If they do nothing, federal transportation funding ebbs away.

Is that a bad thing?

A mileage tax is a bad idea because a mile in one place is “worth” more or less than a mile in another. You would essentially be rewarding car owners in dense metropolitan areas and punishing those who live in the suburbs. The latter is a good thing but the former is not.

Roads should be priced, not driving, although the amount of driving would be used to gauge the popularity of a road.

I don’t know why people think “pay as you drive” tax is such a great idea. A conventional gas tax is essentially the same thing. It penalizes those who drive more and drive heavy inefficient vehicles and benefits those who do the opposite. Simply the conventional gas tax should be raised and pinned to the rate of inflation so it never looses it revenue generating potential.

If a “pay as you drive” tax is instituted it will undoubtedly force the creation of an awkward inefficient bureaucracy needed to collect the taxes which would be on top of the current bureau needed to collect conventional gas taxes.

The only real weakness that I see to the conventional gas tax are electric cars. However this could be readily fixed by a proprietary metering system that couldn’t be circumvented when you plug in your car. The power company would collect the road tax from this special meter that only measures the electricity used for the electric car. This type of system would not be much different then that of gasoline stations that currently collect conventional gas taxes.

I believe, that while the points brought up here are legitimate concerns, these problems are easily solved without any additional awkward taxes.

I don’t think we could have a vehicle electricity tax: too many people would cheat by taking electricity from other meters that do not have this tax.

The one benefit of a VMT tax is that it could include toll-everywhere congestion pricing – which is essentially the same thing as the road pricing that Boris talks about. There will inevitably be a shift from the gas tax to a VMT tax when plug-in hybrids become popular, and we should take advantage of it by including toll-everywhere congestion pricing.

By reducing or eliminating congestion, toll-everywhere congestion pricing would eliminate most of the political pressure to build more freeways.

Interesting article about Chicago. The tale of “two Chicagos” reminds me very much of what’s going on in my own NYC.

Am I missing something here? Wouldn’t a VMT tax be regressive, by raising the cost of fuel-efficient cars and lowering the cost of inefficient SUVs?

It seems to me that most of the benefits offered by the VMT tax would be just as well covered by upping the gas tax. And, the gas tax adds an incentive to drive fuel-efficient cars, since those who do pay less in taxes per mile.

What advantages would a VMT tax offer over a substantially raised gas tax?

As a European who has lived in OR when they they were considering this, I think the mileage tax is an expensive distraction.

1. It penalises fuel-efficient, less-polluting vehicles, who would pay the same per mile as V8-pickups
2. It’s incredibly complex to enforce. Are all miles in the state taxed. What if I go to canada? Offroad miles?
3. It is possible to avoid. Jam GPS, remove the detector, break the speedo.

Gas tax is fair because it penalises fuel-inefficient vehicles, rewarding greener ones. It is also very hard to avoid, unless you fill up out of state or have access to tax-free farmer fuel. In the UK they dye farm diesel red to detect that.

Mileage taxing is just a workaround for the problem that raising Gas tax in the US is viewed as a politically unacceptable, but the costs are high. Better to bite the bullet and raise fuel to something even slightly closer to EU rates

The obvious enforcement problems would make this very difficult to enforce and having my mileage numbers something that government can monitor seems somewhat problematic. We have a very UNCONNECTED system that could in some respect track users with traffic cameras in different cities. I think with these cameras privacy laws should force destruction of this material after a reasonable number of days and make it illegal to share this information (from cameras for traffic enforcement) between agencies. bb, you may think it’s trivial and surely they can track us other ways but there should be some limits especially in areas like this. If you want mileage tracking you set up different systems in different areas to reflect the costs of those areas (i.e. tolls on highways, and congestion pricing in cities–and I’m sure you can work out some pricing scheme for suburbia which is less invasive)

Also, I don’t think it’s necessarily such a great idea. I understand that high pollution cars and driving a lot are different externalities but that doesn’t necessarily mean they need different taxes. I see a higher gas tax as something that will have a greater chance of convincing users of low MPG cars that drive a lot to switch to high MPG cars and I don’t think the mileage tax will have as much effect on reducing the amount people drive. I also see it as a rural tax. I am very pro urban but (assume overall pollution is the same) the city driver who drives 50,000 miles is doing a lot more damage in many ways than the rural / intercity driver who does that. Somewhat in terms of infrastructure but also how he drives, who he has the chances of hurting, etc. I am not supportive of having such a driving culture but I think our driving culture has different impacts in different places. Expecting to have a cheap car in NYC is not the same as expecting the same thing in the rural U.S.

All you people hyperventilating about “OMG! privacy!!!”: you realize you have zero credibility, since right now the government can track anyone who buys a Metrocard with a credit card? They’ve had this ability since Metrocards were invented but nobody said boo. Meanwhile, people are so concerned about anything that might possibly inconvenience drivers. The hypocrisy is pretty sickening. And that includes the NYCLU.

I’m definitely not singling you out, Andy. But I just don’t get why people say “oh, you can’t track drivers!” and then as soon as the push for tracking drivers (congestion pricing, mileage taxes) stops they lose all interest in civil liberties – and they never once mention that transit users have been tracked for years. It would be one thing if they didn’t get so concerned about the tracking. Tracking drivers is a serious issue, but tracking transit users is a non-issue. How am I not supposed to get offended by that?

Cap’n, I don’t think you’re right. There is a difference between infrastructure based tracking (congestion pricing, metro cards) which can tell when anyone has passed a certain point and individualized tracking like being forced to put a device in your car. Both are tracking, yes, but they are different. One you can avoid like Andy does by not using metrocards but instead paying cash. But this gives you certain opt out choices. Also, this is more a part of your history and there are often laws in place about how this data can be shared. I reject the idea that because you give up certain pieces of privacy that you’re a hyprocrite when you request some types of privacy. I do not think it would be proper to be forced to have a device in my car. But I can opt in or out of most tracking systems and make sure proper privacy controls are in place like the various CLUs advocate for on systems such as EZ pass, metrocards, or search engines. I do think the metro card issue is lesser because it can be avoided although I should know better what laws are in place for what is done with the data about point of entry (although, this is clearly a less precise measure than other things). But, I don’t have a problem with congestion pricing if data is dealt with properly so that it does not become a lifelong record but at most a record of where you entered the pricing zone until your account is settled and then data is destroyed. The same data issues would alleviate some of those issues with taxing mileage but I still don’t get how they’re going to put these devices in my car nor am I sure I would trust that.