I’m posting this up here mostly because I want to see if anyone around these parts wants to defend it. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is considered one of the up-and-coming possible Republican Presidential or VP candidates in 2016 or 2020, so this is a chance for OC Republicans to curry favor with him when he needs it most, because this seems like the work of an absolute dillweed:
Hybrid and electric car owners circled the Virginia Capitol to protest a $100 yearly fee that would be placed on their vehicles if Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan passes.
On Thursday, a Senate committee reviewed the $3.1 billion transportation package that would eliminate the state’s gas tax and impose the $100 fee.
McDonnell called the fee on alternative fuel vehicles a substitute for losses in the federal gas tax when he appeared on WTOP’s “Ask the Governor” showthis week.
“It’s meant to compensate for the federal gas tax that those vehicles do not pay,” he said.
Click on the link to read the rest. The sound you hear is that of my mind boggling.
Embrace this energy policy or denounce it, OC Republicans; from my standpoint we alternative fuel advocates win either way, because embracing it is dumb politics and even dumber policy. Does anyone out there want to argue that this is a good idea? Bring it on!
The photo is of our family’s late lamented Prius, “Prudence,” best known for eliciting the question “is that light green or light blue or something else?” She made commuting from Brea to Irvine more tolerable. Clearly, early adopters of such technology are enemies of the state.
California:
http://roadwarrior.blogs.pressdemocrat.com/14162/is-the-gas-tax-free-ride-ending-for-electric-vehicles/
Thanks for digging that one up. Interesting.
No they don’t. Not nearly — not until you see the creation of a whole lot of hybrid and electric tractor-trailers and similarly heavily laden trucks. 20,000 fruit flies might weigh the same as a bowling ball, but even 20,000 fruit flies landing individually on your pinkie finger over the course of a day is not going to damage it as much as one bowling ball landing on it once. Based on its weight, you could run my Prius and all of the other Priuses in California plenty of time before they did as much damage as a day’s worth of full-laden eighteen-wheelers.
As for this:
Such a fee might eventually make some sense, but it will almost certainly over-penalize hybrids based on the amount of actual wear and tear they do on the road. And more to the point, his last paragraph is right on. Let this wait until we no longer need to struggle, for the benefit of our climate, to push people into low- and no-emission-vehicles.
Have those fruit flies been sterilized?
Will 20,000 fruit flies flying in an airplane add to the weight of the plane and therefore decrease the MPG of the plane?
How many fruit flies can dance on the head of a pin?
Do sterilized fruit flies still enjoy sex?
“Have those fruit flies been sterilized?”
Why? Are you pregnant?
“Will 20,000 fruit flies flying in an airplane add to the weight of the plane and therefore decrease the MPG of the plane?”
Of course they add to the weight of the plane, just like if they were in your pregnant belly.
“How many fruit flies can dance on the head of a pin?”
Everybody knows that fruit flies can’t dance. They have six left feet, pin head.
“Do sterilized fruit flies still enjoy sex?”
Only if they’re doing it right!
Giving absurd answers doesn’t actually make my comments absurd, you know.
I don’t find any of your comments absurd.
Only Skally’s questions, which deserve an absurd response.
I think he missed your point of a Prius’s relatively light weight, and thus relatively light wear and tear on the road. Which should result in a lighter tax burden on the owner.
Prudence does remind me of the color of a fruit fly imprint on my windshield…
That might be synesthesia, or more locally known as Winshippian.
Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, said in a statement. “Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles. This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”
Diamond: “No they don’t. Not nearly”
Diamond, you may be looking at the electric vs gas vehicles as a whole, but individually do you also disagree (which is what I believe Haugen was implying)? For example, does a full electric vehicle put significantly less wear and tear on the roads than a similarly sized/weight gas vehicle?
I personally would think that there is little difference. Obviously, one pollutes more than another out of its tail pipe but in terms of maintenance of roads, I would have to imagine that sjmiliar sized/weight vehicles would put the same maintenance requirements on the road, use the same signage, use the same stop lights, etc…
I have not dove into this but I believe we will be seeing our gas tax here in CA go up in a few months in order to make up for the drop in gas tax revenue that we have seen. This will likely be a continuing problem as people find ways to drive less, gas prices go up and people are forced to drive less, cars get better gas mileage, and the usage of non-gas vehicles continues to increase. The roads still need maintained (and generally just improved), so the money is going to come from somewhere and the question is where?
