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Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

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Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#221

Post by kelnos »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #218
lmilcin wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for. There are three main reasons for a tax to exist: 1. To bring revenue 2. To create incentive 3. Social justice (or illusion of it) Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything. Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance buildin…

I'm not sure how it works in your country, but in the US fuel taxes don't go to the general pot, they end up in a specific fund called the Highway Trust Fund that's specifically earmarked for transportation infrastructure and maintenance.

Per the article, in Australia the fuel excise does not go toward road maintenance, but instead goes into the general fund.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#222

Post by SEJeff »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #218
lmilcin wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for. There are three main reasons for a tax to exist: 1. To bring revenue 2. To create incentive 3. Social justice (or illusion of it) Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything. Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance buildin…

I'm not sure how it works in your country, but in the US fuel taxes don't go to the general pot, they end up in a specific fund called the Highway Trust Fund that's specifically earmarked for transportation infrastructure and maintenance.

And in the US, the overwhelming majority of road damage is done by long haul freight semi trucks, not electric or ICE cars.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#223

Post by chii »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #218
lmilcin wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you misunderstand what the road tax (or any other tax) is for. There are three main reasons for a tax to exist: 1. To bring revenue 2. To create incentive 3. Social justice (or illusion of it) Revenue from a specific tax is almost never used for a specific purpose. All revenue goes into a large bin from which the government takes to finance everything. Revenue from fuel/road tax is not used to finance buildin…

I'm not sure how it works in your country, but in the US fuel taxes don't go to the general pot, they end up in a specific fund called the Highway Trust Fund that's specifically earmarked for transportation infrastructure and maintenance.

and the article is specifically talking about australia, which doesn't have specific tax buckets for a purpose.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#224

Post by Ardren »

Guthur wrote: post #199
Zenbit_UX wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No but they are that country that was on fire this year due to climate change... How quickly they've forgotten.

Nope, you don't know what you're talking about. Australia has terrible land management. Before urban settlement the Aboringal population would carry out continual burn and migrate behaviour, keeping the bush leaf clutter far more in check and drastically reducing the amount of fuel available. Austalia has always burned long before the industrial revolution and it can't burn without fuel.

Australia does plenty of forest management. The problem has been in recent years it's been more dangerous to do controlled burning and the recent bushfires were so extreme the fire was jumping between the tops of the trees skipping the undergrowth completely.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/media-reaction-australias-bushfi...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-th...

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#225

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

adrianN wrote: post #38
recursive wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that road damage caused by vehicles is not linear with weight. Heavy vehicles do much more damage. I can't cite a source, but I recall an exponent between 3 and 4 on the leading term. With that in mind, everything but heavy freight is basically negligible. And then it's generally for businesses where privacy isn't so much of an issue.

Wikipedia says damage is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#cite_ref-13

That is insane. I will remember this for life now.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#226

Post by kelnos »

Someone wrote: post #196
marta_morena_28 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confirmation bias to the fourth power. A person just told you that an average truck of which you see plenty on the roads, does a couple thousand times the damage of a car and your response is: "Let's get all the cars of the road because a bicycle does no damage at all compared to cars"

Who says all ? I’m just pointing out that there can be economic incentives for improving bicycle infrastructure. That isn’t an original idea. See for example https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ (2009) Also, if in Google “50 ton 5-axle truck” I get trucks that I rarely see on roads in Europe. Reading https://www.jpisla.es/resources/Download+JPIsla+20130106+Pes... , that’s because t most countries do…

A quick search suggests that a semi truck without trailer weighs between 10 and 25 tons[0]. Those are usually 3-axle, so that's between about 125 and 4800 units of damage. That's still a massive amount when compared to the 1 unit of damage for a sedan.

Add an empty trailer and you get 35 tons (5 axles, 2400 units of damage). US max allowed is 80 tons, for a whopping 65,536 units of damage.

I don't know how full they are, but I see 5-axle tractor-trailers on highways all the time in the US, and also locally doing last-mile deliveries to larger businesses like supermarkets and home improvement stores.

I guess the differences in allowed weights might account for why US roads are often in worse shape than many in Europe, though I assume vastly different maintenance schedules play a large part as well.

[0] https://www.tcsfuel.com/blog/truck-weight-classification/

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#227

Post by nl »

goatinaboat wrote: post #122
zozbot234 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but some portion of road maintenance costs is independent from vehicle-caused wear-and-tear on the actual road surface. You would want this portion to be paid also by standard, non-commercial vehicles since these users are clearly receiving some value from the existence of a well-maintained road.

This is true, but some portion of road maintenance costs is independent from vehicle-caused wear-and-tear on the actual road surface. A lot it is caused (around here anyway) by water permeating and expanding as it freezes.

Not much of that happens in Victoria, and even less in South Australia.

In South Australia we get temperature below zero maybe once every 10 years.

Victoria has some snowfields, but they are a relativity small area.

Bitumen damage from melting is a real issue though. See the pics on https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-05/melting-road-in-far-n...

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#228

Post by nl »

cam_l wrote: post #174
chrismorgan wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for Australia specifically (this article being about Australia), frost damage to roads is typically either non-existent or negligible. There aren’t many roads that are exposed to substantially freezing conditions often.

I have had bitumen melt onto my shoes in summer though.

See the pics on https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-05/melting-road-in-far-n...

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#229

Post by megablast »

chrismorgan wrote: post #133
adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia says damage is proportional to axle weight to the 4th power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_weight#cite_ref-13

I remember my dad telling me that when I was in my late teens. That it’s the fourth power startled me. To give an idea of what this means: For a 50 tonne semi-trailer with five axles, (⁵⁰⁄₅)⁴ = 10,000 units of damage. 2 tonne vehicle with two axles, 1 unit of damage. That one truck, only 25 times as heavy as a pretty heavy car, is doing 10,000 times as much damage to the road. Thus indeed if you have basically any he…

Except we need trucks. We don’t need private cars.

Re: Victoria follows South Australia and imposes electric car road tax

#230

Post by b112 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #6

I'm not really sure there's a good answer here. Fuel tax is 43 cents a litre. Australian cars right now avg about 13.1 litres per 100km. So you're looking at ~$5.6 per 100km for fuel tax. This tax is adding $2.5 tax per 100km for electric. Right now, EVs are absolutely creating an regressive tax situation with regards to fuel. Those who can afford to buy newer, efficient cars can usually save money on tax over those…

With respect to road damage via heavier vehicles, as other posts discuss, I won't. Not because it isn't real, but because the debate has been going on for, oh, 50+ years. Thus, conflating that issue with this, will result in an utter and relentless logjam.

So back to your post, one thing I'm utterly against is taxing per distance driven. Why?

Privacy. There are already talks all over the place, discussions in government, of having a GPS tracker counting distance. Some even discuss real time uploads to the government, others monthly dumps.

Sorry, no. No, no, no. In fact, not sorry. :P Because talk about full time surveillance! I realise that in some nations, like the UK, who have RFID/TPMS trackers, and license plate trackers all over the place, this might seem normal.

But I do not want that here.

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