Oregon Lawmakers Propose Mileage Tax On Fuel Efficient Vehicles 686
Hugh Pickens writes "Facing a $10 billion revenue shortfall for transportation financing, the Oregon Legislature is expected to consider a bill to require drivers with a vehicle getting at least 55 miles per gallon of gasoline to pay a per-mile tax after 2015 to offset the loss in tax revenue for fuel efficient cars at the gas pump, where the government has traditionally collected money to build and fix roads. Oregonians currently pay 30 cents per gallon, a tax that is automatically added at the pump, but as cars become more fuel efficient and alternative fuel sources are identified, state officials project gas tax revenue will decline. 'Everybody uses the road, and if some pay and some don't, then that's an unfair situation that's got to be resolved,' says Jim Whitty of the Department of Transportation. Opponents of the Oregon proposal say it will hurt a new industry. 'It will be one more obstacle that the industry and auto dealers will face in convincing consumers to buy these new cars,' says Paul Cosgrove, a lobbyist for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. Other states, such as Nevada and Washington, are also looking at a per-mile charge and a Washington law that would charge electric car owners an annual fee goes into effect in February. Oregon did a pilot study of the mileage tax (PDF) where participants paid 1.56 cents per mile and got a credit for any gasoline tax they paid at the pump. Although initial media portrayals of the system were almost uniformly negative, 91% of test participants preferred the mileage tax to paying gas taxes."
How do they do it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Without GPS, how do they know when you leave the state? And with GPS isn't that a serious privacy issue?
Here in Washington State, they are planning a $100 / year fee for these types of vehicles.
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Maybe you have to include the odometer reading when you file your car's property tax or registration or something?
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That's easy. If you've driven an unusually high number of miles without filling up in-state, you were probably out of state.
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Without GPS, how do they know when you leave the state?
That's easy. If you've driven an unusually high number of miles without filling up in-state, you were probably out of state.
And you think the State Department of Revenue will be happy with that explanation, and "let you slide" on paying up for the miles you can not prove were not driven in-state?
That's not the way taxing bodies work.
The system *must* be cut-and-dried, the miles driven in and out of state must be absolutely confirmed for the tax to be fare, and the only real way to do that (if the tax is based on miles) is GPS.
The other option is what Washington is doing, which is a flat $100.
Keep in mind that gas or electric, if
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Or one could place odometer-checking checkpoints on all roads in/out of a given state. I think the more reasonable way to go is simply have the fuel pumps require the odometer during use. Fleet cards already do that, so it's not like you're asking too much of the fueling stations. It's not perfect - you could fuel up out of state to dodge it - but I think it's better than the checkpoint option.
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You're missing the point: To tax an all-electric (or hybrid) on miles driving in a particular taxing region, you must know when the car is in that region.
Do you propose that every time I drive in or out of Oregon that I stop at a measurement station and have a state official read my odometer?
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Why not do it electronically? You wouldn't even have to stop.
It could be done with RFID tags similar to the kind they use for toll-road "Good-To-Go" passes, but there will be those that object to this type of tracking as well.
I think a flat rate is a good half-way.
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Yeah...that's getting close to the electronic equivalent of "Papers Please" when traveling interstate.
I've had toll roads I've had to deal with some....I don't ever buy the toll tag things, I just pay the little extra in cash, I'd rather have my travels be as anonymous as possible.
Re:How do they do it? (Score:4)
Do you propose that every time I drive in or out of Oregon that I stop at a measurement station and have a state official read my odometer?
"Papers please!"
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We don't want your sort here anyway. (Hostile native Oregonian)
Re:How do they do it? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the problem. It *does* have to be perfect. Oregon is *not allowed*, by the US Constitution, to tax your driving out of state. Unless they can *prove* to a reasonable standard that they are not taxing out-of-state mileage, they can't do it.
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Yes, that is what the discussion is about. Our road tax is assessed as a tax on fuel. A certain percentage of the taxes on gasoline and diesel are specifically for road maintenance.
