Posted on 03/11/2014 7:41:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last month, Barack Obama traveled to snowy St. Paul, Minn., the same place where in the sunnier days of June 2008 he predicted that his clinching of the Democratic presidential nomination would be remembered as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and the earth began to heal.”
This time in St. Paul he addressed a lesser problem, one within the ambit of a president’s powers: transportation.
He mentioned the most common form of transportation — auto travel over streets and highways — only in passing. Instead, he hailed St. Paul’s “spiffy new trains,” one of which was derailed downtown two hours later.
But he did make one very practical and sound point. And that is that you have to find a way to pay for these things.
What he failed to mention is that the funding source for federal transportation spending is drying up, in part because of his own policies. That’s the federal gas tax, enacted as part of the Interstate Highway program in 1956 and last raised in 1993.
Gas-tax receipts are on a downward trajectory, for multiple reasons. One reason is that people have been driving less, and not just because of the recession. Average monthly driving, the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center reports, peaked at 900 miles in 2004 and was down to 820 in 2012.
Young people, glued to smart phones and video games, are less likely to drive or even get driver’s licenses. Commuting is down, with employment still below pre-recession levels.
And the Obama administration raised gasoline mileage standards to 35.5 miles per gallon in 2016 and 54.5 mpg by 2025 — far above the 2013 average of 23 mpg. These sharp increases mean that less gas will be sold and much less revenue will be generated by the 18.4 cent per gallon federal gas tax.
In addition, the government is promoting hybrid and electric cars, whose owners pay less or no gas tax — even though they cause wear and tear on highways. Owners of natural-gas vehicles — promoted on a bipartisan basis by Senators Jim Inhofe and Carl Levin — would pay no gasoline tax at all.
This has left congressional transportation committees in a quandary. Raising the gas tax is considered highly unpopular. Obama’s solution in St. Paul — “simplifying the tax code” — doesn’t seem to be in the cards any time soon.
All of which undermines the argument that the gas tax is a user tax, in which those who use roads tend to pay for them.
Fortunately, there is another and better kind of user tax available. That, as the Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole has argued, is per-mile tolling.
Poole proposes that limited-access highways — interstates and expressways — be funded by tolls. He would leave local streets and rural roads to be funded by states and localities.
The technology is available. Transponders are used to assess tolls today in California’s Orange County, Dallas County in Texas, and Northern Virginia. The charges go to your credit card, and you hardly have to slow down through the toll plaza.
Computer-generated tolls are a superior form of user fee. They tie revenues to the highways in proportion to their use, and can be adjusted to reflect the cost of maintenance and improvements.
Per-mile tolling also would eliminate the use of federal-gas-tax funds for ancillary forms of transportation — subways, light rail, bike paths and trails — which have been gobbling up revenue needed for highways. States and localities valuing such amenities could pay for them.
Tolling would also pay for proper ongoing maintenance. Too often that is left unfunded by local officials or congressmen eager to cut ribbons on new projects.
In addition, per-mile tolling would enable public-private partnerships or private firms to fund construction or operations by borrowing in bond markets instead of paying for future needs out of current funds.
That’s already happening too: The Canadian government is funding the new Detroit River bridge through a public-private partnership.
Private firms would have an incentive to keep roads in good shape. Otherwise, traffic and toll revenues would decline and profits would disappear. And per-mile tolling can also reduce traffic congestion by varying fees according to usage or time of day.
The gas tax worked tolerably well for nine decades. But technological progress, behavioral change, and government mandates have rendered it obsolete.
It’s time to pay for highways not at the gas pump but through the transponder.
— Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examine
Hell NO.
The gas tax is a slush fund. It will never end. They'll just add toll roads to the mix as another way to harvest dollars from the host organisms.
Idiocy.
They will erect the tolls and NEVER get rid of the gas tax, and we’ll be stuck with BOTH revenue confiscation schemes by the government.
RULE OF LIFE NO. 1: Government NEVER - EVER limits itself or reduces what it confiscates.
Ridiculous. Gas tax is the fairest way to collect tax if you are going to tax by useage. The more you drive the more you pay.
Toll roads. Limited access points. Only those driving on those roads would pay.
What is wrong with not putting gas tax monies in the general fund and wasting it on pork? Why not build and repair roads with road tax monies?
It might work of you at the same time privatized the stretch of road in question. That’ll never happen.
Also most roads have hundreds and thousands of on grade entrances. How do you practically handle that? Sensors at the end of every driveway?
Step 1 - Require automakers to install GPS tracking systems on all new vehicles.
Step 2 - Pass a law requiring all subsequent data to be turned over to the Federal Government to charge a per-mile tax.
Step 3 - Give access to that data to political hacks like Lois Lerner so that they can use the media to ream the next GOP Presidential Hopeful whose car just happens to turn up in the parking lot of a local brothel.
This makes no sense. Those who use the roads most use the most gas.
Thread winner. No further comments needed.
Does a Prius pay it’s fair share?
If you let them tax the roads you travel; in addition to taxing your income, discretionary spending items, basic staples, your home, your car, your HEALTHCARE; eventually they will be getting around to taxing the air that your breathe.
only the little people will pay that.
the important bureacrats will have no tracking or auto expempt tracking meaning they will never pay. (see vips who are never given a red light ticket)
During WWII all the politicians demanded an exemption card for gas rationing.
Equip every vehicle with a GPS tracking device that uploads its data whenever it passes by prepositioned checkpoints. Then a monthly statement can be sent to the vehicle owner for their share of road maintenance, and what type of road they used.
The Government having a way to track the whereabouts of every vehicle in the country. What could possibly go wrong...
There is tax on electricity usage.
It is the 'adjustment' that worries me.
There is already a Rain Tax in MD.
That tax is on metered juice off the grid. Doesn’t the Prius generate it’s own battery charging juice?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.