“I could support toll roads on all or most major roads provided one thing happens - THE TAXES ON GASOLINE ARE ELIMINATED”
I was wondering when someone would bring that into the discussion. After what you suggest, the next logical step would be for cars to pay for miles driven using GPS. Leaving the intrusion of government tracking/privacy issues out of the argument, such a system has the most potential for being ‘fair’ regarding usage. There would have to be different cost ‘zones’ to account for areas that required more expense such as the difference between straight open highway vs. areas with curbs and traffic lights. As you mentioned, the system would also have to account for vehicle weight. Now having the technology, GPS and massive computers, such a system would have the best chance at being ‘fair’ for taxation for service provided. If you don’t drive, you don’t pay a cent. The more you drive, the more you pay for the road’s upkeep. That said, I really don’t like the idea of having every foot of vehicle travel I do being recorded. It’s along the lines of a cashless monetary system, but I fear both will eventually become the standard.
I absolutely agree with you.
The potential to track everywhere you go is disturbing on several levels.
When I lived in Singapore I saw this first hand because all the freeways are toll roads. I believe that an electronic toll pass thingamabob is required or at least I didn’t know anyone that didn’t have one. If someone robs a 7/11 and leaves the scene of the crime in a white Camry but nobody saw the license plate the first thing the police do is check the tolls system for any toll tag registered to a person with a white Camry. They then start knocking on the doors of every white Camry owner who happened to be on the road in that area, at that time. I understand the crime fighting element but the total lack of privacy and lack of a presumption of innocence is disconcerting at a minimum and frightening when I thought about it.
That said owners of electric vehicles are getting price brakes through government subsidies to the cost of vehicle and they pay no road maintenance tax. Thus, the present system is just as intrusive is some important respects because it creates a privileged class of drivers who are directly subsidized by other drivers, often of lower socioeconomic classes who can’t afford the still expensive even after subsidy Tesla. Tesla drivers need to pay the $1100 dollar a year they owe in road tax. The average gasoline powered car owner does this electric and hybrid owners should too because. When you consider the government incentives drivers in hybrid and electric vehicles are really driving vehicles that are very expensive to operate, they just get other people to pay for part of the operation cost. That is not just and it should not be so.
If I convert my Mazda to propane and don’t pay the road tax as if I was running on gasoline I go to jail. Why should a “Model S” Tesla driver not be arrested for doing the same thing?
The only real alternative to the wide spread use of toll roads if hybrid and electric vehicles continue to become more common is some form of straight “Transportation tax” accessed to all vehicle owners (Not drivers but owners) that is based not upon distance traveled but upon the weight of the vehicle owned. This has its own problems not the least of which is suddenly charging people $1100 dollars a year just to have a valid driving license tag.
A tax on miles driven is already being discussed in various places around the country as an alternative to gas taxes and tolls. I’m opposed to it for the reasons you listed, and because politicians never eliminate a tax. They only know how to impose more taxes. The gas tax will never go away.