Tag Archives: gas tax

Taxing cars by miles driven already going in two states with more moving forward

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With larger numbers of new kinds of cars using roadways, states are moving ahead to shift away from a gas tax to fund roads:

Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com

The Oregon task force put the state at the forefront of the new approach, known as a road-user charge or a vehicle miles-traveled (VMT) tax. The state launched a voluntary program in 2015. Legislators in Salem are considering a bill that would make the program mandatory for new vehicles with a fuel economy rating of 30 miles per gallon or higher starting in 2026…

Utah’s program was launched last year and has enrolled more drivers than Oregon’s. A dozen states are considering legislation this year to update, launch or study programs, including California — where the governor wants to end sales of gas-powered cars by 2035 — and Wyoming…

Officials in Oregon say objections can be overcome as the public becomes more familiar with the new systems and research debunks concerns that some drivers, especially those in rural areas, will be disproportionately affected…

Oregon’s tax rate of 1.8 cents per mile is equivalent to the 36-cent gas tax paid by a vehicle that gets 20 miles per gallon. Someone driving about 11,500 miles a year would pay about $207. That leaves owners of hybrids paying more than they otherwise would. It would be a good deal for drivers of large SUVs or pickup trucks, but in 2019, the legislature limited enrollment of new vehicles to those that get at least 20 miles per gallon.

This has been years in the making; see earlier posts here and here. The gas tax will generate less revenue as states and carmakers move away from gasoline engines. Something will need to change.

How drivers respond will be interesting. Will this discourage driving? Move people more quickly or less quickly to new technologies? Encourage fleets of electric cars rather than individual ownership?

And the ripple effects are hard to anticipate. What does this do with the trucking industry which is responsible for delivering many critical goods? Does this lead to better maintained roads? Will this encourage more interest and funding for mass transit?

Or, the funding could smoothly transition over time and Americans continue their love of and support for driving. And this and others changing aspects of driving could simply change the whole experience of driving without eliminating driving, ranging from commuting patterns to visiting gas stations and fast food places to road trips.

Where the money goes when you buy a gallon of gas

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An overview of the problems electric cars pose for funding road maintenance includes a breakdown of where the money for each gallon of gas goes:

About half goes to the drillers that extract oil from the earth. Just under a quarter pays the refineries to turn crude into gasoline. And around 6 percent goes to distributors.

The rest, or typically about 20 percent of every gallon of gas, goes to various governments to maintain and enhance the U.S. transportation’s infrastructure.

Currently, the federal government charges 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline, which provides 85 percent to 90 percent of the Highway Trust Fund that finances most on highways and .

State and local government charge their own taxes that vary widely. Combined with the national levy, fuel taxes range from over 70 cents per gallon in high-tax states like California and Pennsylvania to just over 30 cents in states like Alaska and Arizona. The difference is a key reason the price of gasoline changes so dramatically when you cross state lines.

I would guess few drivers have a sense of where money at the gas station goes. Instead, they likely just react to increases or decreases in prices and when prices go up possibly grumble about who is being made rich.

Taxing drivers by mile “unwaveringly unpopular”

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Recent surveys suggest Americans do not like the idea of having to pay per mile driven:

The Mineta Transportation Institute, which has polled the public on a variety of tax questions for the past seven years, found that the mileage tax was “unwaveringly unpopular.” In the latest survey, which covered 1,500 people and was released this month, the institute found that support ranged between 23 percent and 48 percent, depending on how the question was framed. More people liked the idea if the mileage tax varied by how much a car pollutes…

According to the latest Mineta survey report, authored by Asha Weinstein Agrawal and Hilary Nixon, which was presented this month at the Commonwealth Club of California, between 31 percent and 75 percent of people supported increasing the gas tax — the higher figure if it was dedicated to maintenance.

While majorities may dislike a tax per mile driven, it sounds like more support could be garnered depending on how the tax is structured. Require each car to be tracked by the government via GPS? Dislike. No breaks for smaller vehicles or more fuel-efficient cars? Dislike. The money collected via the new method of taxation funneled away from road maintenance? Dislike.

In other words, this is likely to happen in the coming years but there will be a lot of negotiations as well as attempts to make this more palatable to voters.

