8 ms·
Toll roads are good economics. If a choice has negative externalities (more traffic, more pollution, road damage), tax it.
by nfw2 10mo ago
Toll roads are good economics. If a choice has negative externalities (more traffic, more pollution, road damage), tax it.
- kiernanmcgowan 10mo agoIt’s also a direct usage tax to support road maintenance. Heavier users of the road ways end up contributing more to the maintenance of the public good. We had a proxy for that via gasoline taxes but with EV becoming more common we need to find a replacement for that revenue.
- haskellandrust 10mo agoThe gas tax hasn’t kept up with inflation, EVs are only a secondary contributor to the shortfall. Most states have been leeching from their general funds to keep up with highway maintenance. California has raised theres fair aggressively, though.
- pclmulqdq 10mo agoThere are several states that have an EV registration surcharge that replaces gas tax. It's not popular with the pro-EV crowd.
- vel0city 10mo agoI'm fine with a decently fair registration tax to offset the gas taxes, but the one in my state is the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gas for the state gas taxes. If the car was a 35mpg hybrid that would be 35,000mi of equivalent driving. This is incredibly unfair.
- Loughla 10mo agoIf I owned an ev for 3 years, the tax means I save money.
- vel0city 10mo agoThis is a yearly tax. So that would be the same as 105,000mi in three years meanwhile the average car probably only drove ~37,500 in that time period.
- pclmulqdq 10mo ago35,000 mi of driving is not anywhere near out of the question if you're a daily commuter who takes road trips once in a while. If you're driving a truck or a non-hybrid, it's also a lot less mileage. It sounds like this is actually close to what you would be expected to use.
- vel0city 10mo agoIt's far away from the average of around 12,000. Few cars drive 35,000mi.
- pclmulqdq 10mo agoThe average driver also doesn't get 35 mpg driving regularly. The average driver probably gets around 20 mpg, and that would make this distance about 15000 mi.
- vel0city 10mo agoThe kind of people choosing an EV wouldn't get a 20mpg car, it's an unfair comparison.
- pclmulqdq 10mo agoThey also chose a car that's extremely heavy (by virtue of the battery), so they create more road wear per mile than the average American car. The point is that tax rate seems fair.
- caseysoftware 10mo agoThe EV tax applies to people who a) casue a disproportionate amount of wear & tear on the roads vs ICE vehicles and b) are generally higher income in the state. When you look at taxation from a "charge the people who use it" or the "the rich should pay more" perspective, this appears to address both. Is the problem simply that you want to pay less taxes?
- vel0city 10mo agoNo, I just want to pay a fair amount of taxes. Honestly the gas taxes should be increased or we should move to a tax structure where it's mileage, weight, and emissions based. Paying 3x the same taxes while having less externalities isn't fair.
- caseysoftware 10mo agoAs I've cited elsewhere on this thread: > With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars. Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-roads-way-more-than-ice-cars-due-to-weight-217255.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro... If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car in the externalities of road wear & tear.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" is at most 25% higher in a "damage per mile equivalent" but could be as little as 6% using the averages. If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent. What's your annual mileage?
- vel0city 10mo ago27 isn't 35 no matter how many times you say it is. > If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent. The average is less than that by a decent bit, so more than half of US cars are paying more even with your unproven, contorted math based on some estimates done once in the 70s and never really looked into closely again. It's also assuming the difference in weight. The closest hybrid I would have bought instead is only like 100kg lighter than my EV. And it gets like 40mpg, better than 35mpg. It would also mean semi trucks should pay like 20,000x more in registration fees. Does this make sense? > What's your annual mileage? Less than 15k on that car (like most people), so even with your assumed math it's overpaying.
- notatoad 10mo agoit's pretty silly to have a tax that incentivizes the opposite behaviour to what you want. registration surcharges benefit the people who drive the most, at the expense of the people who drive the least. if you're trying to pay for wear and tear on the roads, or reduce congestion, making people feel like they have to "get their moneys worth" on the registration surcharge really isn't helping.
- seanmcdirmid 10mo agoMost states include higher tag fees for EVs. I pay way more in the EV fee than I would have paid in gas taxes considering I don’t drive that much. Trucks and other heavy users dwarf car traffic by far though, and those extra logistic costs (if charged by weight) would show up as increased cost of goods.
- tpm 10mo agoThe UK is creating a new pay-per-mile EV duty from 2028 to fix this.
- analog31 10mo agoI'm not sure that use taxes really support road maintenance, at least in my state. The reason is that money is fungible, and the income from use taxes can be offset by a reduction in support from the general fund.
- bestnameever 10mo ago> Heavier users of the road ways end up contributing more to the maintenance of the public good. Heavier users aren't causing the damage though. Heavy vehicles like busses and semi's cause the most damage.
- stefan_ 10mo agoBut the economics of collecting them suck. A tax is a lot easier and much less "enshittifying" the daily experience.
- _aavaa_ 10mo agoBut a tax is not targeted to where the usage occurs. Tolls allowed highways with more usage to get more revenue to save up for the more frequent maintenance.
- survirtual 10mo agoYeah nice in theory but the reality is far from this. In order to implement tolls, you need several components involving middlemen. This includes frontend software, backend, payment processing, transponder management, all the hardware involved, support staff, sometimes toll station staff, among other things. These toll companies are often owned by foreign companies that are in it for the long haul, offering sweet deals up front then gradually charging more and more with no end in sight, as roads diminish in quality and rest stops fall into disarray. Toll roads are a scam, a regressive tax on the working class, and downright immoral. We should not limit the mobility of people.
- loglog 10mo agoWould American companies treat an average motorist better than foreign companies? Are you insinuating that these good, law-abiding, American companies are COMMUNIST?
