The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation system for the working class and how do we raise the revenue to fund that through taxes.
The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. The best thing we can do to make transportation more affordable in general is giving people more options aside from the car. Taxing the wealthy in order to raise revenue for public transportation and active transportation options dominates any sort of regressiveness issues around road tolls and less traffic makes buses more effective.
> The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry.
Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses.
The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway.
It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit.
And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat.
And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization.
Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
> Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
No, this is wrong. (1) There is no housing price bubble in Tokyo. Yes, some very central "ku's" (Shibuya-ku and Minato-ku) are seeing a rise in home prices, but it is nothing ridiculous. It is no where near a repeat of the late 1980s. You can easily select a neighborhood just ten minutes away and it will have sharply lower prices. Also, Japan effectively has zero NIMBYism due to a national building code. New housing is constantly being built in Tokyo. (2) Yes, overall, the population is shrinking in Japan. However, the population of Tokyo continues to rise.
> A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses.
I don't see this. The cost of a month pass on new york subway is $130 a month. That is less than my monthly parking fee in sf
He's saying that's only a fraction of the actual cost of providing your rides for a month. Most of the funding for transit systems comes from appropriations, not fares.
Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? Would be interested to see - I’m generally aware of the cost vs. fare side of subways, but haven’t seen numbers that support individual car travel being cheaper when you account for subsidies there.
Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
> Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel?
There are several ways you can look at it. The easiest way is to divide the opex budget by the ridership. E.g. MTA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au... ) had a $19B budget in 2023 for 1.15B rides, resulting in about $16 per ride. Assuming conservatively 60 rides a month, that's $960 a month for transit in NYC. Without any capital expenses taken into account.
> Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
This is interesting analysis. However, the MTA is much more than the New York City subway (and Staten Island railroad) that serves the five boroughs of New York City. The LIRR (Long Island Railroad) is an enormous commuter rail system that serves a huge geographical area (probably the largest in North America).
>Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses.
Meanwhile, we're barreling toward 2-3 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me.
>It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
No the most eco (and financially) friendly model is high density areas where you can walk and bike to school and work. The transportation costs under this model are effectively nil.
Land aside, building a single story house is much cheaper per sq ft than a tower.
Medium density streets, like UK terraces can have enough density to support commerce nearby etc. but also low enough density to use a lot of solar to power houses directly.
Land may be the constraint given the population of the world.
I'm essentially parroting the (settled and not at all controversial) consensus view of the urban design profession so there's no real end of citation.
Though there are few clear cut real world examples to point to because land use is one of the most highly politicized things and it is rarely exposed to real market forces.
It's a great thing to have arguments about because whenever you can point some examples, people will always nitpick at why it's not real (eg. Tokyo is affordable and dense thanks to low regulation and the market, but people will point at the relatively poor Japanese economy etc).
But from basic geometric principles it makes sense that automobile oriented infrastructure is ultimately unsustainable and more expensive because of the constraints of the real world.
Ultimately the issue one runs into is that a car is a box several feet wide by several feet long (6.7x17.4) for an F150. That's a lot of space both parked and on the road. So if everyone buys one (and largely drives around themselves) it's clear that one quickly fills up the size of the road. The cost of expanding roads is very expensive, disruptive, and occasionally impossible. And then it doesn't even really work in remarkably improving traffic because due to Induced Demand, it reprices driving cheaper, which encourages more people to drive, which refills the road again. Everyone's time is being wasted sitting in these large boxes that cost tens of thousands of dollars.
So the core problem is that cars are enormously space inefficient. The system simply doesn't scale and eventually reaches break down.
You simply have to give up and can't grow the city any further. So you have to push people out to other cities.
But if we think of moving people instead of cars, there's a lot more space efficient opportunities since people are very small.
So you look at things like a bicycle, whose costs are relatively near nil, a protected bike lane that is also effectively near nil (put some jersey barriers on an existing road) and you can move that same person for much less. Obviously the problem is that they can't go very far but a combination of different modes for different uses and you have a system that can actually scale.
Build compact mixed use neighbourhoods that one can walk and bike to for local needs, buses for inter neighbourhood, and trains for intra and inter city long distance travel.
