The taxes should probably be based on some combination of usage and gross vehicle weight. People driving more with heavy vehicles ought to pay a larger share of road maintenance. A gas tax somewhat handles this since people with larger vehicles who drive more will use more gas.
But the gas taxes don’t even cover all of the money spent on maintaining/upgrading the roads. Roads are very expensive especially when you have these large highway interchange projects. We should really be trying to get people away from driving cars and onto transit, biking, walking etc. as much as possible
The taxes should probably be based on some combination of usage and gross vehicle weight. People driving more with heavy vehicles ought to pay a larger share of road maintenance. A gas tax somewhat handles this since people with larger vehicles who drive more will use more gas.
But the gas taxes don’t even cover all of the money spent on maintaining/upgrading the roads. Roads are very expensive especially when you have these large highway interchange projects. We should really be trying to get people away from driving cars and onto transit, biking, walking etc. as much as possible
This is especially true where I live, because our state police are getting money from the DOT to help police small towns who can’t afford their own.
I imagine they’ll start caring more about road maintenance when they’re so bad nobody can drive fast enough to get a speeding ticket.
They would if we stopped wasting money on entirely unnecessary projects and worthless maintenance.
Gas taxes are sales taxes. They’re still bad.