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One idea: eliminate gasoline taxes and charge every vehicle an annual road use fee based on the weight of the vehicle as part of their registration renewal.
by mikece 7y ago
One idea: eliminate gasoline taxes and charge every vehicle an annual road use fee based on the weight of the vehicle as part of their registration renewal.
- adrianN 7y agoBurning gas in cities has many externalities that are not priced in sufficiently even with the current taxes. Taxes should be raised, not lowered.
- ajmurmann 7y agoBurning gas anywhere should be practically unaffordable, given we are likely making large parts of the planet unhabitable.
- cglace 7y agoMaking gas unaffordable makes large parts of the planet uninhabitable in the short term.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoWe could ramp up public transport very quickly given the will to.
- adrianN 7y agoNot in the places that would become uninhabitable without gas.
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoYou did say large parts of the planet, what large parts of the planet couldn't adopt public transport?
- adrianN 7y agoI didn't say that, but all parts of the planet that are too sparsely populated and have poor infrastructure. There is little point in having a bus if there are only a handful of people per square kilometer. There are large parts of the planet that don't have a reliable power grid either. IMHO we should just abandon those areas and give them back to nature.
- cannonedhamster 7y agoPower is actually pretty easy to solve compared to transportation. You can reliably generate either wind, water, or solar anywhere on the planet and store it locally. You're right though that centralizing populations tends to be the most efficient use of resources.
- dagw 7y agoSure, but that should be priced separately by each city in the form of congestion charges.
- kadoban 7y agoThat would just be a large subsidy for anyone that drives a lot.
- shard972 7y agoBecause only the rich drive alot.
- wastedhours 7y agoPetrol taxes are probably the fairest way to tax ICE based on usage short of having black-boxes in every car (which would in turn create a nice black market in itself for fiddling them) - heavier and less efficient vehicles naturally use more and so get charged more, the more you drive, the more you burn, the more you pay. I can't see a fairer way than that for ICE at the moment.
- 5555624 7y agoThe OP wants to eliminate petrol taxes on ICE vehicles to treat all vehicles the same way. Right now, an EV doesn't pay any petrol taxes, which are often used to maintain road infrastructure.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoSince nobody is making EV heavy trucks yet and EVs are a small minority of road traffic they account for approximately none of the infrastructure wear and tear. It's a pure cash grab. If they need more money they should be up front about it rather than being smiley and trying to portray it as EV owners not paying their fair share. I say this as someone who buys a heck of a lot of gas.
- Spooky23 7y agoFee based taxation at the vehicle level is there to slow electric adoption and benefit a few stakeholders, period. The obvious way to raise money from all motor vehicles today is LPR. The Federal government already has an extensive network of LPR and high resolution cameras on the interstate highway system for criminal and customs surveillance, and most states have extensive networks that can easily be scaled. You could even use LPR for demand based taxation, instead of mileage based systems, put fees on peak usage or vehicle class. The current system is significantly flawed anyway, because state policy varies, especially with trucks. A truck operating in New York may be gassing up In Pennsylvania, and be out of the jurisdiction of the state for safety and other regulation. Also commercial vehicles use flags of convenience for registration... rental vehicles are often registered in Arizona and Indiana.
- 7y ago
- bryanlarsen 7y agoThat's massively regressive. In the United States, poor people don't own significantly fewer cars than rich people. Jay Leno is a rare exception.