Not to dismiss Greg’s broader point (say hybrid vs suv), but an electric car or hybrid car will weigh more than its similarly sized internal combustion brethren.
One could make the case that electric vehicles cause more road wear . . . Not less. It’d miss the point, but it’s true.
I think Greg’s broader point was actually combined total of Electric/Hybrid vehicles compared to the combined total of Gas/Diesel vehicles.
I actually figured that a electric/hybrid would weigh more than its gas equivalent (i.e. Civic hybrid vs gas), but I probably was not figuring in the heaviness of the batteries. If true, that is actually part of the point though…we all should be paying for the maintenance of roads and in somewhat in ratio to the usage and damage placed on the road. Hence, gas tax which has a heavier toll on heavier, less efficient cars, compared to lighter and generally more gas efficient (except for those sports cars of course).
The difference is due to weight. Yes, my hybrid weighs more than a similarly sized sedan — just as a house fly weighs more than a fruit fly. You can land either variety of fly on your arm as many times as you want — if you’re into that sort of thing — and it’s not going to damage the skin in your arm. The difference you note exists — but it doesn’t make a difference.
By the way, if you want to take your fruitfly and housefly examples landing on skin, you probably should know that a housefly weighs in the ballpark of 12X that of what a fruitfly weighs. Likely about the same as a typical ratio between a passenger car (let’s assume 3K lbs) and a big rig (12X ratio would be 36K pounds which very easily could be about right depending on the load). Even if two houseflies landed on your skin, they would do approximately the same damage as 1 fruitfly (i.e. next to nothing). The fly to bowling ball is too extreme an example compared to car to big rig…
fun with numbers! I get your point now though.
Thanks! I can put down my tweezers and stop balancing those damn flies on my arm now! Empirically yrs, &c.
(The point is that the concern is really about — well, maybe not peak load, as I want to say, but the cumulation of loads that each exceed some minimum threshold where it begins to do structural damage. Short of that, don’t sweat it.)
No, I don’t disagree that they put the same wear and tear as other vehicles in their weight class, presuming similar speed and distance traveled (if I properly recall the equations used to calculate damage to roads. I recall that one of the components is squared, and that’s where you get the huge differences in road damage between a big truck and even a midsized sedan.) However: they aren’t in the same weight class. That’s the point.
Most of the wear and tear on roads comes from transportation of large amounts of freight in big trucks, the 18-wheels of which don’t spread the weight around as much as would be necessary to avoid road damage. (If they did, there would be so much friction with the road that they’d likely not be cost-effective to drive.) Personal transportation (unless you include buses, I suppose — which can get heavy, though not as heavy as laden tractor-trailers) is just not a major problem causing road damage. It’s trucks. And we all benefit from trucks because we like having food on our shelves and merchandise in our stores. Therefore, it’s really a general expense — which points to the general fund.
What I’d like to see is more people employed in driving smaller (and lighter) vehicles, as energy efficient and renewably-sourced as possible, to take merchandise that would generally be shipped by train — and kept off the roads altogether. It would cost more for labor — but a large amount of that savings might be recouped by not having to spend so much time repairing roads.
Whoa whoa whoa. Was that a typo or are you advocating taking freight off of the most environmentally friendly method of land based transportation– modern rail?
No, I want more freight send by rail — then loaded at depots onto smaller trucks, running on California sunshine, in more local communities. I want to minimize the number 18-wheelers and other heavy vehicles. Once we have the option of low- or no-emission vehicles, the rationale for eighteen-wheelers — making fewer trips — becomes less significant. We can have more people make a decent living (more safely) with smaller, more localized, trucks — ones for which the purchase or lease doesn’t leave a driver deeply in debt.
Interesting idea…I wonder what that would do to the price of goods. Would it be more or less expensive? I guess one would weigh the cost of big rig (truck, gas, damage to roads, driver, forklift driver, forklift, etc…) versus the cars (multiple cars, less damage savings, less gas savings assuming solar, plus multiple drivers, less forklifts replaced with people loading cars, environmental savings). Short terms it feels like an incremental cost to the product but long term could be saving. Wonder if there are any studies on it?
