Del. David Poisson, D-Loudoun, has introduced legislation that would establish a joint subcommittee “to study the desirability and feasibility of replacing the state motor fuel tax with a mileage-based fee predicated on vehicle-miles traveled in Virginia.”
Needless to say, I am excited to hear this news, as I have been advocating a mileage-based tax for a few years now. For the benefit of newbies to this blog, the arguments for such a tax can be recapitulated as follows:
- The gasoline gax is living on borrowed time. Not only is the tax not indexed for inflation, the automobile industry is on the verge of introducing high miles-per-gallon vehicles that consume less gas and yield less tax revenue — indeed, the industry is on the verge of introducing electric vehicles that consume little or no gasoline at all. It’s only a matter of years before the gasoline tax fails to generate enough revenue to maintain existing roads, much less build new ones.
- A mileage tax is the ultimate “user pays” revenue source. The more you drive and the more wear and tear you put on the roads, the more you should pay to maintain them. There is no reasonable argument against this principle. There are only objections to the practicality of implementing the principle. As indicated in an article by the Loudoun Times-Mirror, the joint subcommittee would examine whether a GPS system or a pay-at-the-pump system would work better.
- A mileage tax fairly allocates location-variable costs. It is a core dictum of Bacon’s Rebellion that economic and environmental sustainability requires a rational allocation of location-variable costs. Translated into plain English, that means, people need to pay for the full costs they incur from their choices of where to live and work. A rational transportation funding system is an important step on the path to more balanced and functional human settlement patterns.
The tax should be adjusted for the weight of the vehicle (bigger vehicles cause more wear and tear) and the level of pollutants it emits. To my way of thinking, the tax also should be set at a level that would pay for all road/highway maintenance costs, including the cost of working down the maintenance backlog of bridges and other structures in disrepair. Indeed, it might increase the political appeal of the tax to call it a “road maintenance tax.” No one has mounted a serious argument against properly maintaining the infrastructure we ‘ve already invested in.
A mileage/maintenance tax should not be used to pay for new construction. There is no necessary correlation between the number of miles someone drives and the demand he/she creates for new construction projects. The drivers and property owners who create the demand for new roads, bridges and highways are the ones who should pay for them — either directly, through tolls, or indirectly through higher property taxes in Community Development Authority districts, higher house prices via impact fees or some other mechanism.
I applaud Poisson for introducing the idea of a mileage tax into the public discourse. Implementing the tax will raise prickly issues, as Bacon’s Rebellion bloggers have explored in some depth. Virginia policy makers need to start working their way through those issues now before gasoline tax revenues reach a melt-down stage.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.