The problem now becomes what happens when you use the road but don't buy fuel? Or use so little fuel that your aren't supporting your use?
Washington State addresses this with an explicit annual road tax assessed upon vehicle registration renewal. Oregon is trying to get more creative.
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That's easy. If you've driven an unusually high number of miles without filling up in-state, you were probably out of state.
And how do they know where you have been filling up? People are allowed to pay cash at gas stations, you know.
Re:How do they do it? (Score:4, Insightful)
In which case they would be taxing people the most who walk at every opportunity rather than taking the car. The reality is fuel efficient vehicles are light, generally have low power and have the least impact on roads. You want to tax energy, then stop being morons and nationalise energy production and the profits become taxes. Nationalise the banks and the gap between interest paid and interest earned becomes taxes. Do these things and you can substantially reduce taxes for everyone. Screw the psychopathic parasite, all essential services should be government owned and the profits be considered as taxes paid.
What about people who bus, bike or walk? (Score:3, Insightful)
Damn infrastructure freeloaders the lot of them.
Re:What about people who bus, bike or walk? (Score:5, Interesting)
You mean tractor trailers? Those things cause as much wear and tear as 7,000 passenger cars, but you can bet your ass they don't pay 7,000 times as much per mile in fuel taxes. Even at 2 MPG a truck would have to pay about $175 PER GALLON in fuel taxes if they were to shoulder their share of the repair costs. Since this is the United States, we don't tax business their full share and instead we ask individuals to pick up the tab in a way that they can't avoid. Then, when some individuals figure out how to significantly reduce their mandatory subsidy payments to the trucking industry, the government moves in to quash it. 'Murica.
Re:What about people who bus, bike or walk? (Score:4, Informative)
It's 9600 cars not 7000. I love google.
http://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ [vabike.org]
Re:What about people who bus, bike or walk? (Score:5, Informative)
Put it on a train. Trains are so much more efficient for freight than trucks.
Re:What about people who bus, bike or walk? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not very free market of you. Why not give the proper incentives to companies to do less damage to the roads.
Gas guzzlers should be taxed out of existence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Increase the gas tax to compensate. Gasoline should already be taxed more highly that it is because of it's numerous externalities.
That will just incent the purchase of higher mileage vehicles, reinforcing a virtuous cycle.
Eventually I suppose the time will come when taxation of high mileage vehicles will be needed, but clearly that isn't now.
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Why tax only high-mileage vehicles? Everybody uses the road, so everybody should pay. They do have a point, but blaming people who use efficient cars is just plain stupid. Tax everyone, based on miles driven + weight of the car. Because heavier cars damage the road more. Then it will probably make sense.
What they are trying to do now is kinda stupid.
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Which is essentially what a gasoline tax does - heavier cars tend to use more, cars that are driven more use more, heavy cars that are driven more use even more.
This is just looking ahead to a future when the current way of doing business no longer works....
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Which is essentially what a gasoline tax does - heavier cars tend to use more, cars that are driven more use more, heavy cars that are driven more use even more.
This is just looking ahead to a future when the current way of doing business no longer works....
Except this is not yet the future, and it especially was not in 2001 when they started studying how to make up gas tax shortage. Fuel-efficient vehicles are still nowhere near the numbers they need to be for this to even make sense from an bureaucratic/administrative perspective ("The administrative costs of starting the new system would also outweigh any additional revenue for years").
And, while governments are great at reacting to things, they're notoriously bad at prescriptive action without some lobby g
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>> Everybody uses the road, so everybody should pay.
I think what they are trying to achieve is a sort of "fairness".
Based on this sort of objective, however, childless people should pay less property tax since they aren't a burden on the education system, and fat people should pay higher food taxes since they disproportionately use public medical resources.
Sounds absurd to me.
Re:Gas guzzlers should be taxed out of existence. (Score:5, Informative)
It's worse than just "weight" - I've heard that road wear is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power. You know those semis that have the sign, "This truck pays $XX,XXX yearly in road use taxes"? Compared to the road wear they cause, they're still under-paying.
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>Increase the gas tax to compensate. Gasoline should already be taxed more highly that it is because of it's numerous externalities.
Yep.
By taxing high-efficiency vehichles, they will be pushing people into lower-efficiency cars. Not a good move for ole hippie Oregon.
What's the difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't really understand the difference between levying a higher gas tax (which is far easier to implement), and implementing a complicated system for tracking miles driven, and levying this at the gas pump.
Call me stupid, couldn't Oregon achieve two goals of their goals (reducing SUVs, and increased revenue) by simply adjusting the gas tax by the average MPG for cars each year? No crazy GPS+Transmitter system needed, no transition time to a new system, and no invasion of privacy needed...
I don't really understand why people are more amenable to a mile tax system vs gas tax... Unless you have a 100% electric car, you still pay for the additional miles driven, through the additional gas you consume. The only difference is you can reduce your taxes paid by purchasing a more fuel-efficient car...
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Just that the large majority who have gas-powered vehicles get cranky about being asked to pay more, while people with electric vehicles get to use the roads for "free".
Cranky enough that they'd put up less fuss about a massive invasion of privacy? Quite possibly, yes.
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Re:What's the difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
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That's because most people drive cars that actually use gas, and aren't expecting to change anytime soon, so a mile-tax system could save them a bit of money.
Just tax all vehicles (Score:4, Insightful)
how loverly (Score:2)
How utterly loverly. I hope they are not planning to charge people for not filling gas at all.
Reminds me of the old joke. The opera was so good, they charged me 100 bucks to sit in the balcony and 200 for not attending.
A better plan (Score:5, Interesting)
They already have the mechanism to subsitute some amount of mileage taxes for some of the gas taxes. Most state already have a "smog-check" requirement where a licenced facility records the odometer reading so you can register your car. They could easily just add a mileage tax to your vehicle licencing fees as a requirement to register your car. If enough states do this, you could even just tie this to the reciprocal licence-plate identifcation toll agreements that states have with each other (to enable them to replace toll takers with electronic toll devices and licence plate readering software) to account for some out-of-state licence plates.
The current gas tax is probably highly regressive anyhow (poor folk driving older cars that get lower MPG on average pay more than rich folks that driver newer cars that get better MPG), so this seems like the progressive thing to do. You probably don't want to get rid of the gas tax entirely (as it has a small amount of incentive for getting cars that get better MPG), but say split the desired revenue collection about 50-50.
Re:A better plan (Score:4, Insightful)
Most state already have a "smog-check" requirement where a licenced facility records the odometer reading so you can register your car. They could easily just add a mileage tax to your vehicle licencing fees as a requirement to register your car.
Thereby encouraging odometer fraud. The cost of a high odometer now is difficult to quantify. How much less is a 120,000mi car worth compared to a 90,000mi car? Difficult to say. If you are going to tax someone based on the odometer though, figuring out how much it is going to cost you is easy. Avoiding that tax would be a strong incentive to play with the odometer.
The gas tax might be regressive, but don't forget that the gas tax is intended to pay for the roads and related transportation projects. That is what it is (supposed to be) for. What causes the most damage to the roads? Weather, which is uncontrollable and untaxable, and heavy vehicles. The correlation of vehicle weight and road deterioration couldn't be more clear. Heavy vehicles are intrinsicly less fuel efficient. The tax on fuel helps to keep vehicle weight down if it is high enough. That helps the roads last longer and saves everybody money in the long run.
Lemme strike a match on the back of your head. (Score:2)
HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW!
I predicted this two decades ago based on the Netherlands, which forced into existence natural gas car conversions, then slapped a massive tax on them such that you have to drive about 20,000 km/year before you break even vs. gas tax.
HAW HAW HAW HAW, observe asses in action. It's about the money, fools. And what handing it out can buy, which is votes. Everything else is sophistry.
