Maintaining our country’s infrastructure should be easy to agree on, regardless of one’s political views. All too often, it has become a political football, primarily when it comes down to paying for it. Let’s work our way through this.
I would hope that we can agree that our roads and highways should be well maintained and our bridges shouldn’t be in danger of falling down. Now, how do we pay for them?
A significant portion of the money used for this purpose comes from federal, state and local gas taxes. These taxes are typically based on a certain number of cents per gallon and they are not indexed for inflation. There are two major issues with this:
Because gas taxes are a fixed amount per gallon, they cover less and less of the cost of maintaining things over time.
Because cars and trucks are becoming more fuel efficient over time, the amount of gas taxes paid per mile continue to drop. Hybrids that get double the mileage of conventional vehicles and electric vehicles that don’t use any gas at all amplify the problem. This issue is going to get much worse in the next few years as more electric vehicles come to market.
Are there solutions? Yes.
One solution would be to replace the gas tax with a road use tax based on the size of the vehicle and the number of miles driven. It would seem only fair that a conventional F-150 and an F-150 Lightning should both be assessed the same thing for their use of the roads. Similarly, a VW ID.4 electric crossover should pay an amount comparable to other small crossovers and a Tesla Model 3 should pay an amount comparable to other compact or mid-sized cars.
This is not rocket science. Some states have implemented higher registration fees for hybrids and electrics, but this can turn into a political football, with one side urging low fees and the other side urging much higher fees.
The non-political solution is to create a per mile fee structure that applies to ALL vehicles and charge it when tags are renewed annually. The long haul trucks that do so much damage to our highways could be assessed a higher per mile fee on a monthly or quarterly basis.
Retirees and others who don’t drive much would pay less than those of us who drive more. This solution offers basic fairness and can be set at a rate that will cover the costs of keeping our roads and bridges in decent shape.