New road taxes may be necessary in the wake of high gas prices
According to James Ray, Acting Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration, the current system of deriving money for the upkeep of the nations roadways is "unpredictable and unsustainable." He adds, "Without a doubt, our federal approach to transportation is broken, and no amount of tweaking, adjusting or adding new layers on top will make things better." This view is understandable in the wake of record high gas prices, which are causing consumers to drive less and therefore produce less revenue from the gas tax. Ray has some suggestions to alleviate some of the problem, including paying a fee based on mileage driven, an increase in alternative transportation methods and incentives to drive during off-peak hours.
Hybrids, electric cars and other fuel-saving technology will further cause a dent in the FHA's pocketbook. In any case, Ray does not plan to increase the gas tax. In fact, the gas tax could be dropped completely in favor of a completely new system, one "more agile and responsive than the current gas tax." We'll keep our ears to the ground.
[Source: The Detroit News / Photo: splorp - Licensed under CC 2.0]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
FLOORMAN5 5:17PM (7/31/2008)
They see the handwriting on the wall. Hypermile car's, EV's, greese car's. The goverment is not going to let the taxes for this stuff go out the window
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ken 5:32PM (7/31/2008)
As more EVs and hybrids on the road in the future, taxing gas only is not fair to the gasoline car drivers. I suggest taxing tires. People drive more will change tires more frequently, no matter you are driving Prius or hummer.
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Brent 6:03PM (7/31/2008)
That is an interesting idea, but people would likely put off buying tires and risk safety. (To enforce that we would need another government branch to inspect car tires, and tell us when they need to be replaced! NO THANKS!) haha
Ross 12:47PM (8/01/2008)
Ken,
Let's try to keep some sanity.
BoneHeadOtto 5:37PM (7/31/2008)
Taxing the miles you drive seems to make the most sense but that would suck. The people who drive the most likely have purchased the most efficient cars and use least amount of gas. But if people REALLY ARE driving less, then doesnt it make sense that the roads need less capacity and require less upkeep? So the reduction in taxes shouldnt matter because there is less road work to do.....
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MarkR 5:46PM (7/31/2008)
Its about time, the writing on the wall has only been there the past 8-10 yrs, In all caps bold and underlined.
I'm not looking forward to big brother trying to tax my miles, particularly when up to 1/4 of my driving is off-road. Whatever the method it needs to be as easy as the gas tax to continue freedom without big brother knowing where you are every hour behind the wheel.
I'm in favor of a higher registration tax based on miles driven/ vehicle wt. etc. in the previous year. As easy as checking the odometer when heading to the tax assessor/collector.
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steve 6:35PM (7/31/2008)
I seriously doubt much (any?) of this money goes to road maintenance. If it did then driving less would be balanced by less wear on the roads, so income and expenditure would balance out nicely :)
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wildgoosechase73 6:06PM (7/31/2008)
This has been my argument all along against CA regulating CO2. Rather than fight to get a waiver to regulate CO2 why doesn't CA raise their gas tax? Cars will have to get 43 mpg, and gas taxes will have to rise anyway.
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david burgdorff 6:08PM (7/31/2008)
Lets use the gas tax for highways and bridges and not mass transit. Let the people who use mass transit pay for it.
Actually we should get rid of the gas tax and tax imported oil instead. This will create more incentive to produce oil here and reduce the $700 billion for imported oil. I would favor enough of a tax to keep the move to alternatives going.
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goehring 1:20PM (8/01/2008)
The gas tax doesn't even come close to paying for roads.
How about we first raise the gas tax so my property taxes don't subsidize driving.
Jeremy 3:33AM (8/03/2008)
While you value your road and bridge, society may not share your values and hold the private automobile as the highest virtue of transport. If elected officials should decide to allocate a portion of funds generated by automobile use to create a transport system that balances the needs of the urban ecosystem, it is certainly is your right to disagree. However, that would certainly be a shortsighted view. Sadly, the trees of fuel economy and foreign oil fears has obscured the thicket we are in, a landscape dominated by cars and tarmac is not the nexus of human achievement. If you think about it, you might agree that it is rather unpleasant and a ever-present blot on the landscape. The last thing we need is to allocate money for roads beyond safety improvements.
Let's stop subsidizing driving. Cultural change is a bitch, but even if our cars ran on nothing but air, it would worthwhile to reassess the way we organize our society around cars.
killroy 7:04PM (8/05/2008)
Driving less should = less duty cycle on the roads = longer lasting roads.
Increase gas tax and other fuels, when. Electric cars become popular, tax electricity used to charge cars with V2G tech.
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Lad 6:57PM (7/31/2008)
Easy solution: if you register a car/truck you pay a federal tax based on it's weight and the assumption you will drive it an average number of miles. If you can show you drive less than the average you prove it and show a credit on your income tax form. DMV collects the fees and IRS does the calculations and credits. Only computer changes are needed and no new overhead federal departments.
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Nixon 4:03PM (8/19/2008)
What is the goal of the tax?
