Road Usage Tax - WA State
 

Earlier this summer, I recall reading about this being tested in some parts of Oregon. Looks like the idea is being pitched here in WA state, even though a couple of years away.

All I can say is, for people who love driving, this is horrible.

Well fellow Washingtonians, comments?

http://www.king5.com/story/news/loca...sion/77013926/

Let's punish those who have to drive considerable distances to work as well as punish those commuters who can't use the bus. Good one WA state...

Seems to me like there would be way too many factors to account for to make this even remotely fair for in or out of state drivers. Obviously revune for the state is the main goal, sounds like commuters will pick up the slack on this one.

15' BRZ Limited 6MT Ice Silver Metalic

Interesting. Wonder how this would effect me... The FRS sits in the garage 99% of the time and I drive the company car.

They discussed the possible options for implementing this today on the radio. No perfect solution so far:
- odometer readouts when renewing registration (issue for those who drive outside the state often)
- GPS tracker installed in a car to count miles travelled within WA (obvious privacy concerns here)
- smartphone app that i used for tracking location - no clear details here, but of course there are concerns of people hacking the app/smartphone to dodge paying the road tax

They said pay-by-mile is inevitable as the state doesn't collect enough money from the gas tax - the cars are getting more efficient every year. Likely the solution will be a combination of the above + an option to buy "unlimited miles" pass for a rather high flat rate.

Not very exciting news.

Yeah whatever happened to the tax revenue from the legal pot sales? I'm 20 mins from Idaho. Scary thought that moving to another state is a valid option

With such a high tax rate on gas in many states, I'm largely curious how the greater fuel efficiency argument has actually cut into their bottom line. I call total BS... when states want to revise their operating contributions from citizens, I'm surprised they have to lean that much harder to satisfy spending needs when surely there are a great number of other unrelated and costly policies that could be revised.

Gl over there guys... and hope any future experiments tank hard

What cracked me up was the fact that the "committee" discussing the pay-per-mile options is not comprised of elected officials. It's just random dudes.

Oh, and tentative price per mile is 2.5 cents. So, $250 for 10,000 miles.
At least they'd drop the 44 cent-per-gallon gas tax, which is the highest in the US already (but apparently not enough).

The host on the radio show said that before we start increasing the gas taxes and implementing pay-per-mile, how about we make the spending more efficient? There was a report recently that thrashed the WSDOT spending when building roads... and tunnels, of course, haha.

I suspect this would be the easiest target in history for an Eyman initiative.

Well, that means I'm not staying in Washington for long.

Honestly, I don't have a huge issue with it. The fact is our roads overall need attention, and as a car enthusiast I would love to see some of them better maintained. I know we all hate forking out additional money, but this isn't a problem that gets solved without it.

Let's ask the hypothetical question:

If majority of state-level gas taxes are used to maintain state highways, what do you do about electric vehicles?

Same on a national level.

We can ignore hybrids for sake of argument.

As much as this idea sounds stupid, keep in mind this is the result of kicking the can down the road for decades...

-alex

Let's just keep pushing our problems down the road so the next generation can fix it, right?

A valid point.

Maybe since people were willing to pay large dealer markups for hybrids and electric vehicles when they first started gaining traction, I suspect it wouldn't be that out of line to include an electric vehicle road usage tax on the purchase price instead?... either that or enforce a toll on certain public roads or something... just too many moving parts for an actual road usage tax to be effectively useful and fair. My next question leads to whether or not these hypothetical funds generated would actually be entirely used to pay for road upkeep and construction without any improper spending.

This is all without considering the fact that the tax on gas has increased at a greater rate than the adoption of electric and hybrid vehicles, displacing that supposed tax deficiency on all the other regular vehicles; also keep in mind there are other supplemental taxes in place such as the "gas guzzler" excise tax on low mpg vehicles.

If they are going to employ the use of road tax, they need to get rid of gas tax. either or, not both. More importantly, they need to not use this as a cash cow like what they are doing with the stupid toll lane on 405. not to mention people are boycotting that stupid idea left and right, and its backing up traffics by miles.

The monitoring device or road use permit would negate the gas tax for those that choose that route. According to the article I read any way.

It's scheduled to do test implementation in 2017 which means I probably wont be here anymore. Washington roads are so abuse that even if they do start getting the money for the I5 renovation, most of us might not have a chance to enjoy the new road. I noticed that Washington residences don't pay State tax which could be another part of the hard time funding for repairs. I'm from Virginia but because of times like these I'm glad I pay the State tax the fact that their interstates are a lot more driveable. Washington State has a pretty high sales tax which is ridiculous. But overall I think they need to rethink their financial situation more. I'm not into the government knowledge but that's my opinion.

