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The road usage fee should be (miles driven) * (weight) * (fee rate). And owners already go in once a year to a mechanic for a state vehicle inspection, the mil
by polski-g 2y ago
The road usage fee should be (miles driven) * (weight) * (fee rate).
And owners already go in once a year to a mechanic for a state vehicle inspection, the mileage can be reported then. We don't need complicated workarounds for gas tax alternatives.
- taylodl 2y ago> And owners already go in once a year to a mechanic for a state vehicle inspection No we don't. That's not universal for all states nor all jurisdictions within a state. If you already have an annual vehicle inspection, then what you're advocating for is easy. If you don't, then you've created a huge problem.
- verdverm 2y agoI don't think it creates a huge problem. Are there states where you are not getting an inspection of registration renewal at least every two years? Report your millage accrued, pay then or on a plan (because right now, most people pay-as-you-go for the roads via gas tax, lump sum is not going to be reasonable for a large number of them) It's certainly a solvable problem
- taylodl 2y agoReport your mileage accrued. Yeah right. You're supposed to report your purchase price when you transfer your title, too so you pay the sales tax. People lie all the time.
- polski-g 2y agoIf they lie, they end up paying with penalties when the title is transferred to the next owner.
- taylodl 2y agoWhich now complicates title transfer and potentially creates a buyer-beware situation. Road construction and maintenance can be paid for out of the state budget, a major point the adoption of the gas tax was to capture money from the out-of-jurisdiction drivers who were using your roadways: particularly shipping and freight companies. These proposed solutions aren't addressing that problem.
- madcaptenor 2y agoI don't understand the physics, but supposedly the wear on the road is proportional to the fourth power of the weight. I'm not sure if that's the main cost to be accounted for though.
- floxy 2y ago>owners already go in once a year to a mechanic for a state vehicle inspection ...for some states in some areas of the state: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit...
- polski-g 2y agoThat's shocking. Every state I've ever lived in just happened to be one of the few that required it.
- verdverm 2y agomaybe instead of inspection, we consider registration Is there a similar map for vehicle registration / renew frequency? We also don't need a uniform solution across all states, as evident in the map you have already linked to
- db48x 2y agoI agree that weight should be a factor, but it needs to be nonlinear. Very light vehicles do not damage roads, while heavier vehicles cause disproportionately more damage. A car causes some minimal amount of damage that adds up over time, but a car twice as heavy causes more than twice as much damage and thus should pay more than twice as much per mile. And because cargo trucks weigh significantly more when laden than when empty, it needs to be based on either the weight when laden or on the actual weight at the time.
- Two4 2y agoA better formula would be (mileage) * (((highest axle load)^4) * no. of axles) * (per mile fee), which would incentivise loads being evenly spread over as many axles as practically possible. This would be a huge boon to road health and longevity.