Raising gas taxes is the only sane answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Electric/hybrid vehicles should pay less per mile as they do less damage to the roads. An engineer friend told me that road damage is proportional to the fourth power of the weight, so an SUV that weighs 5500 pounds [cadillac.com] will wear the roads approximately 10 times faster than a hybrid that weights 3000 pounds [toyota.com]. It's only fair and reasonable that the Escalade driver pays 10 times the gas taxes, assuming that lawmakers are being honest about what those taxes are used for. Yeah, I know; I had a hard time typing that last part with a straight face.
Mod parent up. (Score:3)
WTF? The physics are well known and understood outside of politics: F=MA. High millage cars have less Mass. Faster roads cost more because of A, it is not difficult to find out the HUGE expense of raising speed limits have on new roads and maintenance. If you are going to tax based upon distance driven, a fuel consumption tax makes sense; however, if you do not consume ANY fuel this approach fails to be equitable. This proposal does not solve the problem and continues the same irrational solution. If
Re:Mod parent up. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, F=ma. Could you please tell the class then if when you drive you keep the pedal floored? Or at some point do you stop accelerating and move at a constant velocity?
I keep the pedal floored until I'm half way to my destination, then decellerate at the same rate for the remaining half :)
Re:Raising gas taxes is the only sane answer (Score:5, Informative)
The law was determined empirically, but professionally enough [pavementinteractive.org].
(I can wish the info above will increase your willingness to look a bit more for info than whatever your DOT responsibilities require you to ... I don't know, possibly to delay the onset of the Peter's principle [wikipedia.org]. May be good for you and for the citizens of your state)
Reminds me of what happened in California (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me of what happened in California (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any justification for such a system other than that you would rather personally pay less?
what about plan B build more toll roads / change (Score:3)
what about plan B build more toll roads / change free ones to tolls.
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OMG. I hate that idea.
But it seems downright reasonable. Guh.
What are they going (Score:3)
Hey Oregon: (Score:5, Informative)
Awesome idea! Please impose a per-mile tax on fuel efficient vehicles such as hybrids.
By the way, you might want to review your existing $1500 rebate for purchasing said hybrid:
http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/cons/res/tax/docs/hybridform.pdf [oregon.gov]
[reaches into bag of applicable figures of speech]
Let's see:
Left hand doesn't know what the right hand... no, wait...
Rebates giveth, and per-mile taxes taketh... WAIT, NO I GOT IT!
Stop being stupid.
We should (Score:4, Funny)
We should tax all foreigners not living in our country.
boneheaded idea (Score:4, Insightful)
the environmental benefits and lower consumption aren't worth anything to these idiots in salem? this is aimed squarely at those who drive plug-in electrics, but those owners SHOULD get a little break (besides the federal credits at time of purchase) for their choice of car to buy.
not collecting enough fuel tax? just raise the per-gallon rate. that's easy and uses existing systems and infrastructure to collect. costs zero to implement, unlike a complicated system of tracking every vehicle and billing for miles driven -- which has it's own privacy issues besides. if road fuel is to be taxed, the existing method of per-gallon taxes collected by federal and state governments are the ONLY reasonable and fair way to go. it penalizes those who drive less efficient vehicles (we DO want people to drive efficient vehicles), or damage roads (larger, heavier vehicles do more damage) while providing an incentive to change to cleaner, more efficient models or to drive less (or carpool, walk, bike, or take public transit, etc).
a combination of a little higher registration fee (for all vehicles, not just high efficiency or electric ones) combined with a modest per-gallon increase should be more than enough to offset the supposed loss in road tax revenues.
at the risk of -1 from oregon residents... oregon could also start collecting a modest statewide sales tax (it doesn't currently have one) to bring in a few extra bucks. they do not need to violate every state driver's privacy by using a costly to implement and administer per-mile tax. but knowing how the masses usually vote, if it comes down to driver privacy + per mile tax vs a small statewide sales tax, voters will choose to be tracked everywhere they go even if it ends up costing them more money. the stigma of a "state sales tax" will lose every time -- and has numerous times before at the ballots, which is why oregon has one of the highest state personal *income* tax rates in the country instead.
