US are already >50% not funded by fuel taxes. What's wrong with tolls and other means, or say primarily taxing large trucks, which primarily do most of the wear, if you're concerned about fairness? > Ideally [...] all vehicles to communicate position in real time to the Government It is not often that one man's "ideally" is another man's "dystopia" so succinctly.

Creationer 7y ago
That still fails to address congestion. The problem is similar to the electricity sector - we spend a lot of money creating capacity to handle peak-loads. If we simply time-shifted some road demand, or generally reduced the peak levels of road use, it would have a non-linearly positive benefit. A rough example: people often decide to buy lunch from cafe's at the arbitrary time of 12:00 midday onwards, forming large queues. If more people bought at 11:30am, the actual time difference is minor, but demand can be handled a lot more effectively. Same thing with people arbitrarily deciding to leave work and drive home simultaneously at an arbitrary 5:00pm. If using the road at that time cost $2, and 30 minutes earlier $0.50, you can very effectively shift demand and improve overall efficiency substantially. This is speaking from the POV of road use in cities. Its also very transparent to road users how to best optimise their road usage, since travel times, congestion levels etc. can be monitored and forecast centrally and effectively, and then signalled with road pricing, instead of individual drivers needing to do all that themselves. The other problem is that by simply restricting axle weight for highway use, we ignore potential economic efficiencies. For example, a single super-heavy truck might create $100 of road damage, but deliver $1000 on economic benefits (eg. replacing two trucks). The user should be able to pay for the damage that they cause. This could be integrated into a smart road-pricing system that considers vehicle axle weight. Singapore has such a system which works very well - but it relies on a large box on the dashboard and AFAIK doesn't considered axle weight.