Only with this approach can you can continue to scale a city and continue to have a large city that is functional.
Houston is able to scale even with the space inefficiencies of the car by leveraging sprawl. It is remarkably larger than NYC and has room to grow.
This is the relief valve I mentioned here:
> You simply have to give up and can't grow the city any further. So you have to push people out to other cities.
So a city that can sprawl like Houston, does so, and it grows outward, adding more cities on the edge and becomes effectively a loose federation of many cities, which aids in the transportation issue.
That is a solution that some cities on a plain can make use of to kick out the runway further, but it's unavailable to others with more constrained geography.
Nothing I'm saying is actually scientifically controversial. I'm literally citing facts from urbanist textbooks. It's just that the way I'm telling them is unsettling for the people who have never questioned the social-engineered "consensus".
The CO2 footprint question is a tricky one. The vehicle _itself_ is not the main source of pollution. Even if you compare the vehicles, the answer is not straightforward: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint The main source of pollution for transit are _drivers_. E.g. each bus needs around 3 drivers to function, resulting in driver-to-passenger ratio of just around 1:7.
So when computing true CO2 footprint, you need to look at a counter-factual scenario where bus drivers are doing something else. But this becomes extremely tricky extremely fast, as you can move into fantasyland where bus drivers are building CO2 scrubbers instead of driving CO2-emitting vehicles. Or where drivers are working on chopping forests for agricultural lands, resulting in huge CO2 increases.
The next best option is to look at different regions and compare them. E.g. Houston, TX with EVs would have smaller CO2 emissions than the current NYC, with climate corrections.
The article you cited doesn't support that assertion. Its thesis is that upzoning alone — i.e. relaxing regulations such that it is legal to build higher-density housing, without further interventions — may not be sufficient to create enough vacancies to lower rents.
The cited article alone simply admits that upzoning won't result in cheaper housing. Because the market is broken (and only socialized housing can fix it), but we must do upzoning anyway.
That article also doesn't support your assertion. For example, they specifically call out parking minimums and minimum lot sizes (both density-lowering regulations) as major drivers of high housing costs.
> No the most eco (and financially) friendly model is high density areas where you can walk and bike to school and work
No, it's not. Because for that to work, you'll need a large underclass that has to waste 2-3 hours a day in commutes and subsist on groceries from state-run stores.
But yeah, the elites will be able to live in nice walkable areas. I know, I lived in an apartment overlooking the Union Square in Manhattan.
No, it was in a friend's apartment that he bought as an investment property. Apparently, the rent in this building is about $30k a month.
The area is great and walkable, with tons of restaurants around. But of course, nobody working in these restaurants can afford to live anywhere close to it.
I do think the future green transport is a self driving electric bus ultimately powered by solar with adaptive routes. It is why I dont mind lots of roads being built as they can eventually be repurposed for this.
Yes shared trips of course waste time. For 50 people you dont want 50 stops. But 1 or 2 stops pickups on the way is fine. The algorithm across all this can optimize cost and travel time for each rider. There may be transfers for cheaper prices.
E.g. $5 for a 30 min trip and a change or $20 for a 15 min trip direct taxi experience.
If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less.
Yes, I played around with that using the isochrone API from geoapify. That's why I'm thinking that buses are not necessary.
> If the road is a bottleneck optimising for usage it may let buses have a fast lane and the difference is less.
Ha. The dirty little secret of bus lanes is that they don't work as people think they do. They don't reduce the overall aggregated travel time (the sum of commute time for all the people traveling the route) in most cases. Instead, they force people out of cars by reducing the car throughput.
The commute time for each person who is forced out of their car typically becomes longer. As is commutes for the people in cars that now have to navigate more congested roads.
Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high.
If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure. But the cost itself has nothing to do with housing prices. Property taxes do not make mortgages more expensive. (Wouldn’t it have the opposite effect, high property taxes making houses harder to afford and therefore decreasing demand?)
Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work? The pure miles of a system are completely irrelevant. Transit systems are meant for high density areas, costing more but covering less ground. The cost of tunneling under a mile Seattle for a road is absolutely more expensive than building a mile of highway in the middle of nowhere.
