Thread by @benfolsom

Ok hold up. Virginia's Democratic governor and legislative leadership are making some weird transportation proposals, and they all seem to be centered on the national resistance to raising the gas tax on drivers to anything close to what is actually needed to fund roads.

The first is just insane (and remember, these are just proposals):

Owners of fuel-efficient, electric, and alternative fuels vehicles will be required to pay fees to close the gap between what they would have paid in average gas tax on a regular car, and what a driver of those more efficient vehicles would actually pay at the same average travel

The link to this story is here:
wtop.com/dc-transit/202…

Here is what this proposal is saying:

You drive a regular gas car. You pay $100 a year in net gas tax

I drive a fuel-efficient car. I pay $50 a year in net gas tax

Because I am getting one over on the gas tax, I must pay a $50 fee to get me in line with what the gas-user paid

The fee structure would depend upon exactly how efficient your vehicle is. A barely more-efficient-but-qualifying gas car would only pay a couple of dollars (because that driver is only cheating the state of a tiny bit of gas tax revenue).

But the owner of a *much* more efficient car (gas-wise), like an all-electric vehicle, would be required to reimburse the state for nearly all of what he *would have* paid in gas tax if he were operating a less-efficient car.

So strategically, the state (technically a commonwealth) is going to ask drivers of more-efficient vehicles to subsidize drivers of less-efficient vehicles.

Gas tax revenues continue to fall, and fuel-efficient drivers aren't paying their fair share.

Doesn't that seem a little bit like a tiny model of the entire US transportation system? A relentless push to make drivers of the worst kinds of cars pay as little as possible for their choices?

It's a proposal so I won't go too far into the modeling or how it might play out, but without tracking mileage, how would these fees be assessed?

The linked story uses the term 'average tax paid by an average vehicle.' Aside from assigning agency to the vehicles (rather than the drivers who buy the gas), doesn't this tend to try and flatten out lots of variables?

'Average vehicle' here has to mean a combination of the vehicle's fuel efficiency (how far it goes on every gallon of gas) and distance driven.

A wickedly fuel-efficient gas car driven loads of miles annually could have the same net tax paid as a behemoth that's rarely used.

If it's a point-value (meaning they pick some number), then you get into questions of equity and fairness. I drive an efficient car (old Mazda with 25 city / 31 hwy mileage) that would qualify for the fee due to efficiency. I drive the car fewer than 1500 miles a year.

I used to be up there with average drive commutes, but when I started commuting by bike, the miles went off a cliff. I didn't start bike commuting *just* to reduce miles on my car, but that benefit accrues to my choices.

So I would be hit with a static fee based on what I would have paid had I drive a less-efficient car a whole lot more miles.

That sounds like I am subsidizing the choice to drive more. The longer the state-wide average ride (most of which are commutes), the higher the fee.

You get into all kinds of weird game-out pretty quickly. If the state gets more money the more everyone drives, then won't state transportation policy continue to encourage development that means more driving?

Yes I know that's what the gas tax does in the first place, and this is some backhanded way to keep it 'fair.' We will come back to the gas tax in a moment.

It's just insane.:

Buy an EV because you want to burn less gas, save money and not harm the environment so badly: Pay up buddy.

Buy a massive 15 mpg SUV because you have kids and might make a trip one day: You're good.

The next insane thing: The governor wants to get rid of mandatory annual vehicle inspections. That's detailed in this piece:
wtop.com/virginia/2019/…

Every Virginian has grumbled about inspections, and forgotten about it and gone overdue, maybe gotten a ticket, maybe had a rejection for work that needed to be done, and *definitely* sat in a long line at the inspection station.

But I am 100% certain that mandatory annual inspections is a big part of road safety in Virginia, and the state should not get rid of it.

In the DC area, we are nearby to DC and Maryland, neither of which has an annual inspection requirement, and it shows on the roads: Dilapidated cars abound, and with no incentive to keep the car up, they can become unsafe.

In my own life, friends of my teenage sons drive, and their cars are a mess: Zip-tied bumpers, hack-job muffler installations, non-functioning dash lights.

These cars don't get past inspection. Either the kids (or their parents) get them up to minima, or they are illegal.

And in Virginia, if you have a REJECTION sticker on your windshield, you may as well wave a flag that says, PULL ME OVER.

Driver culture aside, there is a good car maintenance culture in Virginia. I can't believe the state would kill it under the guise of 'returning some cash back to drivers.'

Not all the transportation news in the governor's proposals are bad. There is one I have always lobbied for: Per-mile use fees.

