Is pay per mile a good idea?
The state's 21st Century Transportation Committee has asked the General Assembly to consider charging motorists for how many miles they drive in their cars in the state to help raise transportation funds.
Would this fundraising effort work in a recession or just motivate people to drive less (which is in and of itself a good thing)?
In a statement by the N.C. Justice Center:
“North Carolina needs a solution that keeps pace with growing road use,” said (public policy analyst Steve) Jackson. “Taxing road use is equitable, since property owners whose lands motivate heavier travel pay a heavier burden. It's a fair policy that encourages smart development, discourages sprawl, and could be implemented right away.”The (Budget & Tax Center) proposal, known as the Property Traffic Fee, is not a panacea. The funding mechanism works best in more densely settled urban areas, and would not be an appropriate way to fund the state's major highways.
“The gas and vehicle use tax can do the job there for a few years, at least,” said Jackson. “The PTF is well-suited as a transportation revenue option for local governments right now. Local governments are looking for more revenue options for transportation and this fits the bill.”
Comments (4)
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Morgan:
The proposed Property Traffic Fee would be charged based on an estimate of how much traffic a property generates; it is not a per-mile fee.
A GPS-based tax, which could vary depending on the type of road that you use, the time of day that you drive would, and possibly even the type of road conditions that you encounter, would be much better targetted and more effective in allocating scarce road space and road funding.
Posted on November 20, 2008 5:39 PM
Dave, No matter how you mix the words it's still a pay per mile or pay per auto system. Good? Bad? I donno.
As for a GPS based system... Now you're talking about a system that would unfairly burden people who drive very little as the cost of the GPS system would be just as costly to install on a low mileage car as it would on a high mileage car.
And will GPS be retrofitted to older cars? My newest vehicle is 20 years old, my oldest 30 years old and all total I average 10 miles per week.
Posted on November 20, 2008 6:33 PM
Just another way for liberals to steal your money. The highway trust fund has been raided by the liberals in Raleigh for years!, Remember I-40 cement laid, cement tore up, cost 20 million dollars! Then there was the tall ship ride, cost so high we never heard the exact amount. Of course not to left out the Parton Theater . Are NC famous bridge to nowhere! Seems a better use of money should be required, no chance.
Of course better newspaper coverage of these items would help, again no chance.
Posted on November 21, 2008 6:55 AM
Pay-per-Mile is the worst idea so come along in quite a while.
It seems to me that the idea is to encourage green vehicles, that is those that get better fuel economy or produce less emissions or hopefully both. Supposedly the idea behind "per-mile" is to generate more revenue for roads, etc. If dollars enter the picture, and they always do, look at the current mess in Detroit in which it looks like we are going to get scammed to the tune of about $116 per capita (35 billion among 300,000,000 USA citizens). That whole mess was presumably caused by Detroit producing gas hogs that our people won't buy. If Detroit had starting producing fuel efficient vehicles in the early 70's when people started demanding them, instead of fighting every piece of legislation calling for more efficient vehicles, the "Big 3" would not be looking at looming bankruptcy. So, we can say that green vehicles make sense from an economic viewpoint and should be promoted for national economic reasons as well as health and environmental reasons. (Not to say that health and environment are not economic issues in their own right.)
Let's look at the following scenario. I drive a 6-cylinder Toyota Highlander that gets 25 mpg. My stepson drives a Chevrolet vehicle that gets 14 miles per gallon. Lets say that he and I take an identical trip of 1000 miles. I use 40 gallons of fuel in my Highlander. My stepson uses 71 gallons to take the same trip in his vehicle. So he is consuming almost twice as much gasoline, emitting more associated pollutants (if we assume that more fuel burned leads to more pollution) and he is contributing much more to the Greenhouse Gas (Global Warming) load than I am. As it now stands, my stepson pays almost twice as much tax as I do, since we are taxed on a per-gallon basis.
As I understand it, if this per-mile BS goes through, he and I will pay exactly the same amount of tax since we both drove the same 1000 miles. One of the basic principles of Economics 101 is "The more anything is taxed, the less will be produced". If we accept this as a true statement, then logic teaches us that the inverse has to be true, that is "The less anything is taxed, the more will be produced" or "The less pollution is taxed, the more will be produced". Therefore, it seems to me that per-mile programs would be encouraging pollution, health problems and Global Warming by removing an important incentive for green vehicles.
The "per mile" approach is nothing more than a thinly-disguised subsidy for Detroit and the gas hogs produced there. The people driving this issue are doing so with no concern for the environment or the national health.
BTW, why all the excitement about a GPS-based system. Every vehicle I have ever driven already had a "per mile" device installed. It is called an odometer.
Robert Harris
Posted on December 8, 2008 9:56 PM