What the fuck are you on about re:democracy? “Thoughtless social experiments” are pretty far from the truth there. Democracy gets ruined by political parties unwilling to hold their own members accountable and by allowing corporations to exert more political power than human beings.
> Subsidized transit has legitimately nothing to do with distorted housing costs or labor markets. Housing market is simply supply vs demand. Housing markets like Seattle are incredibly expensive because so many people want to move there, partly because local middle class wages are fairly high.
Well. Look at your two statements again. Now think about this, what would have happened if Seattle didn't have buses and light rail? And didn't permit new dense office space as a result?
> If you’re saying subsidized transit increases local quality of life, leading to higher demand, sure.
It DECREASES the quality of life. It promotes crime and inequality.
> Or is it that subsidized road systems don’t work?
Small correction: there is unsubsidized transit, just not unsubsidized public transit. Seattle has Amazon, Microsoft, snd Google buses judt like the Bay Area does. My wife takes the Amazon bus a lot even though the public transit route would work just as well (for safety/hygiene reasons).
This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Charging $1/lb for bananas is regressive. Charging $3/gallon for gas is regressive. Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. Etc...
For commodities like that, competition already pushes prices to the zero profit limit. Everyone gets them as cheaply as they can be produced. And for those who can't afford even that we have subsidies.
> This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though.
Maybe EVERYTHING shouldn't BE "constant prices". Maybe where there are practical alternatives to constant pricing, those should be preferred and used.
> Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive.
No. Not unless there is only 1 type of t-shirt in the world available. If I'm poor I can go find cheaper t-shirts either less stylish, poorer quality, from a generic brand, from a discount retailer, second-hand (used), packaged in bulk, etc., or maybe wait around for a sale on the t-shirt.
Besides price signals, what other tools are available to communicate local knowledge through an economy? I can’t think of any that are particularly effective
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.
The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. It doesn't matter if that makes it a "regressive" tax. If you are a daily user of a road, you should pay more for its upkeep than someone who doesn't use the road.
Why should a delivery driver pay the toll for the road to my house, and not me? Why should I be able to exploit flat-rate product pricing like that and skim some money from all customers of the delivery service?
Why should I pay the toll to drive to a friend's house? They're the one getting the benefit out of having easy access to transportation.
What if my taxes pay for all the roads in my town, while the neighboring town chooses to implement tolls instead? Why should I get double-taxed? Prisoner's dilemma and race-to-the-bottom?
Why should I have to deal with having my license plate stolen, and police time wasted (who are paid out of taxes), because of people who don't pay the tolls?
Which 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-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.
> 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-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?")
Canadian stand-up comedian Casually Explained (I don't actually know if he stands up to record his videos) had basically the same joke a few days before them.
Because the cost is not an issue for higher income people. The poor either sacrifice something else to pay the toll, or they take a (likely longer, slower, or more congested) alternate route to avoid the tolls. This ends up costing them more time, which of course is a fixed quantity per day, so they again end up sacrificing. In a way it's regressive even if they avoid it.
We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's ,
were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams.
The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving
times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me!
It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.
This is a strange argument that leaves out some important considerations. You could easily say that because the rich don’t need to use public transit the fares charged for riding public transit are a regressive tax on the working class that use it. Shouldn’t you also argue against public transportation ride fares enriching the private companies that build turnstiles and ticketing machines?
If you have two lanes and want three lanes, you could build the third as public, or as toll. If you build as public, it comes out of taxes, such as the gas tax. If you don’t have enough public money, perhaps you increase the tax. If you build it as toll, you can bond the construction and pay for it with tolls.
At least in theory, this means the toll lane accomplishes the same total road throughput, but shifts the entire cost of its construction to its users instead of depleting public funds. It then appears regressive, but is arguably progressive.
Well if the government raises more revenue from tolls, they can raise less from other regressive taxes or just redistribute that revenue to lower income brackets.
During covid the IRS sent everyone a check. No reason this also can't work at a state level and just have toll funds sent out as checks to lower income brackets.
Or if there are practical, affordable, alternatives.
