I don’t see how driving all consumer road usage fees and gas taxes to zero will do anything other than create more demand for roads, cars, and VMT. It’s a very shortsighted policy. You’ve now made it even more difficult to get support for public transit and zoning reform while exacerbating maintenance shortfalls. Cheap fuel has created the problem, and even cheaper fuel wont solve it. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and all it does is create a very short term benefit.
Because it doesn’t remove the incentive to switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle or use more efficient modes of transportation. It removes one incentive that disproportionately leans on the people least able to change their transportation: it’s an ineffective incentive.
Worse than being ineffective, raising fuel prices without comensuratelty easing transition to other modes of transport drives people to do things like “vote for politicians who promise to lower gas prices”, invariably by increasing supply.
Shifting the financing of road maintenance to freight doesn’t reduce the funding, it just changes where it comes from. Additionally, you can increase the freight fees more than you decreased the gas tax. Although there’s more personal vehicle use than freight, road freight still accounts for roughly 30% of emissions, and we have economical and clean alternatives in a wide variety of cases.
This isn’t something you do in isolation.
There’s a limit to how much you can suppress driving through price controls without doing harm people won’t tolerate, and diminishing returns on how effective it is.
How expensive does gas have to be for you to take an eight hour, 11 mile, bus ride? For you to walk three hours on the highway in a cold weather emergency at four in the morning? Do you just stop going to the doctor instead at that point?
People like progressive policies that benefit them, and they dislike ones that hurt them. Taxing road wear instead of road usage benefits most people, lets you push trucks off the road, and still lets you look into other policies that benefit people while being more environmentally sound.
These are such egregious examples I can’t take you seriously. Also this is factually incorrect:
Because it doesn’t remove the incentive to switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle or use more efficient modes of transportation.
Gas is not a perfectly inelastic good, so higher gas prices literally do result in people buying more efficient cars and using alternatives. It’s just doesn’t happen overnight.
You are advocating for an even more car dependent vision for society under the guise of progressivism by driving vehicle mileage costs down as much as possible. Just stop and go see how actual modern societies handle this, instead of how petrostates do.
Why don’t you tell me, since you seem to disagree with my “build mass transit before people can’t get to work”, and “let people build higher density housing near necessities”.
All the “modern societies” I can think of opted to invest like that rather than exacerbating regressive tax schemes.
I never disagreed that higher gas prices gave an incentive. I disagree that that’s the only incentive, or the best incentive. A regressive tax disproportionately impacts the people least likely to effect change. It doesn’t matter how high prices get, the person making minimum wage can’t afford a more efficient car.
High fuel prices are literally part of why someone who actively wants to flood the market with gas and penalize EVs was elected. If the effects of your solution are worse than the experience of the problem, people will attack the solution.
Pushing freight off the road still reduces gas consumption. A grant program to build bus routes to a minimum level of timeliness, service area and access would give people a viable option to actually not use cars in our existing cities.
Raising registration costs on low efficiency vehicles would let you push people away from them in a way people can budget for, while also making it possible to waive the fee for people who can’t afford it.
You’ll have to be more specific about which of my examples is too egregious for you. I think I only gave examples based on the actual weather and bus system where I live, and the actual business district where my doctors office is. Metropolitan area of about 500k.
Please don’t tell me what I’m advocating for. You might disagree with me on what the impact of my plan would be, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not actually wanting us to get to the same place you do.
I don’t see how driving all consumer road usage fees and gas taxes to zero will do anything other than create more demand for roads, cars, and VMT. It’s a very shortsighted policy. You’ve now made it even more difficult to get support for public transit and zoning reform while exacerbating maintenance shortfalls. Cheap fuel has created the problem, and even cheaper fuel wont solve it. This is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, and all it does is create a very short term benefit.
Because it doesn’t remove the incentive to switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle or use more efficient modes of transportation. It removes one incentive that disproportionately leans on the people least able to change their transportation: it’s an ineffective incentive.
Worse than being ineffective, raising fuel prices without comensuratelty easing transition to other modes of transport drives people to do things like “vote for politicians who promise to lower gas prices”, invariably by increasing supply.
Shifting the financing of road maintenance to freight doesn’t reduce the funding, it just changes where it comes from. Additionally, you can increase the freight fees more than you decreased the gas tax. Although there’s more personal vehicle use than freight, road freight still accounts for roughly 30% of emissions, and we have economical and clean alternatives in a wide variety of cases.
This isn’t something you do in isolation.
There’s a limit to how much you can suppress driving through price controls without doing harm people won’t tolerate, and diminishing returns on how effective it is.
How expensive does gas have to be for you to take an eight hour, 11 mile, bus ride? For you to walk three hours on the highway in a cold weather emergency at four in the morning? Do you just stop going to the doctor instead at that point?
People like progressive policies that benefit them, and they dislike ones that hurt them. Taxing road wear instead of road usage benefits most people, lets you push trucks off the road, and still lets you look into other policies that benefit people while being more environmentally sound.
These are such egregious examples I can’t take you seriously. Also this is factually incorrect:
Gas is not a perfectly inelastic good, so higher gas prices literally do result in people buying more efficient cars and using alternatives. It’s just doesn’t happen overnight.
You are advocating for an even more car dependent vision for society under the guise of progressivism by driving vehicle mileage costs down as much as possible. Just stop and go see how actual modern societies handle this, instead of how petrostates do.
Why don’t you tell me, since you seem to disagree with my “build mass transit before people can’t get to work”, and “let people build higher density housing near necessities”.
All the “modern societies” I can think of opted to invest like that rather than exacerbating regressive tax schemes.
I never disagreed that higher gas prices gave an incentive. I disagree that that’s the only incentive, or the best incentive. A regressive tax disproportionately impacts the people least likely to effect change. It doesn’t matter how high prices get, the person making minimum wage can’t afford a more efficient car.
High fuel prices are literally part of why someone who actively wants to flood the market with gas and penalize EVs was elected. If the effects of your solution are worse than the experience of the problem, people will attack the solution.
Pushing freight off the road still reduces gas consumption. A grant program to build bus routes to a minimum level of timeliness, service area and access would give people a viable option to actually not use cars in our existing cities.
Raising registration costs on low efficiency vehicles would let you push people away from them in a way people can budget for, while also making it possible to waive the fee for people who can’t afford it.
You’ll have to be more specific about which of my examples is too egregious for you. I think I only gave examples based on the actual weather and bus system where I live, and the actual business district where my doctors office is. Metropolitan area of about 500k.
Please don’t tell me what I’m advocating for. You might disagree with me on what the impact of my plan would be, but that doesn’t mean that I’m not actually wanting us to get to the same place you do.