A per mile usage tax is a tax on liberty and freedom of movement and I am against it.
The first fact is roads have to get paid for one way or the other. O&M is the second largest cost behind new construction on a per mile basis. Direct usage taxes are always the most equitable the axiom is use more pay more where no one is subsidizing the others. Electric cars already don’t pay into the system so they already don’t contribute to the Federal nor State or local.systems unless there is a user fee for EVs at the state or local level. Usage fees should also be indexed to the actual damages done to the road surfaces causing the need for the O&M expenses in the first place. It’s been proven with 50+ years if study that the key wearing component on a roadway surface is the pounds per square inch of bearing weight. This has the effect that class 8 vehicles do tens of thousands of times more actual damages per mile than a LDV. Google scholar, science direct, or EBSCO is loaded with quantified study after study with warehouse full of data to.back that up. Usage fees should be indexed to axle weight with the same principle use more pay more and cause more damages pay for those damages.
Freedom of movement is only guaranteed in the sense that one can leave their place of.residence and travel to another location. No where is it a right to drive not only not in the constitution but codified in state law that driving is a licensed privilege issued by the state’s themselves. You are most certainly free to walk, ride a bike or take public transportation or now uber or any other ride for hire approved by the locals or the state’s. Cars are a licenced privilege. Get too many tickets , or too many duis and see how quickly that privilege is revoked.
The alternative to federal per mile use taxes given EVs and increasing fuel.economy standards that don’t come even close to.funding the road systems is to.go to a European style road tax and toll roads in every Highway which most European motorways are tolled in some form. They also have local and national level road use taxes on a monthly or yearly basis called vignettes. Every new country you drive into forces you to buy a current and valid vignette for their road systems those run 40+ euros a month. In addition to those London , Paris and other major cities have congestion taxes and local vignettes too.
Again roads need to be paid for, so how to.collect the trillion dollars needed over the next ten years to upgrade and keep the current roads in service. Gas taxes at their current levels won’t cover a quarter of those costs. So rob the general treasury and use income taxes? Print more debt fiat currency? Or go the European way and use monthly or yearly taxes at the levels that will find the system. There is no free ride someone is paying for the roads to be built and maintained. The users pay, or the tax paying general public does via income tax or the buck get passed to future generations as debt and to this generation as inflation due to fiat currency printing those are the choices the current system is broken it.funds a quarter of the need. The most equitable way is user pays and those who use the most pay the most.