If there is low cost public transit available, then a toll could be an incentive to use public transit instead of driving. But if there is no other viable transportation option, then it is effectively just a regressive tax.
This approach is why carbon taxes won't work. Tax carbon, then credit it back to a majority of the population because "they can't afford it". Leaving the people who can afford it to not reduce their carbon use.
Thus entirely defeating the point of taxing it in the first place.
If you want less driving, make it more expensive. Yes, some people will be in unfortunate situations where they can't afford it, but that's the point.
i think it is funny how this critique only comes out to play when people dislike a thing for other reasons but want to project a high-minded concern for the poor.
> For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet
Only if there is no other way for them to get from point A to point B. If there is, it’s a time vs $ value question to the driver and not regressive, nor an “obstacle”—it’s simply a decision.
Edited because I admit original statement below is incorrect.
"You could say they are a flat tax since every driver pays the same per usage. You could even argue it is a progressive tax since richer people use toll roads more. The only way you CAN'T describe a toll is a regressive tax. Words have meaning."
This is completely incorrect. A flat tax has a constant tax rate, which is why it's often referred to as a "proportional tax." Under a true flat tax system, everyone pays the same percentage of their income.
A toll is absolutely regressive because the burden it imposes is constant, irrespective of income; poorer individuals will pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income than wealthier counterparts. As income increases the "effective rate" asymptotically approaches zero, which is regressive by definition.
If you read the literature[1], they're regressive - less regressive than sales tax, but still regressive despite being utilized more by higher income drivers.
It’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.
The 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.
Most 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.
I'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.
35,000 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.
It weighs about as much as the smallest base model F150. Optioned out models and other trim levels easily hit 1,000lbs+ heavier.
Meanwhile that base model equivalent weight F150 gets about 24mpg and thus pays about half as much gas tax while doing the same amount of damage driving the average mileage. Further proving my point, I pay twice the state fuel tax for an equivalent weight pickup truck. Is that fair?
But also, isn't the whole point of the pickup truck to load it down? If all it's doing is carrying 1-4 people it's whole life, seems like a lot of waste. I'm told people buy trucks to actually load them down a lot and not just commute and get groceries? So while it's about the same weight dry and unloaded shouldn't it's weight really be quite a bit more in practice? Or are we all agreeing now trucks are just for commuting and getting groceries?
Now you've moved the goal posts to about half of your original claim. And it's still not accurate (links have already been provided elsewhere in this thread). And the only thing I've owned in the last 30 years that gets 25 mpg is a camper van (and, no, that thing doesn't move anywhere near 15K miles/year).
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
The 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.
They 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.
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
The 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?
No, 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.
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
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.
27 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.
Semi trucks pay huge amounts in gas taxes because they guzzle gas like nobody's business. It's only the EVs that aren't paying for their road wear in gas taxes.
Average class 8 truck (>33,000lbs) burns under 11,000GGEa year, ratio is 1GGE=1.13gal of diesel. So somewhere under 12,500gal of diesel on average, but we'll use that to lean even more in the truck's favor.
Are you suggesting the average car burns less than 1 gallon of gas a year?
A 20mpg car driving 12,500mi (the average ICE in the US) would use 625gal of gas. So more like 20x, maybe 40x if the per gallon tax of diesel is double. Pretty dang far off from 20,000x.
And they're doing way more miles while being massively heavier, meaning incredibly more harm on the road than whatever EV you're thinking.
Registration fees are likely the same or close but when you factor in gas taxes (the original comparison here), the Ford is definitely paying more both based on fuel type and mpg.
Not sure where you are but in Indiana, gas tax for unleaded is 36c while diesel is 62c so on a per-gallon basis, that's an additional +72% in taxes. Back of the envelope: Civic at 30mpg pays 1.2c/mile vs SuperDuty at 15mpg pays 4.13c/mile so the multiple is closer to 3.4 vs 2
So yes - assuming registration fees are comparable and mileage is comparable - the SuperDuty should pay more.
The lightest SuperDuty has a gas engine. Diesel SuperDuty fuel economy is a bit better, but the vehicle also weighs more and is likely to be carrying/pulling more. But regardless of whether the multiple is 2 or 3.4 or somewhere in between, it is a small fraction of the added road wear.
