U.S. drivers break mileage record

[kkt]

Fine.  Tax the gas.  Get rid of the tolls.

For one brief shining moment, Washington had no toll roads or bridges that were entirely within the state...

[froggie]

I'm not a huge fan of toll lanes for the reasons that you mentioned though. Virginia has basically created a system were the well-off can pay to bypass most of the Beltway traffic en route to DC. That's just bad policy, in my mind.

Evidence from past HO/T lane projects suggests that people of all income levels use the lanes.  Are the well-off better able to pay for it?  Sure.  Are they the only ones using them?  No.

[The Nature Boy]

I'm not a huge fan of toll lanes for the reasons that you mentioned though. Virginia has basically created a system were the well-off can pay to bypass most of the Beltway traffic en route to DC. That's just bad policy, in my mind.

Evidence from past HO/T lane projects suggests that people of all income levels use the lanes.  Are the well-off better able to pay for it?  Sure.  Are they the only ones using them?  No.

When I drove through there last time, I took them (just to see what the experience was like), I think it cost like $7 from end to end. I may be off on that number. It doesn't seem like a very good use of money over the long term.

[froggie]

Depends on the situation.  If you're in a hurry to get to something that has a monetary value higher than the toll, then the toll would be worth it.

[The Nature Boy]

Depends on the situation.  If you're in a hurry to get to something that has a monetary value higher than the toll, then the toll would be worth it.

Oh absolutely

I'm more thinking about the average daily commuter. That would add up after a while.

[jeffandnicole]

I'm not a huge fan of toll lanes for the reasons that you mentioned though. Virginia has basically created a system were the well-off can pay to bypass most of the Beltway traffic en route to DC. That's just bad policy, in my mind.

Evidence from past HO/T lane projects suggests that people of all income levels use the lanes.  Are the well-off better able to pay for it?  Sure.  Are they the only ones using them?  No.

In theory, yes.  But then again, income levels may not equal well-off.  Someone with a lot of income could also have drowned themselves in debt...especially if they spent during the good times.  Someone in a lower income bracket may have an old car, small house, etc, but no mortgage or car payments, and would have money available.

Depends on the situation.  If you're in a hurry to get to something that has a monetary value higher than the toll, then the toll would be worth it.

Oh absolutely

I'm more thinking about the average daily commuter. That would add up after a while.

Yep - ask anyone that's basically forced to cross a toll bridge or pay a toll on a daily basis.  Also those that need to buy a monthly pass for a parking garage or mass transit (especially when they already have a car).

[Duke87]

that's what astounds me about the push to go back to tolling: We've tried it already and it sucks, say all you want about modern, electronic tolling systems.  Now, we have this uncoordinated mishmash of tolled facilities and tax-funded facilities that just isn't getting the job done comprehensively, at least in recent years.

It's all psychological.

Gas prices are, by natural market forces (at this point mostly inflation but people don't think in such terms), higher than they used to be historically. Realistic or not, the perception exists that gas is already too expensive and anything which might increase the price of it further is met with fierce opposition. Especially since people's lifestyles are such that, for the most part, they don't have the option of just buying less gas to compensate for a price increase. It's a cost of living that cannot be changed without changing how one lives. So if the gas tax goes up, you have no choice but to pay more. People don't like not having a choice.

Tolls, meanwhile, offer people a choice. If you don't want to pay the toll, you don't have to use the tolled road. So yes, it creates "Lexus lanes" and such, but at the end of the day that is exactly what people want - to have the road there for them if they want it, but to not have to pay for it if they don't.

Another perception problem is one of the productivity of money. People have a mental disconnect between gas taxes and public roads. As far as the user can directly see, gas tax revenue like all tax revenue is pissed away into the great nebula that is public coffers, and the roads they drive on are paid for with magic money that comes out of the nebula with the input having no relation to the output. When a road is built and funded with tolls, the user directly sees exactly what they are paying for, and feels more like they are actually getting something for their money.

[Sykotyk]

that's what astounds me about the push to go back to tolling: We've tried it already and it sucks, say all you want about modern, electronic tolling systems.  Now, we have this uncoordinated mishmash of tolled facilities and tax-funded facilities that just isn't getting the job done comprehensively, at least in recent years.