I think that they are such studies, but, you know, I have read a lot of stuff over time and I don’t remember where. Let’s have Ryan Cantor research it for us! He’s good at this!
OK, that sentence was a bit trippy. More is better, very glad to hear that.
Big issue is the packing of containers. If you want the container on a lighter truck, then you must unpack the container for transport on a lighter duty vehicle. That’s lots of labor and lots of real estate to use for repacking.
Fair criticism. My guess is that the industry would adapt with containers that contained modular sub-containers
I’m actually a bit surprised that Greg isn’t cheer-leading a replacement for the gas tax.
It’s a regressive tax that penalizes the poor, who more often than not operate older and less efficient vehicles while commuting longer distances. A flat fee based on vehicle weight would seem to be a step in the right direction.
On a related note, I can’t at all justify why taxes on diesel fuel are more than taxes on gasoline. From an environmental prospective, it makes no sense.
Hey Greg– how about expanding this to include the ridiculous GPS monitored per-mile tax that’s being proposed to replace the gas tax? Fits right in with the absurdity.
Ryan…is the GPS monitored per-mile tax ridiculous because it is based per-mile or is it because it is GPS monitored, or both?
I personally, think a per mile tax seems to be relatively sane.
Both.
Perhaps I’m a bit dated, but there’s some history in California . . . we call them FREEways for a reason. They’re free.
While moving towards a de-facto toll road system certainly has its pros (disincentive to pollute, incentive to car-pool), it’s counter cultural. We lack the infrastructure to provide the pubic an alternative to driving and to avoid the tax (like we do now with the gas tax. Don’t like it? Buy a more efficient car.) It isn’t a reasonable solution to California’s road funding problem. If this is really where we want to go (and I don’t think it is), we need something more transitionary.
In addition, a per-mile cost basis is a regressive tax that penalizes the poor for having to own a home in a cheap part of Southern California and commute to work. Given the state’s 60 year history in enabling this model, it isn’t fair to ask the poor to shoulder maintaining our roads in this type of disproportionate fashion.
The GPS piece is absurd on it’s own. Only one class of citizen has to currently submit to GPS location tracking: Criminals on probation.
We are on the same page with the GPS part. The current gas tax seems to be a combined road usage and pollution based (i.e. more efficient car or drive less = less tax paid). I don’t think that a per mile system (i.e. de-facto toll road) is any more counter cultural as it pertains to public alternative than the current gas tax system. One can avoid the gas tax and a potential per-mile tax the same way- don’t drive. I would envision that any potential per-mile tax would be tied to both mile and type of car. It could be done without GPS monitoring (i.e. when you smog your car for example). The solution may be a hybrid- both per mile and continued gas tax. It rewards the gas efficient cars by paying less gas tax at the pump while still having them contribute to the overall road system through per-mile. It is do-able IMO.
Per mile is not more regressive than gas tax is it? If you live far away from work, you pay more in current gas tax also. The current system penalizes long commutes just as per mile would, although per mile certainly would be easier to have a “credit” or something for those who are “poor” whereas the current gas tax does not. I would not envision that per mile would be any more regressive +/- than current gas tax. Maybe you are more in favor of scrapping the state gas tax and not having the per mile either…increase income tax to make up the difference (more progressive at the state level)?
By the way, freeways are not economically “free”. They are paid for by all of our tax dollars…both initially and upkeep. I believe the “freeway” term was more of a free flow of traffic without stop lights as opposed to free from economic responsibility. Freeway versus highway.
“Maybe you are more in favor of scrapping the state gas tax and not having the per mile either…increase income tax to make up the difference (more progressive at the state level)?”
I’d certainly be willing to look into it.
Not likely to happen due to the politics around it, but I could see a decrease to the gas tax as well as implementation of a per mile charge. Everyone uses the roads so I would be much more willing to have a shared system. I can’t really imagine someone in a full electric vehicle saying that they should not contribute to the roads.
If done correctly, per mile certainly can be done so that it more closely matches the use as well as provides some mercy towards those least able to afford it….IF done correctly.
The regressive part of this is that those who are able to afford the hybrid/electric vehicles are those who are more likely at the higher end of the income ladder. Since they have decreased their contribution to revenue by decreasing gas consumption, and now the tax is going to go up later in the year, the tax burden is being shifted down stream. If nothing is done, our current system will continue to be more regressive with a shift to those who drive less efficient vehicles and/or long distances.