Interesting that this targets electric vehicles (Score:3)
But for those that use the argument of electric vehicles, there is an easy solution to this. Skip worrying about those that charge at home. The reason is that if they charge at night, they actually LOWER ALL OF OUR ELECTRICITY COSTS. Yes, by charging in the middle of the night, power companies are able to run their base load systems at a higher rate, and more importantly, when they do build new plants, it will be base load systems, as opposed to more expensive day-time on-demand systems.
So, where and when should you tax electric cars to pay their way? When they charge in high demand times. Basically, the more cars that charge in daytime, and the more that it will cost ALL electric users. Charging in the daytime at a home is expensive. The reason is that most home owners of electric cars get price breaks during the night time. During the daytime, they pay full price. BUT, the commercial stations, such as at walgreens, should be charged a tax for day-time usage. Interestingly, all of the systems, have the ability to do just that. IOW, taxes can be added to those commercial systems, and can be time based.
Natural gas, can also be charged at the stations.
not 10 billion (Score:3)
1.6 billion shortfall.
Oregon uses 45,000 MkWh a year.
45,000,000,000 kWh.
3.5 cent a kWh would solve this with the added bonus that it will also take care of electric cars as well.
Oregon, and many other places, have this weird tax the thing used ONLY for its support; which needs to stop. IN the context of services for society, it's really stupid to do that.
Tax Psychology (Score:3)
They used to say they were using taxes to modify people's behavior to get them to do better things. The whole Sin Tax idea. Now they're taxing good behavior too. In other words, they're just plain greedy.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Or older cars. Not everyone who drives a gas guzzler is necessarily behind the wheel of a bulldozer.
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Or older cars. Not everyone who drives a gas guzzler is necessarily behind the wheel of a bulldozer.
If you drive a car which is "older" enough to be worth driving then it probably gets pretty good mileage. My 1960 Dodge Dart (19.5' long and 6.5' wide... this is the 2-door!) got over 20 mpg on the freeway, say 25 or so. Of course, this was on premium plus octane booster, as it had 12:1 compression... I couldn't afford to drive it today :p
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Coming back this year? They've been on the lots here for months.
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I'm always puzzled why people demonise old cars and their drivers (unless you sell new cars, of course).
If you can keep an older car on the road, it's probably because you (1) travel relatively low mileage and/or (2) you keep the car in good condition.
Failing the above, you are driving an old wreck into the ground, so it won't be around for very long anyway.
Whatever, there's little point in penalising someone who drives an older car.
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The Citroen AX 1.4 diesel could get 100mpg, a car that is now over 1/4 a century old. One was driven from Dover to Barcelona on 10 gallons of Diesel.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means per-mile tax on all autos in order to be fair, not just fuel efficient ones. Sure, it's a bit unfair to gas guzzlers, but why should we be fair to them?
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not unfair to gas guzzlers, it's unfair to people with long commutes regardless of what they drive.
It would be better to just jack up the gas tax. It punishes the wasteful more than the thrifty and is still has some relationship to distance driven. Plus it doesn't punish EV drivers at all, for now I'd think they're worth giving a break.
Or even better yet, start charging big rig operators the lion's share of the road maintenance costs for causing the lion's share of the damage.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Informative)
It's a shame that fuel costs are making it expensive for big trucks. Fortunately the free market can sort that out - trucking heavy things long distances will become more expensive, and maybe more efficient transport will become more competitive.
The amount of damage caused to the road by a vehicle goes up as the FOURTH power of the vehicle's weight. http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/091116/03.htm [dot.gov]
So I have no issue with the cost of trucking going up - right now, it's the big rigs that don't pay their share of the road costs, not the drivers of light, efficient cars.
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My rig is already self-driving. At least while I'm snoozing.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Interesting)
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I'd be willing to bet that the trucks would be paying the lion's share of the tax if it were a mileage tax. UPS/FedEx/(any moving company) would end up paying an egregious amount of road tax and shipping costs would go up. Interestingly, this may be seen as anti-competitive since the USPS probably doesn't pay tax on fuel (do they?)