IL legislator drops tax by miles driven plan

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Following up on last week’s post, it now appears Illinois will not have a new driving tax anytime soon:

The Illinois Senate president says he will not pursue a proposal to pay for road construction by taxing motorists by the miles they drive.

John Cullerton is a Chicago Democrat. He floated the idea last week because revenue from taxes on gasoline is declining. Cars are more fuel-efficient but they still wear out roads…

Cullerton posted on social media Friday that he intended the plan — which the Executive Committee aired on Wednesday — to spark debate about more efficient ways to fund road-building.

He says he “received a lot of constructive feedback” but will not pursue his plan.

Such a move was likely unpopular but withdrawing the idea doesn’t help the state move closer to the issue: how are roads going to be maintained and improved? Few people like to pay increased costs for infrastructure but they will certainly dislike it if the roads are not in good shape or major repairs cause headaches and future borrowing down the road.

With gas at a relatively cheap point, isn’t it time to at least consider raising the gas tax?

IL lawmaker considering tax by mile proposal

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One influential Illinois legislator is looking into taxing drivers per miles driven:

A new proposal to pay for fixing Illinois’ roads could use devices to track how far Illinois drivers have traveled and tax them by the mile.

The plan from Senate President John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat, is aimed at gasoline tax revenues that have fallen as drivers have bought more fuel-efficient cars…

Drivers, under the plan, could pick whether a device in their cars monitors their miles one of two different ways. Or they could choose to pay the 1.5-cent-per-mile tax on a base 30,000 miles traveled per year, if they have privacy concerns.

One device would track where specifically drivers go and not charge them when they travel out of state or on Illinois toll roads. The other would simply monitor the odometer reading, not tracking the rest of the information.

Illinois drivers would get a refund for gasoline tax costs paid at the pump, Cullerton said. Out-of-state drivers not registered here would pay those taxes as usual.

The article suggests this could come to a vote in a few days but I suspect it will take some time as there are a number of important details to work out. This has been considered elsewhere (see earlier posts here and here involving Oregon) but this seems like a quick move in Illinois. Gas tax revenue has dropped in Illinois in recent years.

These important details might go beyond the technical details and involve trust in politicians. Do Illinois residents trust their own government to (1) track the data properly and (2) refund gas taxes paid at the pump?

Mass transit use down in the Los Angeles area

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It can be tough to get Americans to use mass transit. See the case of Los Angeles: billions have been spent in recent years and use is down.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the region’s largest carrier, lost more than 10% of its boardings from 2006 to 2015, a decline that appears to be accelerating. Despite a $9-billion investment in new light rail and subway lines, Metro now has fewer boardings than it did three decades ago, when buses were the county’s only transit option.

Most other agencies fare no better. In Orange County, bus ridership plummeted 30% in the last seven years, while some smaller bus operators across the region have experienced declines approaching 25%. In the last two years alone, a Metro study found that 16 transit providers in Los Angeles County saw average quarterly declines of 4% to 5%…

The decline suggests that Southern California policymakers are falling short of one of their longtime goals: drawing drivers out of their cars and onto public transportation to reduce traffic congestion, greenhouse gases and the region’s reliance on fossil fuels…

Southern California certainly isn’t alone. Public transportation use in many U.S. cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., has slumped in the last few years. But the question takes on new significance in Los Angeles County, where politicians and transportation officials are considering whether to seek another half-cent sales tax increase in November that could raise $120 billion for major transportation projects, including several new rail lines.

Cheap gas is not helping. I’ve been thinking in recent days that if there was any time to increase gas taxes to provide needed money for roads and other transportation projects, now is the time.

More broadly, most Americans seem to want to drive themselves when they can. Even though the total costs of owning a car add up, driving offers status and freedom. In a society where those are two key values, mass transit may not be able to compete when there isn’t the kind of density found in New York City or San Francisco.

Drivers pay less than what the roads cost

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One report suggests the gap between what drivers pay and what roads cost continues to grow:

A report published earlier this year confirms, in tremendous detail, a very basic fact of transportation that’s widely disbelieved: Drivers don’t come close to paying for the costs of the roads they use. Published jointly by the Frontier Group and the U.S. PIRG Education Fund, “Who Pays for Roads?” exposes the myth that drivers are covering what they’re using.