It's all psychological.

Gas prices are, by natural market forces (at this point mostly inflation but people don't think in such terms), higher than they used to be historically. Realistic or not, the perception exists that gas is already too expensive and anything which might increase the price of it further is met with fierce opposition. Especially since people's lifestyles are such that, for the most part, they don't have the option of just buying less gas to compensate for a price increase. It's a cost of living that cannot be changed without changing how one lives. So if the gas tax goes up, you have no choice but to pay more. People don't like not having a choice.

Tolls, meanwhile, offer people a choice. If you don't want to pay the toll, you don't have to use the tolled road. So yes, it creates "Lexus lanes" and such, but at the end of the day that is exactly what people want - to have the road there for them if they want it, but to not have to pay for it if they don't.

Another perception problem is one of the productivity of money. People have a mental disconnect between gas taxes and public roads. As far as the user can directly see, gas tax revenue like all tax revenue is pissed away into the great nebula that is public coffers, and the roads they drive on are paid for with magic money that comes out of the nebula with the input having no relation to the output. When a road is built and funded with tolls, the user directly sees exactly what they are paying for, and feels more like they are actually getting something for their money.

But that's also part of the problem. The cost of making it 'only the user pays' makes it more expensive to keep track. Also, if you based it on weight/mileage, you will have trucks paying an extremely high amount. Which, based on the belief that 'cost is covered by those who use it' will simply see their prices for EVERYTHING go up if it goes up.

Gas tax is a simple way to keep track and charge for the tax. It takes it as a user fee, charged regularly, and the money is handled by retail establishments and passed on in volume to the state and thereby to the feds. If you feel there's a 'freeloader problem' with electric or hybrids, simply up the gas tax to compensate. It will do two things: help spur people into going toward more fuel efficient and non-oil based transportation, and to help get some of the least fuel-efficient vehicles to be driven less or given up entirely.

And the idea that we can't raise the price of fuel is bogus. People will still buy it at $5/gallon as they are right now at $2.50/gallon. Will the volume change? Sure. But, doubling the price came nowhere close to halving the consumption. So, it's a win, win.

I remember when gas was just edging past $2 for the first time in my area, the big talk of a $0.50 increase to the federal fuel tax was that people would never buy gas for $2.50 a gallon.  Not long after that, it was hitting $3, $4, and $5 a gallon. And still people filled up their cars. Took trips. Traveled. Sure, we changed some of our driving habits (combining multiple trips into town into one).

But people act like that was a bad thing. Conservation of energy and cost SHOULD be something we do. Whether we do it because prices are high or not.

[cpzilliacus]

- it is psychologically much more difficult to ignore. I know that I have to put gas in my car but it's a thing I do every so often and I just consider it a cost of living. Some tax is included in the price of the gas, but it isn't generally shown on signs or receipts so it's out of sight and out of mind. But if I am being charged a tax based on how many miles I drive, now I'm going to glare at my odometer every time I get in my car and think "every time that thing ticks up another mile, it's more money out of my pocket". And then feel like the government is constantly, slowly sucking my money away as I drive.

This bullet highlights exactly why the average American driver has A) no clue about the full cost of driving, and B) the actual cost of road infrastructure.  (A) because it's a "hidden tax", and (B) in part because the gas tax does not cover the full cost of roads and highways.  Not by a longshot.

And then there's the matter of a chunk of those motor fuel taxes getting diverted to mass transit projects (federal capital subsidies for transit come almost entirely from federal motor fuel taxes), and in some states, the amount of fuel tax revenue and toll revenue that gets diverted to transit is quite high as a percentage of all spending on transit.

More than  a few justify and rationalize opposition to increases in those federal motor fuel taxes by stating that "it all would go to transit anyway" (never mind that such claims are false).

An honest discussion of transit funding should be part of the conversation, and it usually is not.

[cpzilliacus]

I'm not a huge fan of toll lanes for the reasons that you mentioned though. Virginia has basically created a system were the well-off can pay to bypass most of the Beltway traffic en route to DC. That's just bad policy, in my mind.