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Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
SUVs are not the gas guzzlers many make them out to be. Newer ones are getting 22 to 30mpg. Most vehicles that use a lot of gas are older cars owned by the poor. Gas taxes, which are quickly turning into the modern vice tax, do just what other vice taxes do: Tax the poor. The people you want to tax, who drive $60k suvs could give a shit less what gas costs.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Informative)
22-30mpg is crap. I've had better mileage than that for over a decade even on US made autos.
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Even 5 years ago those same SUV's got 15-20. It's a remarkable improvement in a very short timeframe.
Just for reference, my 2006 v8 4-Runner gets 16MPG under mixed driving and the best I can do in all freeway driving if I keep it under 60 is about 20MPG.
My wife's 2010 v6 Rav4 (which is only slightly smaller) gets nearly 24 in mixed city freeway and close to 28 on pure freeway miles.
In 4 years they added nearly 25% more fuel efficiency (accounting for the weight and power differences).
And yes I support highe
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Miles driven does nothing to the road compared to pounds per square inch. My cars do almost nothing, both are around 2klbs, one is on 195/50/15 tires and one is on 30x9.5"s. Very low psi on the road. Compare to a big rig...every single time one comes into my neighborhood I find new potholes.
Re:Or they could just increase gas tax (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't know any poor people do you? Most of the poor drive the old cheap cast offs and the big old luxury cars driven by old people survive well. The big land yachts that never tear up or die. 5000 pounds of steel and chrome with a front seat bigger than most peoples couches. 40 year old caddies and lincolns that get 10 to 15 mpg if they are properly tuned which they seldom are. You can pick them up all the time for 5 or 6 hundred dollars and drive around with a cloud of smoke following you. If it dies you walk away and get another one. When I got out of the service in 88 I had limited funds and picked up a 74 malibu with a 350 engine and 4 doors for the family for 600 dollars and spent about 400 dollars getting it in good running condition. It got about 14 city and 17 highway and I drove it from 1988 to 2002 and spent money on tires, oil and gas for it. When it dropped a valve I got 300 dollars for scrap and moved on. That's how working poor do it. Yes I could have got a toyota corolla for a couple of grand that I didn't have but it would have got maybe 22 mpg and that's not enough difference to be worth it, especially when it would have cost me tons of money to fix if it did break whereas if I had wanted to I could have dropped an engine in the malibu for 500 bucks if I needed to. Mileage isn't everything.
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The heavier vehicles damage the road more (yes it's more complicated than that but... ).
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Stereotyping is too easy. I drive a new light duty pickup that gets better mileage than my previous vehicle - a full size sedan. I live in Texas where driving your own vehicle is virtually, for better or for worse, the only way to get around. There is bus service in my area, but according to the DART transit calculator I would have to leave home at 6am to get to work by noon.
But I do live within just a few miles of where I work. I'd commute on my bike, but I don't have enough heavy clothes to be outdoor
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Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
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TROLL: Look, mommy wants to "guide" you! (Score:4, Funny)
It's not a penalty, you faint-hearted, lame, shit-eating excuse for a tree hugger. It's an attempt to spread the cost of BUILDING roads fairly across the people who USE those roads. It's about how miles rolled diverge from gallons pumped; not how your little junkmobile sips fuel while barely being able to push its thin-walled, plastic self down an onramp faster than an old lady in a walker, all the while you're bleeding off what little speed your tiny, tiny engine has managed to impart to your sorry amalgamation of mismatched parts as you leave skinny little tire marks dodging squirrels in abject fear of thousands of dollars of body damage.
Personally, I think you little turdlets in your I'm-so-hip tinycockmobiles should be penalized by being run off the fucking road, where your little texting-phones would get driven through your misshapen skulls until they met your little white earbuds in an explosion of angsty fucktard granola-fed brain matter. Then your remains should be fed to wildlife, while your complete piece of shit can't-go-in-snow junker gets crushed and recycled into a respectable 4WD with a bench seat so that adults with functioning gonads can sit together, rather than strapped into your paper-thin faggotty bucketass seats, seatbelts on, faces perpetually ready for immersion in a fucking airbag. We'll hang a rainbow-colored, bio-degradable kitchen apron on a reflector post to celebrate your erasure from the planet.
