I suggest road tax measured by miles and vehicle mass. it would be a good incentive for dropping vehicle mass.
And how do you propose tracking miles? Keep in mind you should not be taxed for out of state travel, not for travel on private roads.
How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
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Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#22How much worse will the roads become with electric vehicles that are traditionally quite a bit heavier than their ICE counterparts? Will it require more repairs/taxes?
Road wear is proportional to the fourth of vehicle weight (modulo contact patch size, but let's not complicate things), so let's tax in the same proportion!
Tangentially, I got a look at a Rivian's front tires today, wanting to spot-check the rumor that model shreds front mitts and they looked worse than the rears on the Mustang some friends welded the rear differential on.
Rivians are rumored to squat at highway speed and dump all their power (800 hp, is it?) through the front wheels. The suspension supposedly toes the fronts in for stability at high speed, which results in scrubbing, shredding the fronts.
These mitts, I swear, had wear flaps, where the tire was peeling up. The rears showed none of this. Mind you these were the stock Pirellis that are supposedly extra warrantied for the Rivians design.
Like a true moron I was too excited to go biking to get a picture, and walked off satisfied in validating the internet rumor with my own eyes and those of a couple buddies. One of whom is an insurance agent and just rolled his eyes, saying, "oh yeah we're having an awful time getting coverage for those".
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#23With new taxes? LOL. This is the government we're talking about here folks. 99% of the time I actually click on the article before commenting but I literally can't resist on this title.
Yep, e.g. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/21/texas-new-law-electr...
several articles also note that this tax is significantly higher than the calculated average ICE drivers currently pay.
https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/texas-electric-vehicle-tax-r...
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#24I suggest road tax measured by miles and vehicle mass. it would be a good incentive for dropping vehicle mass.
Miles seems like it might not be worth the added cost of administration. Also note that road damage as a function of weight goes up by roughly a power of 4. Doubling a vehicle's axel load causes 16x the road stress, though that may be in line with what you were suggesting and may even add weight to your point.
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#25Hopefully with taxes based on vehicle weight and miles driven in last year
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#26Maybe states should decrease their amount of roads in conjunction with this decline in revenue. That would make an even greater contribution towards lowering emissions by reducing the number of all cars, EV or otherwise.
You are not wrong
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#27Taxing the trucks hauling around freight containers? Their vehicles were always the ones tearing up the roads the most anyways, because they were heavier. Now electric cars are heavier and giving them a run for their money, but still. Companies opt to move their stuff on the road instead of by train, even with financial incentives to use trains, because they don't want to have to wait for their materials to be loaded…
The freight haulers have also done their part in ripping up their infrastructure or letting it rot (so you have to put your box on a truck to get it to the freight yard), running bigger trains slower and without a hard schedule, and generally being annoying to work with in the pursuit of better operating ratio.
Hell, a lot of truck traffic is moving freight from one rail yard to another.
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#28Taxing the trucks hauling around freight containers? Their vehicles were always the ones tearing up the roads the most anyways, because they were heavier. Now electric cars are heavier and giving them a run for their money, but still. Companies opt to move their stuff on the road instead of by train, even with financial incentives to use trains, because they don't want to have to wait for their materials to be loaded…
Electric cars aren’t really giving them a run for their money. Road damage goes as the 4th power of axle weight [1]
A fully loaded semi is 80,000 lbs and has 5 axles so 16,000 lbs/axle.
A Tesla model S weighs 4500 lbs and has 2 axles, so 2250 lbs/axle.
16000/2250 = 7.1
7.1^4 = 2541
So the truck is doing 2500x the damage of the Tesla. Esentially all road damage is done by heavy trucks which is why semis have to pull over and get weighed periodically to make sure they’re under the limit, but cars never do.
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#29The Road User Fee Task Force was almost right. They didn't take into account curb weight.
The right way forward is a weight-mile tax, like those levied on fleets and cargo transport. Good news! That will create incentives for lighter passenger vehicles, ending the reign of deadly oversize SUVs.https://jalopnik.com/watch-video-on-us-deadly-obsession-with...
Re: How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?
#30Maybe we can have fewer cars and fewer roads and just focus more on building sustainable cities that are more focused on people instead of vehicles?
My vehicle enables my person to do so much more than I could do without it. To focus on People, for me, would imply making vehicle transport easier and quicker. There's virtually nothing I'm interested in that's in walking distance (there are plenty of things in walkable distance - I'm just interested in none of them).
> There's virtually nothing I'm interested in that's in walking distance
That's the problem to solve, then.