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Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

latimes.com

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Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#71

Post by blihp »

shereadsthenews wrote: post #47
SilasX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars . Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

That's not really the view from a city budget. Cities don't have that many truck routes and their costs are dominated by maintaining streets where virtually all the traffic is light vehicles. For the state it is a bigger problem because almost all state route are truck routes.

Are you sure about that? I see garbage trucks, delivery trucks (package, furniture, appliance etc.), lawn service trucks, salt trucks, snow plowing trucks etc day-in, day-out.[1] And to do their job, they probably need traverse 95% of the paved roadways on a regular basis. Granted, you don't typically see 18-wheelers tooling around most neighborhoods[2] but there is quite a bit of truck traffic through even moderately populated urban and suburban areas every day.

[1] If your argument is that these are all 'light' vehicles, my city disagrees with you. They recently cited road damage from the variety of garbage hauling services as a reason to limit our options. Not that I entirely buy that as the only or even main reason they did so... local politics and all that.

[2] However they have been known to use secondary streets when they shouldn't.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#72

Post by rowdyc »

kbos87 wrote: post #65

Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside. Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.

You just described Bus Rapid Transit

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#73

Post by vincentmarle »

SilasX wrote: post #39
shereadsthenews wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuel tax revenue and other direct user fees like annual registration in California amount to less than 25% of what the state and its cities pay to maintain the roads and streets. Roads are massively subsidized from general revenues. If you are proposing a $5/gallon fuel tax then I completely agree. That would be about equivalent to what other rich countries tax motor fuel and consistent with the state's greenhouse ga…

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars . Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

This is why the Netherlands also has weight-based vehicle taxes (on top of the gas tax and many other taxes).

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#74

Post by baroffoos »

nickles wrote: post #3

> Uber and Lyft “are using public roads, and the profit is going to their companies,” Phil Washington, Metro’s chief executive, said at a recent meeting. Public roads are supposed to be paid for through fuel taxes, which every Uber and Lyft driver pays. California has gasoline taxes of: * 55.22c per gallon (second only to Pennsylvania) * 18.4c per gallon (federal) * 2.25% sales tax Additionally, taxing only rideshari…

This seems to be a recurring problem. We have all these subsidies and taxes that penalize or prioritize certain kinds of actions instead of charging everything at its true cost. This means the government is forcing a certain kind of solution to the problem rather than charging the problem makers the cost of their problem.

A better solution would be to charge all drivers the exact cost to run their cars including all road maintenance for the roads they use and the cost to the health system and environment that their cars create.

Then provide multiple options such as rail and bike lanes. People will naturally gravitate to the best solution.

I often see complaints about how this will raise the cost of products like food because they need a lot of road and fuel resources. But the thing is you already pay for this cost through other means. By charging the true cost the price of an apple may go up but the price in your tax goes down. And this way the seller of the apple is now incentivized to source the apple locally and reduce the transport costs because its no longer paid for by everyone.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#75

Post by mrhappyunhappy »

kbos87 wrote: post #65

Amen. Uber and Lyft are adding congestion to our roads and undermining public transportation, all while profiting off public infrastructure and a class of driver “partners” who incur all of the costs for a razor thin upside. Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to.

State owned rideshare network will be better how exactly? People taking their car or someone else’s makes no difference.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#76

Post by [deleted] »

mc32 wrote: post #57
SilasX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's misleading -- yes, in the aggregate, gas taxes cover only part of the expenses, but that's not because of personal cars . Damage on the roads -- and thus maintenance costs -- scales with the 4th power of weight per axle. So the damage is virtually all from large trucks, with sedans and SUVs as a rounding error. If you were to apportion out the maintenance cost due to personal cars, they are overpaying.

Exactly this. Of course, if they tax per axle and tonnage combination, it’ll just be passed on to consumers anyhow as most of trucks are distributing goods which directly or indirectly end up in the hands of consumers. However, it would be quite fair to do, I think.

[deleted]

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#77

Post by dragonwriter »

briandear wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I mentioned that is already beginning to happen. > But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive. That is irrelevant, we are reaching a point where taxation on road miles driven vs. fueled used becomes unavoidable. What will wind up happening is that efficient and clean energy vehicles will still need to be taxed to account for usage, while less efficient vehicles will be taxed even more (t…

Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more? If they are already paying more for fuel, doesn’t that already “tax” them more? It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.

> Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more?

Internalizing the environmental externalities of operating them.

> If they are already paying more for fuel, doesn’t that already “tax” them more?

Fuel taxes are a mechanism for the additional (that is, beyond road usage, in the context of the grandparent post) taxes on inefficient vehicles.

> It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.

That's actually a reason you might want a method other than exclusively fuel taxes to implement the additional taxation (which may be via, say, a means tested tax subsidy for purchase of more efficient cars, rather than directly another extra tax on inefficient ones), because fuel taxes are operations taxes but don't directly effect purchases (they may be taken into account, but the poor who feel they need a car will often buy what they can afford up front even if it is not fully rational because real people tend to fall short of rationality in some predictable ways, and discounting deferred costs is a big one.)

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#78

Post by seanmcdirmid »

briandear wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I mentioned that is already beginning to happen. > But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive. That is irrelevant, we are reaching a point where taxation on road miles driven vs. fueled used becomes unavoidable. What will wind up happening is that efficient and clean energy vehicles will still need to be taxed to account for usage, while less efficient vehicles will be taxed even more (t…

Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more? If they are already paying more for fuel, doesn’t that already “tax” them more? It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.

> Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more?

Taxation serves two purposes: (a) to fund roads, and (b) to discourage society damaging behavior. For (a), we need to tax all vehicles, for (b), we need to tax some vehicles more than others.

> It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.

True. Perhaps the efficiency tax can be built into the initial new car purchase while the use tax is ongoing (those old cars will eventually fall apart or fail an emissions test anyways and be taken off the road). Anyways, these things can be worked out.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#79

Post by tareqak »

conanbatt wrote: post #55
tareqak wrote: post #35

It'd be nice to be able to at least see the math that is used to calculate and budget road repairs then compare them with value that that particular road brings in. More broadly, some kind of (global?) effort to accurately calculate externalized costs of all kinds. Gotta catch'em all!

You know who gets 100% of their income from an externality? public officials that propose dumb laws. How are we going to get that money back?

If you start measure externalities, then you can start predicting their expected value. Proposers of dumb laws will have to spend more effort in showing that their law is effective at whatever thing that they are trying to affect. The feedback loop will become more apparent and hopefully tighter. You won't be able to recoup that money back, but you would be able to demonstrate negligence / malice / incompetence more effectively and deal with them then as appropriate.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#80

Post by objektif »

briandear wrote: post #68
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I mentioned that is already beginning to happen. > But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive. That is irrelevant, we are reaching a point where taxation on road miles driven vs. fueled used becomes unavoidable. What will wind up happening is that efficient and clean energy vehicles will still need to be taxed to account for usage, while less efficient vehicles will be taxed even more (t…

Why should less efficient vehicles be taxed more? If they are already paying more for fuel, doesn’t that already “tax” them more? It seems like such a tax is regressive — rich people can buy new efficient cars more easily than poor people.

Because you are also emitting more co2. From CA perspective it might make more sense.
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