The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Roads aren't free to build and/or maintain... in fact, it's extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It's just that all levels of gov't have allowed revenues from the gas tax get inflated away by both regular inflation and increased fuel efficiency.
Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable.
I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
>. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
We incentivize density in this country by having a ton of compliance hoops that increase cost on a per-building basis. People might just decide that they love suburbs so much that they vote for politicians who tell the Strong Towns crowd, the environmentalists and the trades and engineering groups to shove it and we go back to the 1980s and slap up street after street of chap AF single family homes on septic with nary a site plan in site.
The problem with a progressive tax for a service is that there is no pricing mechanism to direct it.
If fewer people drive, and more take the train, how is the state compelled to shift funding?
This is one of the hard problems of politics, and it’s one of the reasons markets have been successful, but most people entirely ignore it.
Again, the point of the article is that we already do not have enough budget for road infrastructure, and the roads are already significantly subsidized by federal highway spending. Any solution of “more taxes on wealth and earnings” is theoretically doable, but practically very difficult. Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.
Probably shouldn't have a progressive tax for a service. You have a progressive tax for things like automobiles, houses, income. A portion of that revenue goes to transportation services that benefit both the public and local business.
> Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.
If by use you mean 18-wheelers, then by all means, tax away. I am pretty sure highways would last for decades with a minimum of maintenance if there were no large trucks on them.
> If by use you mean 18-wheelers, then by all means, tax away. I am pretty sure highways would last for decades with a minimum of maintenance if there were no large trucks on them.
I mean, this is magical thinking. Yes, weight should be taxed, but the vast majority of states restrict trailers to the rightmost lanes. You can see the extra wear and tear. That doesn’t mean that autos aren’t contributing non-trivially.
As truck taxes rise, more of that freight will move to rail, so it’s not an infinite tax base.
Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable.
I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.