And… I also forgot to mention parking… but there’s a lot to say there… cost, blight, etc.

A VMT tax would also address the emissions issue. That’s because when a vehicle is registered the emissions test, weight and size of the vehicle would be taken into account. The theory behind this is that lower emissions should be rewarded, lower weight reduces wear and tear on the roads and the safety hazard to other drivers, and the size of the vehicle relates to how much space on the roadway a car uses – a limo, for example, should be charged a higher rate in congested areas.

Raising the gas tax is politically difficult – in fact, it is so politically difficult that it doesn’t ever happen. People who don’t have cars don’t see the tax as affecting them, so they don’t care. People who have cars are adamantly against it, so they do car. Additionally there are very strong lobbying groups to go up against. Instead of raising gas taxes we have relied on sales taxes, which are politically feasible – people vote for sales taxes on transportation issues.

Finally, the gas tax is flawed for one final reason (or really 2 reasons): who can afford a Prius? They’re not cheap. Even a new luxury hybrid SUV can get the mileage of a 10 year old junker. The gas tax is thus unfairly put on those people who can afford lower mileage cars. If $5 gas tax was put in place today, tomorrow there would be lines out the door at Toyota and Tesla dealerships. So, a $5 gas tax would only clear our roadways for the rich, who wouldn’t even really be paying the tax at all.

In the above scenario this is one other problem too: there is considerable amount of pollution and waste in private vehicle, especially an electric one because of the batteries. An electric light-rail vehicle can last 100 years (just look at Market Street in San Francisco), but a normal lifespan is over 25 years (buses are good too, but not as good). Even then, a transit vehicle is used everyday all day and by many people – we need far fewer transit vehicles per capita than cars. Even just shipping all these cars takes a toll on our environment. And, building roadways creates massive amounts of pollution. Not just from the machines that build them, but the cement secretes huge quantities of greenhouse gases while it sets. Transit uses needs only a small fraction of the roadway as that of vehicle… less cement, less construction costs.

There more issues too, but I’m running out of time, so I’ll make it brief: 1.) the cost of motor vehicle accidents on society, not just in terms of health care, but also pedestrians who are disproportionately injured, and the lawsuits that tie up our courts and feed lawyers pockets 2.) the cost of blight from traffic and freeways 3.) the cost of noise 4.) the cost of traffic delays on productivity 5.) the social inequality measure for those who cannot afford a car 6.) lost productivity spent while driving while work can be done on a transit vehicle 7.) the cost of defending oil trade routes 8.) the health concerns of pollution 9.) the infrastructure costs incurred from urban sprawl (water, sewer, etc.) 10.) the environmental degradation from urban sprawl 11.) GM corporate get :) … you get the point.

If you lived in a country where a good was produced that benefited all of society, and could even make money, you would have a good product. Now imagine if someone came and dumped a wasteful luxurious product all over your country and built glamorous retail outlets for it and came up with great advertising schemes etc – AND dumped that product at far bellow the real cost of the product. Your product couldn’t survive right? It wouldn’t be fare – even if your product was really good for society and the other product imposed wasteful harms. That wouldn’t be right would it? That’s our country today.

Now you might say that well buses use roadways too. Yes. But a bus with 50 people on would require 40 cars (people drive on average with 1.25 people per vehicle). The space to accommodate those extra cars would require more lanes and more maintenance and more societal harms. BUSES SAVE MONEY in this respect. We should encourage their use.

The gas tax doesn’t work because people are overusing a commodity that is delivered bellow market price and bellow costs. That’s not an acceptable mechanism of funding transportation.

Actually a vehicle registration fee isn’t really a road pricing mechanism, since you pay the same amount no matter how little or much you drive. You’ll want to follow Oregon’s new experiment on replacing the gas tax with an odometer-based mileage tax charged when you renew your registration.