7 ms·

> "...they would of taxed cars based on volume + mass." yes, something i also heartily advocate (or any alternative that would effectively internalize these so

> "...they would of taxed cars based on volume + mass." yes, something i also heartily advocate (or any alternative that would effectively internalize these sorts of hidden costs). it goes beyond lives (although that's most important, obviously) to things like how big our paved surfaces are, how much space we devote to parking, and how far apart everything is.

filoleg 5y ago
This proposed approach of taxes based on volume+mass also addresses the problem of getting funding for road repairs. For a specific example of how much better that approach would be compared to what we have now, let me pick WA state (because that's where I live, so I am familiar with how it works here). In WA, road repairs are funded through gasoline tax. There is one big problem with that: EVs. EVs don't use gas, so they effectively don't pay the gas tax used for funding road repairs. As time goes, more people switch to EVs, and funding for road repairs dries down. To solve that problem, WA instituted a flat EV fee that you pay along with your early registration fee. It would have been ok, but that EV fee is flat, so it doesn't matter whether you drive the newest most powerful Tesla Model S or a budget entry-level Nissan Leaf, you pay the same EV fee. That flat fee is around $150 or so (iirc from the last year). This pushes the cost of annual registration fees for Nissan Leaf up by over 50%. Which is ridiculous, given it is a small and fairly light car, and it doesn't seem fair to charge it the same amount of fees for road repair purposes as you would charge a much larger car (because heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear for roads). However, dropping the EV fee and switching registration fees to be based off mass+volume would solve this problem perfectly and would be much more fair, since mass is pretty much the primary variable directly affecting the amount of wear and tear caused to the road (in addition to how much the vehicle has been driven in a given year, but I don't think that charging annual registration fees based on your mileage is that much of a great idea for multiple reasons).
- akerl_ 5y ago
  I’m confused why you’re so willing to ignore mileage. A Nissan Leaf driven daily as a commuter car will do a lot more wear and tear on the roads than a Ford F-150 driven occasionally to the store. We have the data to track mileage. Odometers are regulated and DMV already records mileage at various checkpoints. Why wouldn’t we use it?
  - mjevans 5y ago
    Distance or Mileage involves an invasive inspection. It also runs the risk of violating privacy depending on how it's tracked. Tracking it also just plain expensive, even if it's only required to report / measure mileage at time or distance intervals. Arguably someone is _likely_ to drive however far they need to drive irrespective of the taxes and wear on any particular section of road is going to be roughly the same for any quantity of mass and axle count. Speaking of mass, cargo vehicles should be taxed assuming some fixed duty load, like say 1/3rd of a year use at their maximum capacity rating, including towed equipment.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      The state inspection that cars have annually in most states record mileage.
      - bombcar 5y ago
        Most? I don’t recall even CA recording mileage for a smog and I’ve never had a car inspected elsewhere except after being totaled out.
        ghaff 5y ago
        MA does for an annual inspection. I'd be surprised if it was that unusual in the US.
        giantg2 5y ago
        I think only about 15 states have period safety inspections.
        zootboy 5y ago
        Despite the fact that the CA smog test is an absolute joke of an inspection (no inspection of tires, brakes, lights, etc.), it does in fact include an odometer reading.
    - 5y ago
- shadilay 5y ago
  The WA EV fee is actually 2 fees, one 150$ and a new 75$ so 225$ total.
  - filoleg 5y ago
    Thanks for correcting me. I initially typed "something around $250", but I decided to google it first, and it turned out articles from about the $150 fee, without ever mentioning the $75 one. So I changed it to $150. But after your comment, I went to check my most recent registration fees I paid last year, and you are fully correct. The total of all EV fees indeed comes out to $225.
    - shadilay 5y ago
      The articles you read we're probably just from before the new fee was enacted. WA who's governor ran for president by calling out other candidates for not being green enough has the highest EV fees in the nation disincentivizing EV ownership. The irony is palpable.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > because heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear for roads That is true, the fatigue damage to the road goes up as the cube of the weight. What this means is that cars don't cause much fatigue damage to the roads - it's the trucks that do. A semi loaded to the legal limit causes 9,000 times as much damage as a car. Really, the heavy loads need to go by rail, not highway.
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    It really puzzles me, even as a rail fan, how it is said that America’s freight rail is the envy of the world, but in every town there are abandoned tracks pulling right up to downtown warehouses. It just seems like we let good infrastructure go to waste. It’s probably a tax thing, iirc the rail companies pulled up half their mileage because they were on the hook for property taxes on all that acreage (turned lots of double tracks into single tracks, and old single tracks into recreational bike trails)
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      You're right. The railroads have to pay all the costs associated with the tracks, the truckers shifted those costs onto everyone else. > old single tracks into recreational bike trails This is rampant in Seattle. They've not only torn up the tracks and turned them into bike trails, in order to install light rail, they've had to blast new right-of-ways at incredible cost.
      - srean 5y ago
        Couldn't the government lay and maintain the network of tracks and lease them out to the freight companies ?
      - loonster 5y ago
        At least with a bike trail, its much easier to turn it back into rail if needed.
  - kilotaras 5y ago
    > the fatigue damage to the road goes up as the cube of the weight Slight correction - damage per axle is proportional to 4th power of load per axle. In practice it means slightly less than 4th power of weight (due to semis usually having more axles). https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
- tres 5y ago
  I believe the Washington state gas tax charged to standard internal combustion vehicles is much a lot about volume + mass; moving more stuff around less efficiently is going to inherently take more calories & therefore more tax will be paid. That said, I've been really disappointed with the way the Washington state EV tax you reference was implemented. I mean, I'm just fine paying my fair share, but I should be taxed in the same manner as any other user of the same resources. To that end, we have vehicle inspection stations & using those to check odometer readings on an annual basis would make for fair taxation. As it is, I stopped paying registration, insurance and left our Leaf sitting in the driveway since the pandemic started because of the way this tax is levied.