By the fourth power law, an unloaded diesel Superduty creates ~22x the road wear of a honda civic. Loaded can be 100x more.
I do agree the relationship probably isn't linear, but the fourth power rule doesn't necessarily have numerous studies confirming it. It was a small collection of studies on road wear the US highway administration did in the 1950s and pretty much everyone has just gone with that. Other studies have pointed to it being less than previously thought.
Thanks for the insight but my claim was never "12,000mi is really 35,000mi"
Regardless, it would be interesting to see the actual number worked through to see what the equivalent EV registration fee should be if road damage/maintenance is the sole factor.
> If the car was a 35mpg hybrid that would be 35,000mi of equivalent driving.
> that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off
You absolutely did suggest me paying taxes for 12k miles is practically the same as ~35k miles, you said it several times. That it's not far off. How else am I supposed to read that? You were so sure of it you mentioned it many times.
> Regardless, it would be interesting to see the actual number worked through to see what the equivalent EV registration fee should be if road damage/maintenance is the sole factor.
Sure, but it's likely far less than what I'm paying. As mentioned elsewhere, a similar weight unloaded F-150 pays half the taxes. So I'm at least paying double for similar weight vehicles, and yet you tell me it's really only 6%. But sure, tell me again how I'm really just paying my fair share and 12 = 35.
> 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.
^ As you quoted, I used the formula to estimate 12k would be equivalent to 27k and said paying taxes equivalent to be 35k miles is "at most 25% higher", neither of which is "12 = 35". Using their approach, I calculated 35k to be equivalent to 15625 specifically, again, not 12k.
If the underlying approach is wrong, we should replace it with something better.
Alternatively, the OTHER reasoning of "the rich should pay more" still applies, so I assume that's a factor here. Hoping States charge rich people (or high income earners, if you prefer) less isn't likely to work right now.
> Alternatively, the OTHER reasoning of "the rich should pay more" still applies, so I assume that's a factor here.
Once again, your assumption is incorrect. That base model F-150 that pays half the taxes costs more than my EV. The registration fee doesn't factor in income or valuation at all. A $100k Hummer EV pays the same as a $15k used Bolt. Meanwhile that Hummer EV is going to do a hell of a lot more damage to the roads than the Bolt.
It probably has more to do with the government being in the pocket of oil interests and acts accordingly.
it'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.
I'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.
Apparently there is a yearly car check during which the odometer can be read, and there are other options like entering the data yourself, but the legislation is not yet completely finalised.
Require 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).
Nah. 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)
You 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.
Thing 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.
Like 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.
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.
That'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.
Problem 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.
Fwiw 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).
But 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.
Yeah 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.
Would American companies treat an average motorist better than foreign companies? Are you insinuating that these good, law-abiding, American companies are COMMUNIST?
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.
Toll collection used to be much worse in terms of collection efficiency (revenue-cost)--perhaps 50% as I understand it. With all the automated toll booths I assume it's much better today.
Don't they charge you more if you do pay-by-plate though? I always see signs that have a price with local ez-pass, a higher price with out-of-state ez-pass, and an even higher price for pay-by-plate.
Ez pass billing is all over the place, each state/authority does whatever it wants.
If you reg a secondary car’s plate to an ezpass account without using the transponder, a lot of states will just think it was a read fail and charge you the regular rate but it depends.
The less honest states (New Jersey, probably others) will charge you a punitive fee (which doubles if you don't pay on time) for not having an EZpass on that vehicle. And then when you call customer support they'll argue with you, until you call on the last day when they finally agree that everything was good and proper.
25 cents for me. I can get a sticker for $5 sticker that negates that (no transponder I think for Seattle’s first
520 bridge, maybe for carpools?). Oh, supposedly the sticker is a transponder, so I can save 25 cents if I buy a $5 sticker. Even though I don't use the bridge that often, it makes sense to buy.
Ussally if you don't have an account they charge you more. But at least for the systems in my area they'll charge your account wether you have your toll transponder or not (because they OCR your plate and charge the linked account)
congestion 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.