Evidence from past HO/T lane projects suggests that people of all income levels use the lanes.  Are the well-off better able to pay for it?  Sure.

Correct. 

Are they the only ones using them?  No.

Even more correct.  And paying that toll may well mean less fuel expended, and maybe less wear and tear on the vehicle too.

[J N Winkler]

- it's a lot more administratively inefficient to collect than a gas tax since there are a lot more vehicles than gas stations out there. More points of collection = more people you need to collect from = more potential violators = more resources needing to be spent on enforcement. The best type of tax is one with as few points of collection as possible. The worst type of tax is one that individuals have to directly pay.

This point is a good one.  The disparity in count of collection points is actually much greater than this because in most states, the fuel tax is collected off the rack or at the terminal.

And that may not be a problem- if we're actually paying the true cost to drive (complete with varying tax rates depending on peak/off-peak driving and vehicle curb weight), we should be aware of how much it actually costs to pay for our share of road infrastructure. When it's like the gas tax, where it's out of sight and out of mind, I think people lose understanding of how expensive it actually is to have and maintain roads. That could change behavior to cause society to function more efficiently (telecommuting, more varied business hours, etc), which should be something we encourage.

Standard economic theory says the price signal by itself should be all that price-takers need in order to limit overconsumption of scarce resources.  We have been a lot slower to adopt roadspace-saving strategies than seems to be indicated by the degree of congestion in our major cities and I suspect that results from institutional factors that never make it into back-of-the-envelope policy analysis.

As an example, adoption of telecommuting in the last fifteen years has been more of a slow roll than a rocket launch, and I think the ulterior reason for this is that many managers entered the workforce during a time of low congestion, low property prices, etc. and still rely on "face time" to identify trustworthy subordinates/good promotion prospects.  In a given organizational unit where this is the case, telecommuting takes off when the manager is replaced by somebody who has figured out how to get the work done without structuring his or her supervisory approach around superficial metrics like time spent in the office.

Anyway, that's what astounds me about the push to go back to tolling: We've tried it already and it sucks, say all you want about modern, electronic tolling systems.  Now, we have this uncoordinated mishmash of tolled facilities and tax-funded facilities that just isn't getting the job done comprehensively, at least in recent years.

In my view, the current emphasis on tolling will have the effect of establishing that, even with novel technologies, tolling is still not a sustainable approach to financing highway capacity on a systemwide level.  Right now we have too many toll operators chasing too few toll-viable projects and this is already becoming more and more evident as marginal projects fail and require bailouts from the public purse.  This is not a simple retread of the 1950's, however, because the highway policy debate in recent years has been dominated by tolling advocates who believe that modern technology negates all the disadvantages inherent in that revenue collection method.  Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon aside, proving these people wrong is not a trivial job, and it cannot be done by accepting the 1950's experience as read.

I think, and for our sakes hope, that we are moving in the general direction of a "Son of Interstate" grand compromise where the main basis of support is taxes fairly closely related to use, there is a renewed commitment to upkeep with some capacity expansion, and tolling--including the new variations such as managed lanes--is confined to special cases at the margin.

I suppose one of the other reasons I lean towards taxing rather than tolling is because my perception is that taxes are simply more fair across economic classes.  Slapping a toll on a facility while continuing to gather gas taxes slaps poorer classes with an additional economic burden that is a larger percentage of their income than it is for higher classes.  Just seems to lead to transportation facilities where only those who can afford to ride on them may do so -- Lexus lanes?  Try Lexus bridges, tunnels and turnpikes.

Fuel taxes are regressive, too.  The main advantage they have over tolls in this regard is that they do not require the poor to pay exorbitant collection costs on top of the use charge wrapped in the toll plus the tax on the fuel consumed on the tolled facility.  Since there is no good way to differentiate trips taken by the poor, probably the easiest way of dealing with the problem is to make a tax credit or partial refund available to low-income filers in respect of fuel taxes and tolls paid.  A similar mechanism is used in some states where groceries are subject to full retail sales tax.

