To gas tax or not to gas tax
By Jim StergiosNovember 7th, 2007
Kathleen Hunter’s piece, The Long and Taxing Road, in the July 2007 Governing magazine has some good information on Oregon’s experiment to understand the ability to replace or supplement the gas tax with technology (also a big theme here at Pioneer, see the transcript from our 2006 event Creating Mobility). Hunter notes:
Every time [motorists’ odometers] blipped up by a mile, they owed the state of Oregon a tax of exactly 1.2 cents. The trip to Eugene from Portland, a 100-mile journey on Interstate 5, would cost $1.20. And that’s not counting for gas.
The technology in place outside Portland counts miles traveled, avoids counting roads outside of Oregon, and can charge different amounts based on where in Oregon the travel occurs. New York is showing with its congestion pricing proposal one very logical use of new technology, which is to price roadways based on traffic flowthrough.
So, 260 motorists from spring 2006 to spring 2007 volunteered to test the Oregon pilot program. The report on outcomes is, I have heard, out. More on this soon.
Entry Filed under: Better Government, News
1 Comment Add your own
1. Patrick | November 14th, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I think that vehicles should be taxed based upon weight, which fairly approximates the cost to travel on a road. The heavier the vehicle the more wear and tear on the road. Eliminate taxing vehicles by assessed value which has no relation at all to road use. The 97 civic incurs the same demand on the roads as an ‘07 civic. The towns collect the revenue and maintain their local roads. Eliminate the gas tax and replace with the sales tax. Use this increased revenue to reduce the income tax. Highway maintenance funding can be collected by selling time in a given allotments (hrs, 30 min, etc). After all, the service a highway provides is expediency over traveling the local roads. This would also encourage drivers to avoid cramming on the roads at rush hour and literally waste their time. Alternatively, auction off time slots (730-830) to consumers, essentially creating a stock market for time on the highway.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed