Just what are we going to do about the seeming-immovable gas tax and the increasingly-bankrupt Highway Trust Fund? Infrastructurist editor Melissa Lafsky hit the Fox Business studio to make the case for finding creative solutions, including but not limited to increasing tolls. [SButtonZ button="digg"]
Tags: economic solutions, gas tax
Here’s one: screw it. Let the roads crumble.
If only more conservatives read infrastructurist.com instead of watching fox news…
[...] However, I was a little disappointed by today’s article with embedded video, ”Finding Alternatives to the Gas Tax: The Pundits Discuss,” because they didn’t really discuss alternatives to the gas [...]
I imagine though it must not have been politically popular to raise it in 1993 or all the other times before then, so how did they do it back then? Who took the initiative back then? Maybe it just wasn’t publicized much.
I really don’t like the idea of increased tolls because:
-Cash tolls create a bottleneck.
-Electronic tolls require transponders, and there is no standard.
-If people seek longer, alternate routes, then they will consume more gas, pollute more, and create additional wear on other roads.
-Tolls do not provide an incentive to purchase a fuel efficient car.
Thoughts?
I see “fox business” and pass on the click because I dont want to end my day angry.
JP –
1 and 2 Electronic tolls do not require transponders. Many tolls also allow people to pass, have their plate picture taken, and get billed. It’s obviously cheaper for the agency if everyone used transponders, so theres usually a small mailing fee for picture tolls.
3 Alternate routes mean less congestion on the tolled road. The toll road is inducing demand because it is (theoretically) a faster route. By charging, and reducing demand, youre rebalancing the system. A good example is mexico, where all the newer highway are tolled, but an older, free road is always available. Most people take the tolled road because the trip is shorter and faster, even though it IS expensive (much more so than american tolls)
4 – True, but the theory is that in 15 years, everybody will be driving electric cars. Charging a VMT tax would be best, but the privacy people will fight that to the end. Tolls have been around for a century, even if people dont like it, they understand it.
I question how effective the ‘read the license plate’ technology is. More and more cars have smoked plastic covers over their plates to prevent them being read by traffic light and speed cameras. When these covers were attempted to be outlawed several years ago a court case overturned the law. One local newsreporter tried to get information about how many potential tickets could not be sent out because the license plates could not be read and was told ‘that information is not releasable because it would undermine enforcement efforts’
I am also afraid that the Motor Freight lobby will ensure that tolls are structured so that commercial vehicles (especially heavy long haul trucks) will not pay their fair share of the costs.
As I mentioned earlier, tolls will only really work on bridges, tunnels, and freeway-grade highways. They won’t work on the urban at-grade arterial, or the rural 2-lane road, or basically 90% of the highway system. So you still need some sort of tax revenue to cover the vast majority of roads.
[...] Infrastructist Editor Talks Tolls and Gas Taxes on Fox Business News [...]
There’s already a rising standard for electronic tolling in the US: EZ-Pass.
As for tolls not giving people an incentive to increase fuel economy, the problem with that argument is that gas taxes don’t give people an incentive to do that, either. A proper pollution tax on cars would be about $2/gallon, on top of any carbon fee and a military protection fee. A federal gas tax measured in cents per gallon doesn’t really make a dent in gas consumption.