As more drivers turn to zero-emissions vehicles, which don't have to pay anything at the pump, California's gas tax could soon be a thing of the past. But it would be replaced by something else.
The obvious thing to do is just base the cost on your insurance and the fee to vehicle registration. But lets be real, the weight of the vehicle has an exponential effect on road wear so they should just charge heavier vehicles a registration premium regardless of fuel type
For those who don’t understand the the degree to which this matters, behold, the fourth power law of road stress:
There should simply be an annual fee based on vehicle weight and distance driven
Keep the vehicle in your garage and only drive a handful of times? Low fee, drive a monster truck thousands and thousands of miles? Large fee.
This also solves the problem of electric vehicles not paying towards road maintenance, as they are heavy and would wear the roads more than a standard vehicle that uses gas.
The problem is distance driven has a linear effect. The weight has an exponential effect. If you drive a monster truck 10 miles a year and you drive a shitty commuter that weighs 1/5 the amount 3,650 miles a year, the monster truck is gonna damage the road more. If the fee is anything but a 4 power exponent from weight and linear with distance then you’re punishing miles driven more than they are contributing to road wear.
In fact the only time distance matters is if its 0 then why even bother licensing a vehicle heavy enough to be worth surcharging? If most people drive their vehicles more than 10 miles a year but less than 10000, you’d want the fees to scale with normal use cases rather than some fringe use cases that encourage people to own vehicles they never use.
Edit:
The way to do it is probably surcharge people for the weight of the vehicle + the weight of the gas the vehicles use in a year.
Not obvious, there’s tons of holes in that plan and I’ll throw down a couple I thought of while I brush my teeth. I lived in California for years.
-Out of state plates are not included. Sooo many out of state vehicles
-This has an outsized impact on shipping and industry such as work vans, small business trucks (can be argued that it should be, but I’m not convinced that the cost should be borne by those areas vs the bajillion people that don’t carpool to/from LA everyday)
-A heavy vehicle pays a premium at registration, but what if it’s only driven a couple times a year? Vs a lighter vehicle that drives 40k miles in a year. Has to have some kind of use component to plan.
I’d argue that it’s way more complicated than any sentence that starts with “the obvious thing to do…” Everyone wants a simple and fair solution buddy life is not that simple and California’s traffic, transportation, road maintenance, and road based industry is about as complicated as it gets.
The obvious thing to do is just base the cost on your insurance and the fee to vehicle registration. But lets be real, the weight of the vehicle has an exponential effect on road wear so they should just charge heavier vehicles a registration premium regardless of fuel type
For those who don’t understand the the degree to which this matters, behold, the fourth power law of road stress:
There should simply be an annual fee based on vehicle weight and distance driven
Keep the vehicle in your garage and only drive a handful of times? Low fee, drive a monster truck thousands and thousands of miles? Large fee.
This also solves the problem of electric vehicles not paying towards road maintenance, as they are heavy and would wear the roads more than a standard vehicle that uses gas.
The problem is distance driven has a linear effect. The weight has an exponential effect. If you drive a monster truck 10 miles a year and you drive a shitty commuter that weighs 1/5 the amount 3,650 miles a year, the monster truck is gonna damage the road more. If the fee is anything but a 4 power exponent from weight and linear with distance then you’re punishing miles driven more than they are contributing to road wear.
In fact the only time distance matters is if its 0 then why even bother licensing a vehicle heavy enough to be worth surcharging? If most people drive their vehicles more than 10 miles a year but less than 10000, you’d want the fees to scale with normal use cases rather than some fringe use cases that encourage people to own vehicles they never use.
Edit: The way to do it is probably surcharge people for the weight of the vehicle + the weight of the gas the vehicles use in a year.
Not obvious, there’s tons of holes in that plan and I’ll throw down a couple I thought of while I brush my teeth. I lived in California for years.
-Out of state plates are not included. Sooo many out of state vehicles
-This has an outsized impact on shipping and industry such as work vans, small business trucks (can be argued that it should be, but I’m not convinced that the cost should be borne by those areas vs the bajillion people that don’t carpool to/from LA everyday)
-A heavy vehicle pays a premium at registration, but what if it’s only driven a couple times a year? Vs a lighter vehicle that drives 40k miles in a year. Has to have some kind of use component to plan.
I’d argue that it’s way more complicated than any sentence that starts with “the obvious thing to do…” Everyone wants a simple and fair solution buddy life is not that simple and California’s traffic, transportation, road maintenance, and road based industry is about as complicated as it gets.