The report documents that the amount that road users pay through gas taxes now accounts for less than half of what’s spent to maintain and expand the road system. The resulting shortfall is made up from other sources of tax revenue at the state and local levels, generated by drivers and non-drivers alike. This subsidizing of car ownership costs the typical household about $1,100 per year—over and above the costs of gas taxes, tolls, and other user fees…

There are good reasons to believe that the methodology of “Who Pays for Roads?” if anything considerably understates the subsidies to private vehicle operation. It doesn’t examine the hidden subsidies associated with the free public provision of on-street parking, or the costs imposed by nearly universal off-street parking requirements, which drive up the price of commercial and residential development. It also ignores the indirect costs that come to auto and non-auto users alike from the increased travel times and travel distances that result from subsidized auto-oriented sprawl. And it also doesn’t look at how the subsidies for new capacity in some places undermine the viability of older communities…

The problem with the subsidies currently propping up driving is that they’re often hidden: If they were made more explicit, policymakers would likely rearrange their priorities. The problem of pricing roads correctly is one that will grow in importance in the years ahead. It’s now widely understood that improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency and the advent of electric vehicles is eroding the already inadequate contribution of the gas tax to covering road costs. The business model of companies such as Uber and Lyft likewise hinges on paying much less for the use of the road system than it costs to operate. The problem is likely to be even larger if autonomous self-driving vehicles ever become widespread—in larger cities it may be much more economical for them to simply cruise “free” public streets than to stop and have to pay for parking. The root of many existing transportation problems—and the problems to come—is that the prices are all wrong.

Americans like their cars and policies have reflected that for decades. But, owning the “average” car is not cheap – there are a number of expenses that many drivers would say consume a decent amount of their budget. The real issue may not be increasing the gas tax – and with gas as cheap as it is right now, this would be as good a time as any to fix that – or limiting subsidies. The real goal may need to involve having less need for cars and roads. Having electric cars might help society in some ways but it doesn’t solve the problem of paying for roads (see the pilot programs for a per-mile driven tax). Electric cars may enable sprawl to go on for decades.

In the end, perhaps we need to figure out to build and maintain roads more cheaply…or we are left with two options I imagine a lot of people (not necessarily the same ones) will dislike: getting cars off the road or upping the cost of driving by quite a bit.

Testing a pay-per-mile tax in Oregon

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Looking for more revenue, Oregon is starting a test program of paying for miles driven rather than gasoline used:

The program is meant to help the state raise more revenue to pay for road and bridge projects at a time when money generated from gasoline taxes are declining across the country, in part, because of greater fuel efficiency and the increasing popularity of fuel-efficient, hybrid and electric cars.

Starting July 1, up to 5,000 volunteers in Oregon can sign up to drive with devices that collect data on how much they have driven and where. The volunteers will agree to pay 1.5 cents for each mile traveled on public roads within Oregon, instead of the tax now added when filling up at the pump…

Private vendors will provide drivers with small digital devices to track miles; other services will also be offered. Volunteers can opt out of the program at any time, and they’ll get a refund for miles driven on private property and out of state…

Drivers will be able to install an odometer device without GPS tracking.

For those who use the GPS, the state and private vendors will destroy records of location and daily metered use after 30 days. The program also limits how the data can be aggregated and shared. Law enforcement, for example, won’t be able to access the information unless a judge says it’s needed.

 

I suspect a number of governments will be interested in how this test works out. One big hurdle to overcome would seem to be privacy, though government tracking of vehicles may not be far off anyhow (through cell phones, insurance company monitoring devices, black boxes, toll booths/devices, license plate readers, etc.). The argument about deincentivizing electric or hybrid cars doesn’t really hold up because these vehicles still use the roads and add to the maintenance burden. Yet, ultimately this will be about revenue: is this a better model for bringing in the money needed for roads?

“Why Congress won’t raise the gas tax”

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Gas prices are lower and the money is needed for highways but one writer suggests Congress is nowhere near raising the gas tax:

Fuel prices are plunging to their lowest level in years. The Highway Trust Fund is broke, and Congress faces a spring deadline to replenish it. The obvious answer—the only answer, according to many in Washington—is to raise the 18.4 cent-per-gallon gas tax, which hasn’t gone up in more than 20 years. Since prices at the pump have dropped more than a dollar per gallon in some areas, drivers would barely notice the extra nickel they’d be forced initially to pay as a result of the tax hike. That wasn’t true until recently: For years, the pocketbook punch of the Great Recession combined with gas prices that peaked above $4 made an increase both politically and economically untenable.