filoleg 5y ago

This proposed approach of taxes based on volume+mass also addresses the problem of getting funding for road repairs. For a specific example of how much better that approach would be compared to what we have now, let me pick WA state (because that's where I live, so I am familiar with how it works here). In WA, road repairs are funded through gasoline tax. There is one big problem with that: EVs. EVs don't use gas, so they effectively don't pay the gas tax used for funding road repairs. As time goes, more people switch to EVs, and funding for road repairs dries down. To solve that problem, WA instituted a flat EV fee that you pay along with your early registration fee. It would have been ok, but that EV fee is flat, so it doesn't matter whether you drive the newest most powerful Tesla Model S or a budget entry-level Nissan Leaf, you pay the same EV fee. That flat fee is around $150 or so (iirc from the last year). This pushes the cost of annual registration fees for Nissan Leaf up by over 50%. Which is ridiculous, given it is a small and fairly light car, and it doesn't seem fair to charge it the same amount of fees for road repair purposes as you would charge a much larger car (because heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear for roads). However, dropping the EV fee and switching registration fees to be based off mass+volume would solve this problem perfectly and would be much more fair, since mass is pretty much the primary variable directly affecting the amount of wear and tear caused to the road (in addition to how much the vehicle has been driven in a given year, but I don't think that charging annual registration fees based on your mileage is that much of a great idea for multiple reasons).

akerl_ 5y ago
I’m confused why you’re so willing to ignore mileage. A Nissan Leaf driven daily as a commuter car will do a lot more wear and tear on the roads than a Ford F-150 driven occasionally to the store. We have the data to track mileage. Odometers are regulated and DMV already records mileage at various checkpoints. Why wouldn’t we use it?
- mjevans 5y ago
  Distance or Mileage involves an invasive inspection. It also runs the risk of violating privacy depending on how it's tracked. Tracking it also just plain expensive, even if it's only required to report / measure mileage at time or distance intervals. Arguably someone is _likely_ to drive however far they need to drive irrespective of the taxes and wear on any particular section of road is going to be roughly the same for any quantity of mass and axle count. Speaking of mass, cargo vehicles should be taxed assuming some fixed duty load, like say 1/3rd of a year use at their maximum capacity rating, including towed equipment.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    The state inspection that cars have annually in most states record mileage.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      Most? I don’t recall even CA recording mileage for a smog and I’ve never had a car inspected elsewhere except after being totaled out.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        MA does for an annual inspection. I'd be surprised if it was that unusual in the US.
        giantg2 5y ago
        I think only about 15 states have period safety inspections.
      - zootboy 5y ago
        Despite the fact that the CA smog test is an absolute joke of an inspection (no inspection of tires, brakes, lights, etc.), it does in fact include an odometer reading.
  - 5y ago
shadilay 5y ago
The WA EV fee is actually 2 fees, one 150$ and a new 75$ so 225$ total.
- filoleg 5y ago
  Thanks for correcting me. I initially typed "something around $250", but I decided to google it first, and it turned out articles from about the $150 fee, without ever mentioning the $75 one. So I changed it to $150. But after your comment, I went to check my most recent registration fees I paid last year, and you are fully correct. The total of all EV fees indeed comes out to $225.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    The articles you read we're probably just from before the new fee was enacted. WA who's governor ran for president by calling out other candidates for not being green enough has the highest EV fees in the nation disincentivizing EV ownership. The irony is palpable.
WalterBright 5y ago
> because heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear for roads That is true, the fatigue damage to the road goes up as the cube of the weight. What this means is that cars don't cause much fatigue damage to the roads - it's the trucks that do. A semi loaded to the legal limit causes 9,000 times as much damage as a car. Really, the heavy loads need to go by rail, not highway.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  It really puzzles me, even as a rail fan, how it is said that America’s freight rail is the envy of the world, but in every town there are abandoned tracks pulling right up to downtown warehouses. It just seems like we let good infrastructure go to waste. It’s probably a tax thing, iirc the rail companies pulled up half their mileage because they were on the hook for property taxes on all that acreage (turned lots of double tracks into single tracks, and old single tracks into recreational bike trails)
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    You're right. The railroads have to pay all the costs associated with the tracks, the truckers shifted those costs onto everyone else. > old single tracks into recreational bike trails This is rampant in Seattle. They've not only torn up the tracks and turned them into bike trails, in order to install light rail, they've had to blast new right-of-ways at incredible cost.
    - srean 5y ago
      Couldn't the government lay and maintain the network of tracks and lease them out to the freight companies ?
    - loonster 5y ago
      At least with a bike trail, its much easier to turn it back into rail if needed.
- kilotaras 5y ago
  > the fatigue damage to the road goes up as the cube of the weight Slight correction - damage per axle is proportional to 4th power of load per axle. In practice it means slightly less than 4th power of weight (due to semis usually having more axles). https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
tres 5y ago
I believe the Washington state gas tax charged to standard internal combustion vehicles is much a lot about volume + mass; moving more stuff around less efficiently is going to inherently take more calories & therefore more tax will be paid. That said, I've been really disappointed with the way the Washington state EV tax you reference was implemented. I mean, I'm just fine paying my fair share, but I should be taxed in the same manner as any other user of the same resources. To that end, we have vehicle inspection stations & using those to check odometer readings on an annual basis would make for fair taxation. As it is, I stopped paying registration, insurance and left our Leaf sitting in the driveway since the pandemic started because of the way this tax is levied.