We could require GPS on cars anytime we wanted to. “Driving is a privilege, not a right.” Would it be abused and used in criminal investigations without warrants? Yes, probably — but theoretically it wouldn’t have to be.
If we’re concerned about damage, what we want is a “unit of damage” tax. I could drive a Gus Ayer-style Nissan Leaf fueled by solar power from Fairbanks to Tierra del Fuego and not do a lick of damage to either roads or environment. I could drive a fully laden eighteen-wheeler ten miles across some urban bridges and contribute to leaving all of you with a nice infrastructure repair expense. What we want to tax should be what we want to reduce — and that is damage, not miles traveled.
Word.
Greg takes global warming deadly seriously. Eighty years from now we’ll probably realize that we would have spent less just buying every adult in the world a zero-emission vehicle than the amount that we will have spent dealing with the famines, wars, etc. cause by global warming. (Just wait until those Siberian methane bogs burp up their carbon. That is worth avoiding.) I’d favor getting rid of a gas tax in favor of a larger BTU tax — with a reasonable personal exemption so that poorer people could do things like not freeze to death.
Why is diesel taxed more heavily? Particulates.
Diesel is taxed more heavily because most voters don’t use it. Why anger a voter when you can just piss of a trucker instead?
It’s bad policy and particulates have very little to do with it.
Both may be true. Talk to an asthmatic about diesel.
Ah, you’re talking about something else. The impact on an asthmatic has really nothing to do with taxation. It’s a legitimate talking point about the fuel, but not the tax.
Also, I think an asthmatic would be just fine with the new particulate filters and/or use of clean bio-fuels (bio-diesel and renewable diesel . . . which have the same tax rate applied.)
Is has a lot to do with the political decision about what to tax or not to tax. Alan Lowenthal, as I recall, knows a bit about this.
If there are technological advances that make diesel more benign, great! I’m not advocating for higher diesel taxes, just trying to explain them.
My sister-in-law has a hybrid car. She has to keep an extra gas vehicle as a back-up because the hybrid keeps breaking down.
Well that certainly is definitive data.
Why should car owner’s gas and electric get any kind of subsidy?
The price to own, maintain, build, operate, and repair the roads doesn’t change depending on the type of vehicle you drive. (btw, 18 wheelers pay enormous amounts of road taxes because of there weight.)
Yeah, 18-wheelers do pay enormous amounts of road taxes — and even that is still much less than the proportionate amount of damage that they do to the roads. Using my bowling ball vs. fruit fly example, I’m not impressed that you “tax” the bowling ball more than the fruit fly when each drops on my hand if the bowling ball is doing all of the damage to my hand.
By the way: does this mean that drivers should have to pay more taxes? Ummmm — probably not. If we internalize all of the costs, we’ll see that consumers are benefiting from the road-ruining effects of fully-laden big rigs: again, we want stock on our shelves. If we were really to make people pay for their damage, we’d probably shift to a system of smaller and energy efficient trucks, mostly working off of train lines (and, as here, ports), to minimize both road damage and environmental damage. More people get employed, too.
How do we pay for it? Money saved elsewhere: less money on road repair, less damage due to truck accidents, less damage to the environment.
Greg, a few posts above which I appreciate, but am I correct in summarizing your issue with the gas tax and a possible per-mile tax is that everyday passenger cars do not do a lick of damage to the road and that only 18-wheelers do the damage to the roads? Replace all road type taxes with truck tax or general fund tax (i.e. sales/income tax)? Truck taxes supposedly get included in the price of product delivered, which is a hidden tax.
I am not sure that I agree with that passenger cars don’t really do much damage to the roads (the roads in my neighborhood don’t get much big rig traffic, but they sure are beat up and could use some “repair”).
Weather and the use of shoddy materials (thanks, among other things, to outsourcing!) also do damage to the roads even if they are untraveled upon. It’s more damage than “none,” but much much less than tractor-trailers. I used to have the equation on hand when I was doing research on this, maybe someone else knows it offhand.
Yeah and since that is the case, all cars should really be paying for the upkeep of the roads- gas and hybrid/electric.
Sure — once we no longer have so dire a need to incentivize the driving of hybrid and electric cars. Right now, such a move is a move to make global heating worse.