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I believe part of the issue is that as hybrids and electric vehicles become more popular, they won't be contributing anything for their road use so we do need t

I believe part of the issue is that as hybrids and electric vehicles become more popular, they won't be contributing anything for their road use so we do need to seek alternative means of taxing vehicles. I think the simplest method would be to implement some system of yearly odometer reading as it's low-tech, low-cost, and non-invasive.

jws 13y ago
The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Very light vehicles, like EVs, don't significantly wear the roads compared to large cars, pickups, and especially commercial trucks. Consider, (damage is normalized to a Ford F-150). Weight Damage Gallons/mile Honda Civic 2815 0.05 0.032 Toyota Prius 2921 0.05 0.020 Nissan Leaf 3291 0.09 Ford Transit Connect (me) 3500 0.11 0.50 Tesla Model S 4647 0.35 Ford F-150 Pickup 6000 1.0 0.059 Ford Excursion Diesel (bro) 7725 2.75 0.055 Maximum Loaded Truck 20000/axle 1970. (+other axles) 0.2 The Leaf does so little damage that we can ignore it. A Honda Civic weighs even less, but will be paying something like half what a pickup does for 1/20th of the damage. My brother's Excursion is doing about 25 times the road damage as my Connect, but we pay essentially the same gas tax. A truck with a maximally loaded axle is doing almost 2000 times the damage, for about 4 times the fuel tax. Clearly, fuel use as a proxy for road damage is flawed, but not because the light vehicles are getting away, more because the heavy vehicles are under paying. That exponent of four gets big in a hurry. I propose: Assess road expenses into wear based maintenance, and all other costs. Then each vehicle pays based on their mileage and "wear factor" for wear based maintenance and just their mileage for the rest of the costs. The black boxes are needed in the US because our roads are paid for locally, you have to break out the payments to the right parties. It's not like we aren't tracked everywhere we go anyway. Keep the fuel tax as a carbon tax, import/trade balance deterrent, revenue source. Edit: That proposal is going to need a rural subsidy, and possibly a freezing climate subsidy as well. By then it will get political and we'll probably end up with a tax on paint color by the time it is done.
- oftenwrong 13y ago
  >The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Source? EDIT: http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ this?

jws 13y ago

The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Very light vehicles, like EVs, don't significantly wear the roads compared to large cars, pickups, and especially commercial trucks. Consider, (damage is normalized to a Ford F-150). Weight Damage Gallons/mile Honda Civic 2815 0.05 0.032 Toyota Prius 2921 0.05 0.020 Nissan Leaf 3291 0.09 Ford Transit Connect (me) 3500 0.11 0.50 Tesla Model S 4647 0.35 Ford F-150 Pickup 6000 1.0 0.059 Ford Excursion Diesel (bro) 7725 2.75 0.055 Maximum Loaded Truck 20000/axle 1970. (+other axles) 0.2 The Leaf does so little damage that we can ignore it. A Honda Civic weighs even less, but will be paying something like half what a pickup does for 1/20th of the damage. My brother's Excursion is doing about 25 times the road damage as my Connect, but we pay essentially the same gas tax. A truck with a maximally loaded axle is doing almost 2000 times the damage, for about 4 times the fuel tax. Clearly, fuel use as a proxy for road damage is flawed, but not because the light vehicles are getting away, more because the heavy vehicles are under paying. That exponent of four gets big in a hurry. I propose: Assess road expenses into wear based maintenance, and all other costs. Then each vehicle pays based on their mileage and "wear factor" for wear based maintenance and just their mileage for the rest of the costs. The black boxes are needed in the US because our roads are paid for locally, you have to break out the payments to the right parties. It's not like we aren't tracked everywhere we go anyway. Keep the fuel tax as a carbon tax, import/trade balance deterrent, revenue source. Edit: That proposal is going to need a rural subsidy, and possibly a freezing climate subsidy as well. By then it will get political and we'll probably end up with a tax on paint color by the time it is done.

oftenwrong 13y ago
>The wear caused on a road surface is a higher-than-linear function of axle loading. The standard model has a power of 4. Double the mass, 16 times the wear. Source? EDIT: http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ this?