[tmthyvs]

I am just going to point out that a VMT tax would royally screw over those of us in rural areas. I have a relatively short commute but the nature of my work takes me out into the field a lot and I put a lot of my miles on my car doing so. If I had a comparable job in Boston, I'd ride the T to where I have to go because the population density is greater but in Maine, I could easily drive 50 miles a day just driving around doing visits.

I've heard this argument, and I call BS on it. If a VMT tax would royally screw you over, the gas tax already does because you have to buy a lot more gas and therefore pay more gas tax by virtue of being in a rural area. If anything, I think a VMT would likely be kinder to rural areas than the gas tax. Why? I think people in rural areas have (and need), on average, less fuel-efficient vehicles than those in urban areas. Right now, your rural pick-up truck pays way more gas tax relative to vehicle weight and miles traveled than your urban Prius driver or electric car driver. VMT would have a tendency to even this out when all is said and done (I'm exaggerating the differences, obviously). Now this assumes level revenue, but the amount of revenue collected for roads from whatever means is a completely different issue than the instruments used to raise that revenue, and my contention is that a VMT tax is a more favorable instrument on average for rural-dwellers than the gas tax.

[The Nature Boy]

I am just going to point out that a VMT tax would royally screw over those of us in rural areas. I have a relatively short commute but the nature of my work takes me out into the field a lot and I put a lot of my miles on my car doing so. If I had a comparable job in Boston, I'd ride the T to where I have to go because the population density is greater but in Maine, I could easily drive 50 miles a day just driving around doing visits.

I've heard this argument, and I call BS on it. If a VMT tax would royally screw you over, the gas tax already does because you have to buy a lot more gas and therefore pay more gas tax by virtue of being in a rural area. If anything, I think a VMT would likely be kinder to rural areas than the gas tax. Why? I think people in rural areas have (and need), on average, less fuel-efficient vehicles than those in urban areas. Right now, your rural pick-up truck pays way more gas tax relative to vehicle weight and miles traveled than your urban Prius driver or electric car driver. VMT would have a tendency to even this out when all is said and done (I'm exaggerating the differences, obviously). Now this assumes level revenue, but the amount of revenue collected for roads from whatever means is a completely different issue than the instruments used to raise that revenue, and my contention is that a VMT tax is a more favorable instrument on average for rural-dwellers than the gas tax.

A lot of people in rural New England have fuel efficient cars. Toyotas and Subarus are pretty common up here and those generally get good gas mileage. I don't own a pickup truck, never have and never will because I made the conscious decision to avoid a gas guzzler because of the nature of my work (and the fact that I don't have a practical reason to own a pickup truck).

But as some in this thread have proposed, a VMT should exist as a deterrent to driving and be a way to pass on the "cost of the road" to the driver. I disagree with this assertion because as you agree, rural drivers drive more. It would hurt us. I don't think anyone is arguing that we have a VMT that basically just equals the current gas tax. If you want a VMT that discourages driving, you're screwing over who have no other means of getting around.

[Duke87]

If anything, I think a VMT would likely be kinder to rural areas than the gas tax.

I would figure the opposite since city driving is less efficient than highway driving.

If you want a VMT that discourages driving, you're screwing over who have no other means of getting around.

Consider that it's more than an individual trip choice, it's also a lifestyle choice. If driving were made expensive it would give people financial incentive to move to places where there are alternatives or where fewer miles are required to get where one has to go.

Indeed, this is exactly what is seen in countries where driving is expensive - more high density living. It's easy to live in an outer suburb and drive 40 miles each way on the highway to work five days a week when gas is $2.50 a gallon. When gas is $7.50 a gallon people will say "screw this, I'm moving closer to the city" in order to save on commuting costs.

[Rothman]

If anything, I think a VMT would likely be kinder to rural areas than the gas tax.

I would figure the opposite since city driving is less efficient than highway driving.

If you want a VMT that discourages driving, you're screwing over who have no other means of getting around.

Consider that it's more than an individual trip choice, it's also a lifestyle choice. If driving were made expensive it would give people financial incentive to move to places where there are alternatives or where fewer miles are required to get where one has to go.