Yet even with prices at a four-year low, the odds of Congress touching the gas tax are as long as ever. “I think it’s too toxic and continues to be too toxic,” said Steve LaTourette, the former Republican congressman best known for his close friendship with his fellow Ohioan, Speaker John Boehner. “I see no political will to get this done.”…

Advocates on and off Capitol Hill are mounting a new push to lift the gas tax as Republicans prepare to assume full control of Congress in January. Funding for the Highway Trust Fund will run out May 31. On 60 Minutes last month, officials including former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell used the specter of a major bridge or highway collapse to warn of the need for new investments. LaHood, a Republican who was once rebuked by the Obama White House for suggesting a switch to a mileage-based tax, is now going public on the gas tax, in his typically colorful style. “The best argument for doing it is is that America is one big pothole,” he told me in a phone interview, “and America’s infrastructure is in the worst shape that we’ve seen in decades.”…

In a separate interview, Blumenauer said the administration had recently “dialed back” its opposition, with senior officials telling lawmakers that if Congress could somehow pass a gas tax hike, he would sign it. Yet just a few hours after his and Petri’s press conference, Obama himself seemed to put their plan back on ice. At a business roundtable at the White House, FedEx CEO Frederick Smith asked Obama why Congress couldn’t just raise the gas tax and solve the infrastructure problem. “In fairness to members of Congress, votes on the gas tax are really tough,” the president replied, after first chuckling that if it he were in charge on Capitol Hill, “I probably already would have done it.”

It sounds like Congress thinks that such a move would be very unpopular. Americans like driving (even if they have cut back in recent years), prefer cheaper gas, believe the country is still experiencing tough economic times, and many don’t want to personally pay more in taxes. Yet, it makes some sense that highways should be funded by the gas tax: if you use the highways and associated infrastructure, you should help bear some of the cost.

Is Congress responsible for this or the American people? The article suggests Congress won’t act but Congress suggests the American people wouldn’t want it. Are both groups pretty blind to infrastructure needs or long-term investments? In the short-term, few people want to pay the necessary costs but no one will like it if the situation becomes dire.

Illinois gas tax receipts down $380 million between 2007 and 2014

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Going green for transportation is good but it does hurt gas tax receipts:

In 2007, Illinois collected $1.59 billion in gas tax receipts, according to a Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning analysis of Illinois Department of Transportation data adjusted to 2014 dollars. In 2013, that had ticked down 24 percent, to $1.21 billion, adjusted to 2014 dollars.

One reason: People are driving less. Vehicle miles driven per capita on Illinois roads has fallen 6.5 percent since its peak in 2004, according to Federal Highway Administration and Census Bureau data. The recession was a factor, but studies suggest that the change in driving habits is likely to stick, particularly among younger people who socialize via technology rather than driving.

Those who do drive also are using less gasoline. So far, government analysts say that’s not a huge factor in driving down gas tax revenue. But with new government standards expected to boost average fuel efficiency of new vehicles from 29.7 miles per gallon to 49.6 miles per gallon in 2025, such improvements in fuel efficiencies are expected to increasingly tamp down gas tax revenue.

At the same time, more people are turning to vehicles fueled by electricity or natural gas or are opting for other forms of transportation. Nationwide, bike commuting grew 61 percent from 2000 to 2012.

Chicago more than doubled its rate of bicycle commuting from 2000 to 2012, according to the Census Bureau. Half a percent biked in 2000 versus 1.3 percent in 2012…

The changes in how people are traveling is not good news for Illinois’ crumbling infrastructure. Illinois received a C- rating on the 2014 infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers. For roads, the state got a D+, with the society claiming that 42 percent of Illinois’ major roads are in “poor or mediocre condition.”

Taxing gasoline is not a “sin tax” in the same way as taxing cigarettes but the concept is the same: to ensure a steady flow of revenue, consumption has to stay the same (and even then inflation eats away at this) or increase.

I haven’t heard much lately about taxes based on miles-driven rather than gas consumption. But, the article notes that it appears Congress isn’t going to address the issue so we may end up with a bunch of different regulations as states and municipalities look for ways to replenish these funds.