Is it just to charge for the actual wear-and-tear that each vehicle causes to the road system? -- If that's the case, passenger vehicles should not pay very much road tax at all. Because weather and large trucks do far much more damage in comparison to passenger vehicles. The damage from a 3,500 lb passenger vehicle is nearly nothing in comparison to the effects of weather and heavy trucks.
Is the purpose of the tax to distribute highway expenses evenly across all drivers in proportion to the number of miles driven, regardless of the relative wear each vehicle causes, and the amount of fuel the car burns? If that is the goal, then a straight tax on the number of miles driven is fine. But that would takes away the fuel efficiency incentives built into the existing fuel tax. With the current tax, if you burn less fuel, you are rewarded by paying less road taxes. I don't think we want to lose that incentive. There is a massive public expense to burning gas that far exceeds just road and bridge construction costs. This expense covers everything from pollution (and pollution's side effects like public heath problems) all the way to the cost of any wars that might be needed to keep the oil flowing.
If the goal of the tax is to charge each individual for their fair share of the expense that each person's driving is costing the US as a whole, pollution and gasoline consumption is just as much an issue as highway construction expenses.
That's why we have the gas tax we have now.
Before we start throwing out the current system, we need to understand why the current system was adopted in the first place. Whatever system replaces the current system should take into account fuel efficiency and pollution, along with the expense of building roads.
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dhofmann 7:28PM (7/31/2008)
BoneHeadOtto wrote: "The people who drive the most likely have purchased the most efficient cars and use least amount of gas."
But they're still causing traffic congestion and wear and tear on the roads no matter how little gas they use.
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Greg 10:32PM (7/31/2008)
"Lets use the gas tax for highways and bridges and not mass transit. Let the people who use mass transit pay for it."
The thing is car traveled is "supported" just like mass transit in the form of subsidies for the petroleum and ethanol industries and the fact that most people don't pay for their parking places at work. Mass transit also causes less greenhouse gases and is available to everyone even if they cannot drive for whatever reason (insufficient funds for gas, insurance and vehicle; too young; too old; DL taken away, etc.)
"Actually we should get rid of the gas tax and tax imported oil instead. This will create more incentive to produce oil here and reduce the $700 billion for imported oil. I would favor enough of a tax to keep the move to alternatives going."
It is not "our oil" since we don't have a state run oil industry like Venezuela's. New oil found off the coast of FLA or AL will be sold on the world market by US oil companies to the highest bidder.
"I seriously doubt much (any?) of this money goes to road maintenance. If it did then driving less would be balanced by less wear on the roads, so income and expenditure would balance out nicely :)"
Yes it does goes to roads at the federal level through the Federal Highway Trust Fund. This fund has been so depleted by to a lesser extent less gas tax revenues via reduced VMT (vehicles miles traveled) but more so b/c the 18.4 cents a gallon has been eroded away by 15 years of inflation and due to the fact that the road building inflation is going up at a much higher rate than the general inflation rate. Some money may leak out but it is more likely that tax revenues not meant for highways will go that way. Think congressional earmarks like the "bridge to nowhere."
Our state DOT claims that 40% of all road funding goes to maintenance. That is probably on the high side but if you figure that every asphalt road will have to be resurface in XX years it does make sense.
Also figure that we have a serious infrastructure problem in this country with the state of our bridges even after the infusing of money following last year's collapse in Minnesota:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jUG0EOP6unZQXXXaHPVv9mXjQvfwD928NQAG0
BoneHeadOtto wrote: "The people who drive the most likely have purchased the most efficient cars and use least amount of gas."
More efficient, lighter vehicles cause less damage to roadways than heavier vehicles. Also as a country shouldn't we be encouraging efficiency for a multitude of reasons even if the gas wasters have a bigger share?
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Nick 10:58PM (7/31/2008)
What about eliminating some roads? What about converting this spectacularly gigantic surface of land currently taken by roads, and sell it to developers?
In my small town of 5000, there are many roads as in Downtown LA, long, wide roads that are barely used. WHY? Because oil and auto industry have pushed for the construction of roads to feed their wallets.
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Timmy 7:02PM (8/03/2008)
Maybe if the "gas tax" was an actual TAX (i.e., a percentage of the price) rather than a FEE, we wouldn't have this particular problem in the first place. Of course, we'd still have all of the others (associated with cars, petroleum, sprawl, etc) ...
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Wally 6:49AM (8/01/2008)
Let's see now....wasn't it McCain who proposed a GAS TAX holiday to appease Americans need for lower gas prices?
Wasn't it Obama who said NO.
Who really knew what he was talking about?
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mike baz 9:15AM (8/01/2008)
All of your taxes go to paying the interest on the national debt. Actual government programs are deficit funded, that's right, funded by taking on more debt (your grandkids will thank you). Instead of squabbling over pennies, citizens should ask why this is so. Then perhaps ask why the Federal Reserve is neither Federal (wholly private), nor has any reserves (they create money out of thin air, which they then lend to the government at interest!)
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