Jophiel wrote:
On the day these cars make up enough traffic to matter, they'll be taxed for it in some fashion. Unless you know some charity road crews who work for free.
We're actually already at that point, except it isn't the electric cars that are the ones that are killing us, it's the hybrids and more fuel efficient regular cars. Federal gas tax revenues and state gas tax revenues have dropped through the floor in recent years, largely in response to more fuel efficient trucks, hybrid cars, etc. The gas tax used to be a good road maintenance funding source because the tax on a vehicle getting 12-16 miles per gallon largely paid for the wear that vehicle puts on the roadway. Now with the majority of cars on the road making at least 30 MPG or better, we essentially get twice the wear and tear on the road for the same amount of funding. Not to mention that inflation and higher concrete / asphalt costs have dramatically refuced the amount of materials that the tax buys in the first place.
Federal tax dollars used to pay at least half of large projects like river spanning bridges. These days you are lucky if you can get at least 1/3rd funding, and most needed projects are having to wait 5-10 years longer than they would have back even in the 1990's. To put things in perspective, freight trains are starting to make a large comeback because the roads are so congested, major freight companies can't get their products throug in time.
Current proposals for taxing vehicle use in the future include mandating GPS devices inside all vehicles to track milage and taxing based upon yearly miles traveled, with miles driven in X state providing x amount of cash to that state and a portion to the federal government. Other proposals include an odometer reading yearly and tax assesed based on that number sent directly to the federal government, who would dole out funding to the states based on number of registered vehicles. Either proposal could replace or supplement gas taxes. Even more unlikely would be a tax not related to vehicle use, such as a federal sales tax for road maintenance. The main concern seems to be to ensure that people who aren't using the roads don't pay for the roads. THere has also been some talk of using license plate scanning networks to track vehicle miles traveled, which is still big brotherish, but easier to implement because it doesn't involve putting thingies in private vehicles.
Something has to happen soon though. by 2015, there will be enough 40MPG vehicles on the road that we're pretty much screwed.
