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Comment by syzarian | Hacker News Reader

In the U.S. the reason is the Republican party. If we pay an amount to register a vehicle based on weight due to the increased damage it does to the roads then it will be portrayed as a radical environmentalist plot to get rid of SUVs and trucks. Republicans as love the idea of pay-as-you-use government services except when it comes to infrastructure. For example, it’s OK for a $25 traffic fine to include $100 in court costs but don’t under any circumstance expect one to pay more for gasoline to pay for road maintenance.

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Various places have been doing exactly this for decades and while I'm sure there are plenty of complaints, it's not exactly something you hear about on FOX news.

For example: https://ezbuy.chicityclerk.com/faq-vehicle-sticker

   Motorbike   $50.52
   Vehicle with curb weight of 4,500 lbs or less with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less.  $95.42
   Vehicle with curb weight of 4,501 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,499 lbs or less.  $151.55
   Vehicle, Truck, pickup truck with ... a gross weight of 16,000 lbs or less or with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more.  $224.51
   Truck or vehicle with a gross weight of 16,001 lbs or more with a payload capacity of 2,500 lbs or more.  $505.16

Interestingly, minivans are most commonly the thing that surprise people. The lower trim levels usually qualify for the $95 annual sticker but the upper trim levels just barely cross the threshold and must pay the $151 annual sticker.

I don’t think anywhere in the U.S. taxes for registering vehicles and gas are enough to pay for roads. These charges do not pay the “true” costs of vehicles’ damage to the roads.

It's a tricky thing to implement as the road damage is typically quoted as being proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. That means that either the heaviest vehicles would become economically unviable due to the taxation (which I think should be the case) or most consumer vehicles would be too light to make a meaningful taxation contribution.

A 2000 pound vehicle driven an average of 15000 miles per year does $x of damage to the roads. X is a calculable figure. Tax the vehicle to at least pay $x. If it is in the pennies then tax that amount. That a heavier vehicle does more damage just means calculating the appropriate amount to tax it.

It could work out that it costs more to implement the smaller vehicle tax than it would recover in revenue. Also, there's a major problem with logistics companies having considerable power over politicians, so I can see problems with getting them to pay for their considerable share of the road repair costs.

As a Seattleite, I don't think it's fair to blame Republicans in this case: my city, county, and state are dominated by Democrats who promote Vision Zero[1] yet refuse to do anything about these obscenely large (and growing) vehicles.

[1]: https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/projects-and-programs...

It’s an issue that Republicans can attack Democrats on. Change is difficult for many people. Political calculations have been made to:

1. Not give an opponent an easy way to attack you that requires the masses to employ nuanced reasoning to understand why that attack is wrong.

2. Say things to your base to keep them voting for you even though you have no intention of implementing those policies.

It's safe to say that no Republican is going to win city/county/state-wide office around here, so the "attacks" are moot. For example, the state's hurtling towards passing an emergency AWB into law, all while Republicans yell and scream. So, again, the Republicans ain't the problem.

Are there any policies that Democrats could enact that would make them lose support? The answer is clearly yes. Is taxing vehicles enough to pay the true cost of road maintenance such an issue? I don’t know but it may be one that Democrats don’t want to tangle with. Such taxes are done at the state and national level and I think this is an issue they don’t want to give Republicans a win on.

Edit: The nation as a whole has shifted very much rightward the last 50 years. Instead of saying Republicans I should maybe say “right leaning politics”.

Office-chair-stealing Tim Eyman and his supporters would likely get an initiative passed that disallows any limits or weight-based fees. It's not a winning strategy, unfortunately.

Not likely. The Washington State Supreme Court has Eyman in check.

Michigan is the home of the US auto industry and that state is filled with politicians from the Democratic party. Ford and GM are making some mighty big vehicles and I'm sure their elected representatives (Democrats) are doing their best to encourage it.

Eh, I'm a Michigan native, and I don't think the two situations are similar.

Where's the disconnect? The OP claimed it was purely a republican move. The reality is that the powerful people in Michigan are Democrats and the state's top tier companies make some of the heaviest cars on the market. If the Democrats wanted to do something about it, they could make the cars illegal and also put some of their citizens out of work.

But the reality is here in the States it's not the EVs that are the weight problems - it's the mega trucks and mega SUVs. The vehicles people drive today are comically large compared to those we were driving when I was a kid.

They're within a few 100lbs +/- of a Model X?

A model X is also too large.

Your average techie/doctor/lawyer/manager who thinks he needs a 4Runner for his 2-kid household is not going to be dissuaded by hundreds of dollars here or their when their mortgage is thousands a month. You need a huge tax. That huge tax would be punitive on all sorts of "legitimate" activity.

If it was a politics thing and not a "everybody who looks into it with any depth decides it's dumb" thing then some state like MD, RI, CT, or MA would have taxed it already.

Furthermore, we're talking about "damage" (in sarcasm quotes because expected and normal wear isn't damage in any normal sense of the word) power equation here[1]. So basically everything that isn't a class 6/7/8 truck is inconsequential for a road that has any portion of its traffic made up by those vehicles. Since those trucks basically run the economy someone has to pay for it. There's really little political will to engage in an obvious exercise of "picking who to screw" like that vs an imperfect but fairly fair fuel tax.

[1] https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...

You are correct that the desire to subsidize commercial activity plays a role. Republicans may not have power in a state like CT but there is still a desire not to be beat up on an issue that will play well to the masses. For instance, Michelle Obama advocated for better nutrition for school lunch programs. No reasonable person could possibly have seen fault with this but after Fox News attacked her over this it became a dead issue.

EDIT: It is definitely not a dumb idea as you suggest. Many counties have sensible policies on this issue and yet they manage to trudge along without much trouble. As I said it is OK to advocate for pay-as-you-use government so long as people like you don’t pay for your negative externalities too often.

This is because their campaigns are paid for in large part for by oil and gas companies. These positions they take are sadly rational given this. The solution is campaign finance reform.

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