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Then permanently separate road tax from fuel for everyone. Bottom line - fuel efficient vehicles need to provide a financial benefit to their owners.
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's backwards to penalize people for conserving oil. This is a very short-sighted strategy.
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Insightful)
The shortsightedness is trying to subsidize one group with another... when the taxed group is one you are trying to reduce the # of.
While today there are clearly more traditional petrol autos than hybrids (or fully electric)... what happens when the scales tip?
Funding the S-CHIP program through tobacco taxes sounds good... until you reach the tipping point when there aren't enough smokers paying the tax.
As I recall Minnesota ran into a similar problem a few years... where vehicle tabs (amongst other things in part) fund the bus system... when the recession hit, quite a few people got rid of their cars and started running the heavily subsidized bus system.
The result? Massive losses to Metro Transit who had to go running to the city & state for piles of cash because the designs of the legislature had worked too well.
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's like Japan when they decided to go on a water conservation program to save both water and money. Showers were installed in bathrooms, toilet cisterns were modified to reduce consumption, storage tanks used to recycle rainwater for gardens. The project was a success, water consumption was reduced by 50%. But the water company had to double rates as they were now running at a loss.
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So change the rules once you reach the tipping point. What's the problem?
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Why is it backwards for the state to expect that those that use the roads pay 'their fair share' for them like the rest of it's gas using users?
What is a fair share? A Nissan Micra does less damage to the road surface than a Ford King Ranch pickup because the Micra is way lighter so charging all drivers the same flat tax per mile driven is would for example be kind of unfair since the King Ranch tears up the road surface more. If you want to even more fair you can also to take the weight of the vehicle and, it's gas consumption/carbon-footprint per driven mile into account when levying taxes and the Micra wins hands down on all counts. Since this i
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Insightful)
That depends on how much of road damage is due to vehicles and how much of it is due to nature.
Many bicyclists bring up the point that they are so light that they shouldn't have to pay a road tax because they're not damaging the road. Of course, for this theory to hold, we should never have to repair bicycle paths. Yet we do.
While I would agree that the Ford King Ranch pickup does more damage to the road than the Nissan Micra, I would say that a good strong rainstorm with minor flooding does significantly more damage. And that's nobody's "fault."
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Informative)
In engineering classes about 30 years ago, I learned that road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power of the weight per axle. Looks like it has not changed. [wikipedia.org] Nothing says that the tax cannot be based on this model.
Note the not all road damage is a result of bending and flexing due to axle weight. You also get chemical changes (salt, water, oil, pollution), thermal cycling (daily and seasonal), topographical changes (a.k.a. earth quakes), and utilities dig-up. You also have non-damage items like mowing the grass, paying for lighting, interest on debt, etc. that must be considered a part of road maintenance. So, you really should not assign all of the maintenance costs to be based on axle weight if you really wanted to be fair about such things.
You may have noticed the signs on the back of trucks that mention something like, This vehicle pays $5,889 in road use taxes per year. According to this study in 2007 [mackinac.org] the average total tax burden was $13,889 total (for a 80,000 lb truck) and $397 per year for an automobile.
Consider that an 18 wheeler is over 20 times the weight of an average automobile (distributed over 5 axles, though not uniformly). So, ignoring the non-uniformities in automobile weight and axle weight distributions vehicle -- the axle weight related damage should be component should be roughly
(20/5)**4 : (1/2)**4 which equals 4**4 : 1/16 which equals 256 * 16 : 1 i.e., 4096:1
Considering only the 4th power rule component only, avg. damage for truck are roughly 4000 times that of a car. Actual studies [spokesman.com] show this is more like about 10000:1
it is probably a safe bet that trucks are proportionately undertaxed everywhere in the US.
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Insightful)
I should add, this measure, like most taxes, has little to do with fairness. Indeed, the art of taxation, as seventeenth-century French administrator Jean-Baptiste Colbert reportedly said, "consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." -- The measure is about collecting more taxes. Period.