Indeed, this is exactly what is seen in countries where driving is expensive - more high density living. It's easy to live in an outer suburb and drive 40 miles each way on the highway to work five days a week when gas is $2.50 a gallon. When gas is $7.50 a gallon people will say "screw this, I'm moving closer to the city" in order to save on commuting costs.

...except they can't afford to do so given how property prices work in the United States.

[froggie]

...which has more to do with developers preferences (for high-dollar luxury condos and the like) and local NIMBYism (it'll bring traffic and crime!) than anything else, as both are preventing much housing development in core and close-in areas.

[Rothman]

...which has more to do with developers preferences (for high-dollar luxury condos and the like) and local NIMBYism (it'll bring traffic and crime!) than anything else, as both are preventing much housing development in core and close-in areas.

So, we're screwed.

[Mapmikey]

Indeed, this is exactly what is seen in countries where driving is expensive - more high density living. It's easy to live in an outer suburb and drive 40 miles each way on the highway to work five days a week when gas is $2.50 a gallon. When gas is $7.50 a gallon people will say "screw this, I'm moving closer to the city" in order to save on commuting costs.

Absent of other factors this likely wouldn't make financial sense as the cost of moving into the city is way higher than the commuting costs from staying in the far suburbs.  Gas could go to $10 a gallon and my 124 mile round trip commute is still much cheaper than finding a residence close in.

If I average 30 mpg and worked a 5-day work week that would be about 20 gal/wk which at $2.50 a gal is $50/wk and at $10 a gal is $200/wk.  The difference is $600/month.  Housing costs alone (not to mention property taxes, generally higher costs of things, etc) would be way, way higher than $600 a month extra.  And this was true even before I paid off my mortgage.

Mike

[Brandon]

...which has more to do with developers preferences (for high-dollar luxury condos and the like) and local NIMBYism (it'll bring traffic and crime!) than anything else, as both are preventing much housing development in core and close-in areas.

I dare you to try to build something nice like that in Chicago's west or south sides.  Especially Lawndale or Englewood.  I sincerely doubt it's NIMBYism or developers' preferences there.

[froggie]

However, most city areas are not like Chicago's south side.  As with most things, "your mileage may vary"...

[vdeane]

Yeah, let's just say that developers don't like developing things just to have them rented out to people who will pay even a cent less than top dollar.  That's why most new housing these days is luxury housing.

[Pete from Boston]

Yeah, let's just say that developers don't like developing things just to have them rented out to people who will pay even a cent less than top dollar.  That's why most new housing these days is luxury housing.

Agreed, but they wouldn't rent them out at that price if people weren't willing to pay it.

[Duke87]

Absent of other factors this likely wouldn't make financial sense as the cost of moving into the city is way higher than the commuting costs from staying in the far suburbs.  Gas could go to $10 a gallon and my 124 mile round trip commute is still much cheaper than finding a residence close in.

This assumes the closer residence is equivalent to the one further out. What would likely actually happen is you would pay the same amount for a home closer to your job, but it would be smaller.

Indeed, this is essentially what I've noticed in the NYC area - the typical price of a house or apartment varies only with the quality of the neighborhood. If you hold neighborhood quality constant, the prices stay the same whether you're in Manhattan or off in a suburb. What changes is that as you get closer, the houses and apartments get smaller and have fewer amenities.

Yeah, let's just say that developers don't like developing things just to have them rented out to people who will pay even a cent less than top dollar.  That's why most new housing these days is luxury housing.

Agreed, but they wouldn't rent them out at that price if people weren't willing to pay it.

Many luxury units are actually sold, not rented. Which is key to part of why developers can build so many - there is a phenomenon of luxury units being sold to people who have zero intention of ever living them. For example, the penthouse of 432 Park Ave sold to a Saudi Arabian billionaire for $95 million. Naturally he is not going to take up residence there, although he may stay there when he visits New York.

Why do this? Well, you have a fair supply of people who have made a lot of money but are from countries where long term stability is uncertain and where in a crisis any assets they have there may end up getting destroyed or snatched away from them. So, a ridiculously expensive NYC apartment can be both a place to flee to if the shit hits the fan at home, or simply a means of storing $95 million dollars in a place where no one in their home country can get to it.