10-22-2024, 07:26 PM
(10-19-2024, 08:53 AM)Byrd Wrote: It's always critical to go to original sources when looking at this kind of thing -- turns out that wherever your information is from, they inflated the cost ten times over what's being proposed (three cents per mile, or around $100 per year.)
So here's a blog post on it News: tax on electric vehicles but a deeper dig shows that this is not new -- in fact, there's a program like this in Indiana and Hawaii. Indiana's bill, from 2023 (link to the actual bill) has a charge for any vehicle not running on gas or diesel (so.. coal, biogas, etc.)
What do I think of it personally? I'm in favor of it. Roadways everywhere are maintained by the government -- local, state, and national. Materials and labor and machines to build new roads and to repair older roads aren't free and don't come from the Road Fairy. The money has to come from somewhere.
The other option would be to make all roads into toll roads... and that's going to be both messy and undesirable. I've traveled in Costa Rica, where roads are poorly maintained and the 'patches' to roads in the country side are done by tossing out dry cement on the hole and letting the rains and the weight of the cars do the repairing. It leads to some peculiar results.
I'd rather not have that kind of road repair in the US. It's okay for country roads in a poorer nation, but if you hit one of those repair jobs in a big SUV going 80 mph (we drive an SUV and were doing 80 (along with everyone else on the road) on the major highways last time I took a trip), it would not be a good thing.
Thank you once, and thank you twice!
Inflating the account by an order of magnitude tells me almost everything I need to know about the source.
I would never impinge on your opinion, but I am very skeptical of the idea that "road maintenance" costs are properly evaluated when it comes to budgeting...
The maintenance costs are not rendered into taxes on a year to year basis... state government have been "paying for road maintenance" since forever... asking for increased billions and billions feels to me like someone in the world of contracts and contract management are making huge financial gains that have nothing directly to do with "road maintenance."
But that's just me being cynical, I suppose.
