Buried in the 2700 page infrastructure bill | Hacker News Reader

Buried in the 2700 page infrastructure bill

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I'm sure this will be replacing the gas tax, not in addition to it. /s

In actuality I do believe there should be a "fair" way for EVs (which I think this tax is probably targeting, as they currently do not pay gas taxes which are supposed to aid in roadway repair) to pay "their share" of roadway maintenance burden. Gas sales tax happened to work out quite neatly because it was a) proportional to the amount of use of the vehicle(s) and b) encouraged further and further efficient vehicle use, but there's no 1:1 parity for EVs.

Personally I wouldn't object to some level of vendor integration where the car itself reported its mileage on a yearly basis for tax purposes and then was billed as part of your yearly registration fee.

Sure EVs don't pay gas tax..but in lot of states , there is a higher tag renewal fee for EVs. In my state , I pay almost double the annual renewal fee for my EV every year.

In Washington state electric vehicle owners pay a large surcharge on our annual car registration fees, meant to replace the gas taxes we're not generating.

Wouldn't it make sense though to scale a tax on mileage to the weight of the car ? Light cars that are glorified golf carts aren't going to do significant damage to roadways.

I don’t get the resistance to paying for roads. Roads don’t grow on trees. We have to pay for them somehow. I’d prefer more public transit and less car oriented cities, but we need roads too.

a miles traveled tax should have a vehicle weight as a multiplier, even though wear doesn’t become significant until they’re over some threshold.

A tax/fee that treats a Hummer the same as a Toyota Corolla, is going to be regressive. Moreover, if CO2 reduction is among the goals of such a policy, then the costs of manufacturing the Hummer (plus running the grid for it) is going to feel less of a 'pinch' from the taxman than smaller cars.

At some point, as unpopular as this is, an increase on the per gallon gasoline tax is going to have to happen, if you want to pay for the growing infrastructure costs of mobility.

The fee could be adjusted based on vehicle weight. I assume this is one of the pricing models that the study will consider.

Ford F150: 4,021 to 5,014 lbs

Hummer H2: 6,600 lbs

Model S: 4,500 to 4,900 lbs

Model 3: 3,648 to 4,250 lbs

Model Y: 4,416 lbs

Damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle. This means that if you double the weight on an axle, your vehicle does sixteen times the damage to the road.

In short, trucks do far more damage than the delta between light vehicles. A single class for light vehicles, and another for semis, buses, fire trucks, UPS trucks, FedEx trucks, bucket trucks, etc ("big trucks"), would be enough for proportional capture of revenue for the O&M expenses incurred. This is to fund road infrastructure. If you want to discourage combustion vehicles, use a carbon tax on fuel (per gallon/liter dispensed). That neatly segregates the concerns and encourages responsible behavior with both pools of funds collected. Otherwise, it's just one big ol' slushy fund.

(sidenote: speaking only for Tesla, it would be trivial to create an OAuth scope to mileage data for each vehicle based on their API structure)

> Damage to the roadbed is proportional to the 4th power of the axle load of the vehicle.

Can you share evidence for this? I have read that semi trucks cause the majority of road wear and tear damage but haven’t seen a specific mathematical relationship like this before.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test

https://pavementinteractive.org/reference-desk/design/struct...

https://explorer.acpa.org/explorer/places/united-states/illi...

https://higherlogicdownload.s3.amazonaws.com/IPWEA/c7e19de0-...

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25171899

This is going to disproportionately impact rural population that is already financially strapped.

Dirt roads are cheap to operate.

Furthermore, long driving distances are not a right. Although they might be an amenity; YMMV.

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