Re:Of all states? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is how you determine which "fair share" they're paying for. If it's actual wear and tear to the roads, that's pretty much all caused by big trucks or by snow clearing (ploughs and, even worse, salt). Passenger vehicles cause essentially zero wear on the roads compared to those other factors. Fuel efficient cars tend to be even lighter and therefore even less likely to cause damage. You could say that the "fair share" is tied to how much space/time the vehicle occupies. The problem there is that it creates a negative incentive for state and local governments to care about preventing traffic congestion or providing optimal routes for drivers. Those governments already seem to consider driver's time to be irrelevant to cost calculations, so suddenly making it _relevant_ (by positively correlating driver time/distance to revenues) is a frightening thought. You could dismiss that thinking as paranoid, but you would have to ignore all the debacles with things like red light cameras where local governments have intentionally created unsafe conditions at red lights to drive up revenues.
How to pay for roads does become an issue, of course. Raising fuel taxes across the board when some people have much more efficient cars than others seems unfair to the drivers with less efficient cars (some of whom may be unrepentant gas-guzzler drivers, but others of whom are probably too poor to afford a new car). Mileage taxes on fuel-efficient cars are a very bad incentive since conserving fossil fuels is the behaviour a responsible government should be encouraging. Roads and similar infrastructure are the kinds of must-have items that benefit pretty much everyone, even those who don't have cars or drive anywhere, so rightfully could come out of general taxes applied to everyone, rather than just to drivers, but people who don't drive or don't drive very much will scream that they're being forced to pay for everyone else, ignoring the fact that the civilization they rely one wouldn't run without roads. The roads need to be funded somehow, though.
The worst case scenario (barring the big-brother box that tracks your car everywhere and bills based on that) is the government throwing up their hands and selling millions of acres of roadway to a private company (coincidentally run by some cronies) for a dollar and a vague promise of not abusing the position, then letting them run a toll system that makes the old, taxed roadway look cheap, while simultaneously being kept in worse condition and with traffic gridlocked from whatever toll-collection scheme they think up.
I'd like to see the Texas legislature try. (Score:2)
Re:I'd like to see the Texas legislature try. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see the Texas legislature try. (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I meant the 4th power, damn it.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, let's ignore the 2nd law of thermodynamics and stop funding for road repairs. And yes lets make maintenance management a job that someone who attended college (and accumulated tuition debt) to get a civil engineering education can't afford to take. Everyone knows things like concrete design and construction surveying are just a useless waste of money, especially in an area that has a history of earthquakes.
It is quite amazing how downright STUPID Tea Party members can be.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, but you couldn't be more wrong.
In fact I am a rocket scientist - my graduate engineering work involved simulations of chemical reactions on space shuttle heat shield tiles under re-entry conditions to evaluate catalysts to try to prevent exothermic recombination of atomic radicals on the surface.
So shut the hell up. You have no idea who you are talking to or what their knowledge and experience base is. And you got caught blowing out a stereotype straight out of a conservative radio talk show which was utterly and completely wrong in every possible way.
Re:I have a better idea (Score:5, Informative)
This article disputes your general premise. Government workers make more than private sector for the same education level.
http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/29/federal-state-workers-overpaid/ [dailyfinance.com]
Do you have any references to support your claim?
Thanks
Re: (Score:3)
I think US Office Of Personnel Management has better data than your article: http://www.opm.gov/feddata/historicaltables/totalgovernmentsince1962.asp [opm.gov]
So, federal government: 4.4 million employees
Plus, state and local, 16 million: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/governments/cb12-156.html [census.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sure there is a lot of wasted money in administrative overhead.
"I'm sure", in this case, translates to "I don't know and I can't be bothered to find out, but that won't stop me from making an unfounded assertion".
Re: (Score:2)
just charge per number of miles driven per car. report the odometer reading yearly. drive more, pay more. this will encourage both more fuel efficient cars and living closer to work.
No, this will encourage disconnecting the odometer.