If they can show that they are competent in spending the taxed money on improving roads, then maybe this is justifiable. The whole HoV bs in 405 is a clear example of how NOT to spend your money

It would also be nice if they actually spent money in places other than King County...

Oh good, another regressive tax going to a government that wouldn't understanding effective spending if it sat in their lap and called them 'mama'.

The privacy issue is my sticking point. I too would look for another state to live in.

Electric, hydrogen, gas or bicycle.. Don't care. The better answer, if more money really is needed, is to raise the registration tax/fee with a VAT. No privacy concern, affects all registered modes of transportation equally and have a progressive rate based on the value of the vehicle isn't regressive like a flat-per-mile tax, or even our super regressive sales tax.

I've been thinking about this and did some basic research.

To be ideally fair, the road tax should account for miles driven on state roads and the weight per axle. The road damage is highly dependent on the weight per axle; a car that is twice as heavy causes _sixteen_ times more damage to the road surface, roughly. Highways are mostly destroyed by the big rigs, I'd like to see them pay for that.

The means of calculating this road tax (gps, odomoter readings etc) are a big issue, but it's a technicality for the most part, and this technicality is the most discussed item right now as it involves privacy concerns etc. But no one is talking about making the amount paid being proportional to the amount of road damage caused.

Currently, I think the government is planning to price motorcycle miles the same as heavy-duty pickup truck miles. That's a problem, and actually, the gas tax does a better job at making this fair since large and heavy vehicles typically consume more gas (not 16 times more gas for a car twice as heavy, though).

Sounds good to me.

Just brainstorming:
VAT on initial purchase, registration and renewal based on vehicle value and weight. The owner of the F350 will pay a premium but so will the owner of the Tesla Model S. The low-income person driving a 1992 civic will pay much less (light + cheap), as will motorcyclists. Interesting.

I see the bigger picture isn't something we can solve locally or simply through taxes, a big problem is the number of semi-trucks on our roads. There's just WAY too damn many and the solution to that is rail, way more rail. It's the superior solution to transporting goods but then national politics comes into play: anytime you make a 'system' more efficient, you create redundancies and in this case those redundancies are jobs, truck driving jobs and no politician wants to be "job killer".

But on a local level, maybe we should stop voting for these corrupt folks in Olympia but so long as King County gets to dictate the political landscape for the rest of the state I don't see thing improving from a government efficiency standpoint.

@rice_classic, but what about miles driven? An owner of an F-350 that puts 3000 miles a year will pay the same amount of road tax as a 30,000 mile-a-year F-350. That's not fair.
@rice_classic, I definitely agree on the semi-trucks and shifting to railroads. This will not only keep the roads in better condition, but will also reduce congestion and number of traffic accidents. As you noted, this issue is larger than any one of the states, though. Building an awesome railroad within one state won't do much. This would require a similar level of government attention as a cross-country oil pipeline.


Another item to consider in this conversation is that weather plays a huge role - in certain cases larger than road usage. A bright example to that would be the roads South of Mt Rainier, in Gifford Pinchot National Forest. NF-25 is sees a minor amount of traffic but it's all ridden with bumps, dips, and cracks because of landslides, also maybe earthquakes or snow/ice in winter play a role here. Who should pay for repairing such roads? I realize this example but be not the best since the road is on federal land, but I'm sure there's plenty of not-so-heavily-used state roads that are crumbling away because of natural causes.

If they pass this shit I'm out of here.

Tourists / people from out of state will get to drive around here for free while Washington State residents foot the bill for everybody.

I was just brainstorming... Glad I'm not in charge of solving this.. Although if I was I'd start by firing everyone in Olympia and starting over.

The tax could be based on a calculated average. Some drive less, some drive more.. law of averages and all that but yes, some will pay less or more than their 'fair share'.

Taxes are NEVER fair unfortunately. WA state sales tax is a super regressive for example. One could argue that a tax per mile is also unfair because often poorer people can't live close to work (ahem, Seattle gentrification much?) so poorer people often have no choice but to commute. It would disproportionately affect those who cannot afford to live inside the city, which is A LOT of people, have you seen those rents lately!

The only FAIR solution is for government to spend money more efficiently, but since that's never going to happen the only solution, unfortunately, is going to be an unfair one... at least to some.

After driving all over the US I am honestly ashamed of how poor our infrastructure is in relation to how high the gas tax is. Washingtom needs a large influx of capital and major road projects to catch up to other states.

One thought I had about this whole debate on the pay for mile issue is that a small compact car will be paying the same in taxes per mile as a large truck or SUV. How is that fair? One could argue that alternative fuel vehicles and hybrids are the only ones that should pay on this scheme as they aren't paying for their fair share of wear and tear on public roads.

I'm with you. Nashville, San Antonio, and Austin are on my short list.