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This is why I advocate for a gross vehicle weight rating and vehicle miles traveled tax, regardless of energy source (although gas should still be taxed on its
by milkytron 3y ago
This is why I advocate for a gross vehicle weight rating and vehicle miles traveled tax, regardless of energy source (although gas should still be taxed on its own). GWVR and VMT pretty much measure how much impact a car has on road maintenance, so it makes sense to charge heavier vehicles and vehicles that drive more, more.
I think it even makes sense for semis, the cost may go up for goods slightly as they pass that cost onto customers, but we'd be paying less in federal taxes for roads, less in property taxes for roads, and if you drive less (good for health, environment, etc) you'll likely be saving money. It also more accurately taxes EVs with ICEs based on road wear and tear instead of all these haphazard ideas.
- Etrnl_President 3y agoJust tax the roads themselves. Wear is the problem after all, disincentivise it.
- jocaal 3y agowhere are those damn flying cars they promised
- mschuster91 3y ago> This is why I advocate for a gross vehicle weight rating and vehicle miles traveled tax The problem is, while that works out on highways and other federally owned road, the distribution on state or county/city level is almost impossible. Say you have a trucking company doing regional service and one doing interstate transport - both their fleets will have similar driven miles because economically, companies want their many-hundred-thousand-dollar assets to be on the road as long as traffic safety laws allow. Now, assuming they both pay the same mile tax to the state... the state makes an insane profit on the interstate trucking company given that only a low percentage of the miles driven were happening on that state's roads, with the clear majority being on federal highways and other states' roads.
- tomp 3y agoI disagree. Roads are a public good. Having a road available to use, is worth almost as much as actually using it. Not to mention all the positive externalities of a better connected country (more trade, business, economic growth).
- midasuni 3y agoI use a road in my 1100kg car, you use it in your 2200kg car. You cause 8 times the damage. Do you generate 8 times the positive externalities?
- tomp 3y agoYes? The positive externalities created by trucks shipping food into cities massively outweigh almost all passenger traffic. So charging by weight/road damage makes no sense.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoThe truck that the parent poster refers to is not a 16-wheeler or panel truck used for commercial purposes, but someone's impeccably clean F-150 that hasn't hauled anything in 2+ years
- lm28469 3y agoDo you eat red meat ? sugary drinks ? do you exercise ? Do you have XYZ gene ? You're costing X times more to the system because you're diabetic/obese/predisposed ? You should pay more! That's how it sounds, and if we want to live like that we can go back to cavemen times, because we didn't built societies to play this silly game
- tangjurine 3y agoMaybe we should go back to having private roads then, and have people who own the roads decide.