East Coast states want to tax drivers’ travel, not their gas
- Thread starter GURPS
- Start date
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
You know the effort is to squeeze more money out of the consumer.
They see these Hybrids getting better fuel mileage, they see electric cars not buying fuel, they feel this will increase and the gas tax will not pay for the roads and the maintenance of them. Perhaps they are right,
But you can bet whatever they charge or how they do it the taxes will increase the money coming in and tax the crap out of the consumer.
PeoplesElbow
Well-Known Member
I am sure that this in addition to gas taxes and not instead of, because that would not punish people for driving a vehicle that is a gas guzzler.
I don't think they are right until they start making electric 18 wheelers or dump trucks etc. The teslas and prius and civics and whatnot are not the vehicles that are destroying the roads. They are not the vehicles that are causing the need for maintenance. The vast majority of the damages are from the heavy trucks, yet we're paying the cost through the taxes and then destroyed wheels and beat up cars.
Just_A_Citizen
New Member
This is just another aspect of the globalist/Agenda 21 effort to dis-incentivize the use of cars, eventually forcing people out of cars, which tends to cause migration to cities. Once there, people are much easier to control and keep tabs on them.
Hijinx
Well-Known Member
No doubt of that. The heavy vehicles are what is destroying the roads.
But the mindset of the tax making politician is that electric vehicles and hybrids are using the road for free and we have to figure a way to get our tax funds from them.
If you had ever bought a set of tags for a heavy truck you would know they are paying a lot for those tags.
Plus they do provide us with just about everything that has to be transported.
that and zoning laws to restrict the building of new homes in the suburbs and countryside
$ 550 dollars a year - HVUT
commenter :
Viga said
October 26, 2009 @ 10:24 am
Interesting.
Did you take pounds per inch into account when coming to this conclusion? Large rucks often have 18 wheels or more, generally all axles except the steer axle have dual wheels, and large truck tires are larger and wider than car tires, so they generally apply less pressure to the road surface per inch than cars do.
I’m not up on the numbers, but I do recall reading a study somewhere that showed that many cars actually do more damage than trucks. Of course, that would have to be excepting anywhere trucks make lots of tight turns. This is along the lines of the truth that a woman wearing high-heeled shoes does more damage to a sidewalk than an elephant.
Since your source refers only to “equivalent single axle loads” your calculation appears to be flawed. You are not looking at a 3,500lb car versus a 40,000lb truck (many of which weigh MUCH less than that fully loaded because things like Girl Scout Cookies and toilet paper just don’t weigh that much). Rather, you are looking at a 3,500lb car versus two axles of a semi-truck. The heaviest legal (non-permited) weight for one axle is 18,000lbs. This, combined with tire size, changes the equation drastically.
I don’t have tires handy to measure, but we can make some assumptions to arrive at a close guess, using a fully loaded 80,000lb and a 3,500lb car, with all tires at proper inflation levels.
3500/4=875 pounds per corner. The average car tire is 7 inches wide, and lays 5 inches of tread on the ground. This gives the car a contact patch of 35 square inches.
The average truck tire is 11 inches wide, lays 8 inches of tread on the ground, fully loaded, and has two tires per axle. This gives the large truck a contact patch of 176 square inches. 80,000/18=4,444.
875/35=25 pounds per square inch for the car.
4444/176=25.25 for the truck.
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SamSpade
Well-Known Member
Maybe they ought to heavily tax diesel?
Or otherwise find a way to tax heavy vehicles by the mile, which honestly probably isn't that hard.
My primary objection - and it isn't a huge one - is that money received from these revenues have often been squandered on projects perhaps marginally connected with transportation. While a state might regard something as a transportation cost, they might be spending on something like a hiking trail on a previous rail line. The Highway Trust Fund was created to build the interstates. Period. Now it's used for everything else, which confirms what we've long noticed - once a tax gets created, there's really little need to get rid of it, even when it's served its purpose (e.g. the Federal Telephone Excise Tax, which has been halted and re-started periodically since the Spanish-American War). The massively wasteful Big Dig in Boston was paid with the HTF. I'm not entirely sure the federal government has as much need to provide funds for roads as the local governments do.
We've had our own experience with taxes earmarked for specific purposes only to see them squandered.
GWguy
*
Truckers are already screaming about the high cost of doing business, between fuel and tolls on the east coast. Trying to impose a higher level of tax on them will not go well. Remember the trucker protests years ago? And any tax imposed on the truckers will be passed to the consumer thru higher prices of anything shipped via truck. Groceries, fuel, home goods, etc....
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Sure was a bit of fancy mathing by that poster, but I think they still left out some pretty important calculations. It's nice to know the rolling weight distribution per tire, but maybe more important would be the maximum torque applied to the tires that are driving the load (hint, it ain't all 18). How many tires are doing the braking, and even if that were all 18, is the force applied linear with the weight?
How about efficiency? I know a truck gets pretty poor MPG, but when distributed across the load isn't it much more efficient than a car? Does that mean the truck is paying less gas tax per PSI than a passenger vehicle or whatever the poster was arguing even if you accept at face value they do the same amount of damage?
Or how bout the easiest method of all, look at a busy highway and see which lanes are generally in the very worst condition or are getting resurfaced most often.
I got nothing against trucks or their use of the road or the taxes they pay, but I do have a feeling they do more damage to the road regardless of what this poster argues.
BlueSunday
New Member
New Jersey already does it ,they are called Tolls!
glhs837
Power with Control
What Sam said is what I came here to say. Getting into the "who causes the most damage to the highway" argument is handing the proponenets of this idea a big win by ignoring the larger problem. Like here in MD< where over 2 billion of needed road money was taken outright for other things. Not to mention who know how much taken for alternative transportation modes. Gas taxes raise plenty to fix the roads. But they don't spend it on roads. They spend it on non-roadway pet transportation projects. Then tell us they need more taxes to make it up.
itsbob
I bowl overhand
Contact patches.. A car, at about 4000 lbs exerts about 10.5 pounds per Sq Inch.. About 80 - 90 in^2 per tire.
18 Wheel Truck, fully loaded at 18,000 pounds is about 20 PSI.. Dual axles have less a contact patch than single tires.. a Single Tire on a truck could be upwards of 90 in^2 where a dual axle between both tires only has about 114 - 120 in^2..
Still not as bad as the article makes it seem.. but still worse.
I think a fully loaded 3/4 or one ton pick up would be worse.
itsbob
I bowl overhand
Amish Wagons do more damage than any of them combined.. how do we tax them??
Larry Gude
Strung Out
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Where did I mention taxing anyone. How about learn to read Bob.
Clem72
Well-Known Member
Fairly sure big rigs accelerate with their front axle (single tire) and break with their rear. And those are pretty much the only two actions that put any wear on the road surface.
That would make those chains they put on the rear pretty much useless