- survirtual 10mo agoI am not insinuating anything. Road management should be administered by federal and state agencies, including the administration of tolls when they are foolishly utilized. It should not be a for profit venture, it is a mechanism of taxation for public logistics. It should not be possible to offload management to private orgs outside of very specific subcontracting / purchasing of components. Instead, often times full road management is given to private orgs. They are not given a robust legal incentive to act in the interests of the road system, and how could they? They are interesting in using the road to maximize their profit, at the loss of everyone needing the road.
- dawnerd 10mo agoProblem is, it’s not a tax. It’s a handout to private companies that take advantage of taxpayers fronting the construction cost in a lot of cases. We had one here paid for by tax payers but then leased to a company for some low dollar amount and they keep most of the money. It’s just another form of rent seeking. Now, gov run tolls seem like a good idea in areas where congestion needs to be managed. But also needs to be careful not to be a secret tax on the poor.
- vlovich123 10mo agoFwiw in the Bay Area I thought it was a private company but turns out it’s government run with Fastrak operated by The Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) in partnership with The California Department of Transportation and The California Highway Patrol (not sure why CHP is involved but they probably get some kickback of the revenue stream in exchange for some enforcement).
- patmorgan23 10mo agoCHP probably provides accident response services to the roads
- SoftTalker 10mo agoThey are very regressive unless there are income-based credits, which adds administrative complexity. Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought. For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet.
- survirtual 10mo agoCorrect. Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them. The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.
- nfw2 10mo agoAll the statistics I've been able to find point to higher toll road usage among higher income people, not less.
- nosianu 10mo agoWhich may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure. The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerecht.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?") Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different. It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us. There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.
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- maxlybbert 10mo agoI agree. I don't like toll roads, but I recognize that they only charge me for using them, because my use isn't necessarily good for everybody else. Gas taxes also work (ignoring electric vehicles), but paying a specific amount for a specific road certainly seems more direct.
- m463 10mo agoThing is, I suspect the taxing is inefficient. I would guess guessing 1% of it goes to mitigating traffic, pollution and road damage. I think most people will just be burdened by it. I think taxes would be a more efficient way of collecting these fees, and ensuring they go to fund mass transit in a way that traffic/pollution/road damage was mitigated directly and the people were still served.
- whimsicalism 10mo agoit would be efficient even if they just burned the revenue immediately upon receiving it.
- bb88 10mo agoLike all "economically sound" ideas, people fuck it up. To the drivers, its one more reminder of a government taxing you on a day to day basis, locking up the roads taxes paid for, for another series of taxes. Chicago is the poster child here. Constant rate hikes. Diverted funds meant to maintain the roads going elsewhere. "Temporary" tolls that become "permanent", etc. It's bad, stop the madness.
- alistairSH 10mo ago100%. All of this. With a side of handing off management and a slice of the revenue to private entities. With minimum revenue guarantees that then act as a disincentive to improving nearby roadways.
- mjevans 10mo agoThey're a prime sign of broken economics. The people who can least afford to move closer to their jobs are the ones who are regressively taxed in time, energy, and money the most. A proper solution would be to require more housing NEAR the jobs to make it easier for people to save time and money by moving closer.
- throwatdem12311 10mo agoWhy don’t we create the housing at the jobs then?
- levocardia 10mo agoRequire housing in certain places? Now that's what I'd call broken economics. If there is such a need for housing near job centers...why wouldn't that automatically create the incentive to build it? (Hint: It does; the problem is that in most places there are "requirements" that make it nearly impossible to build new housing. Texas is notable in that it lacks the worst extremes of this problem, hence the recent trends in rent in Austin).
- patmorgan23 10mo agoNah. Roads, specifically giant limited access highways through urban cities cost lots money to build. it makes perfect sense for them to be funded by user fees. Urban land is at a premium, if you want to utilize it you have to pay for it. Mass transit is a much more space efficient way to move people in urban environments, and encourages people to walk more in their daily life which has tons of health benefits. Also transit really help urban air quality (even electric cars cause air quality issues because of the rubber tires)
- mjevans 10mo agoYou speak of an already dense place laid out like New York City, or maybe Japan. Where there are regions that HAVE density and typically a matched civic infrastructure. I am speaking of most of America, where that is NOT happening because densification of areas is blocked by those already nearby who like the way suburbs near jobs are. (I don't blame them, apartments and probably condos SUCK, the building codes don't protect me from the choices of those nearby so everyone suffers the most annoyance.) In effect, I am encouraging at least some of those nearby areas to experience zoning upgrades. Like in a city simulator when low density residential gets replaced with high, and mid and high rises replace older single family homes and suburbs.
- MangoToupe 10mo agoSure, if one must drive on a road.
- Lammy 10mo agoPervasive tolling is surveillance-of-movement in disguise.
- amelius 10mo agoMeh, after housing now yet another resource only available to the rich? I think rationing is more fair and the only way to prevent massive outrage until maybe we have reduced the wealth gap to a large degree.
- whimsicalism 10mo agocongestion pricing is good. we can raise taxes, but the existence of billionaires is not a good reason to refuse adoption of obviously net-good policy.
- themafia 10mo agoThat's only if you completely ignore all the positives. More efficient economy, more citizen capabilities, better access for emergency and maintenance equipment. It's so clearly a net win for society and humanity to have open and available roads. Aside from that if you want to tax me then just charge me more for a license plate. Don't stop me in the middle of driving to hustle me for a buck and some change. Utterly ridiculous management of the problem. Meanwhile... private jets exist...
- whimsicalism 10mo agocongestion pricing is pretty unequivocally an economic good. > More efficient economy, more citizen capabilities, better access for emergency and maintenance equipment. congestion pricing literally improves every single one of those.