You just pay as you go. The more you drive, the more you pay. The story is here:
wtop.com/dc-transit/201…

Obvs the devil is in the details, but pay-as-you-drive is literally an incentive not to drive, as opposed to the fuel-efficiency fee, which incents you to drive the least-efficient car as far as possible every day.

There's some claptrap about implementation and privacy but let's be real: Car-installed GPS devices, or electively-downloaded phone apps reporting driving mileage the government is a way overcomplicated way to do this.

Virginians already have an annual inspection requirement (though proposed to end, see above), and a bi-annual emissions requirement. They already need to be in your car for these required services.

Have the technician pick up the mileage and enter it into some system (there is already a statewide emissions system as evidenced by the certificate they give me). You are automatically billed based on your category of vehicle.

Per-mile road use fees are also a great way to set the stage for hardcore categorization of vehicles. B/w fuel-efficiency and emissions requirements, automakers have been gaming the system for decades to get the largest, most-profitable, least-efficient, dirtiest cars on the road

And it's worked. SUVs and pickups are the main vehicles being sold right now. The companies aren't going to fix the problem themselves and 40,000 people a year dying and a persistent cry from road safety advocates have not moved the needle.

Governments don't care. But one day they could, and by putting cars in bands by size, weight, efficiency, emissions, etc., drivers could be influenced.

Want to live in Loudon and drive your Yukon by yourself 50 miles each way each day to and from work? Awesome, you pay more than a better car at the same mileage, or the same car at a lower mileage.

People need to drive less and stop driving by themselves and I don't care if they do it out of a commitment to their communities and their planet, or if they don't want to pay money for the privilege, as long as they do it.

Of course, just as with the efficient-vehicle fees system, this could be screwed up easily with sliding scales that don't penalize bad cars or long distances.

We own three cars (have four drivers in theory), and the missus commutes 48 miles round trip per day by car. I commute zero miles by car, ever. She drives a small car that is fuel-efficient and easy to park (a Mini). We have a big car (minivan) and I have a 17 year-old st. wagon.

We would be big losers in the efficiency-fee game, since two of our three cars would qualify for the fee. We would be big winners in the per-mile game, since we are creatures of our community and don't drive much.

In addition, the per-mile system reinforces a position we take and that society should reinforce: DRIVE LESS.

The last aspect of the governor's transportation proposals is the state gas tax. It will be hiked 4 cents a year for the next 4 years, then indexed to inflation. That tidbit is back in the first story I linked:
wtop.com/dc-transit/202…

The gas tax is a big topic and lots have been written about it, but here are the empiricals:

* The Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon
* It is not indexed to anything and has not been raised since 1993
* States have their own gas taxes
eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq…

Virginia's gas tax is 21.95 cents per gallon, which is separate from the federal gas tax.

The gas tax, as a social and economic concept, is incredibly central to discussions of everything that has to do with roads. Many people (mainly the 'Cyclists don't pay road tax!' crowd) think it is an access fee, when it is actually a consumption fee.

Don't use gas, don't pay the fee.

Because it is a baked-in cost, drivers don't really make decisions about it. Gas has incredible elasticity of demand; when you need gas, you stop and get it.

Drivers don't feel the individual sting of gas fees on a daily basis. But the difference between a 15 mpg SUV and a 25 mpg compact at the same 50,000 miles is $500 in gas taxes (~$1350 for the SUV, ~$810 for the sedan).

Does $500 matter over those 50,000 miles? Who knows, but you don't need a degree in anthropology to draw conclusions about where drivers of different vehicle types assign their priorities, and therefore their dollars (but the degree helps).

The way roads are funded is also a common misconception. The road tax crowd persistently believes gas taxes pay for much more of road funding than is the actual case. Here is a good look at road funding:
taxfoundation.org/states-road-fu…

That page tells us what percentage of road funding comes from state fees, including state gas taxes, tolls, etc. Here is an explainer for how to read this data:
citylab.com/transportation…

And here is a look at why the federal gas tax is not getting it done:
citylab.com/transportation…

General taxation provides about a third to half of road funding. The federal gas tax is off limits and states are averse to raising theirs. The motor lobby is incredibly powerful and decades of car culture have divorced us from real costs of driving.

Solutions like 'make efficient vehicle users pay like they were burning gas' are equivalent to handing out bulletproof vests as a means of gun control.

Overall, the subject of how to bring driver-generated revenue into line with the costs of driving is too large a subject for this forum. but here's my proposal:

Hella raise the gas tax. Hella tax vehicles by size, efficiency and emissions. Hella tax people for driving.

I would be very interested the Three Houseketeers' take on these Northam proposals: @ssurovell, @AdamEbbin, @KrizekForVA (with apologies to Sens. Surovell and Ebbin, who used to be in the House).