How will states pay for roads when gas taxes evaporate?

The freight haulers have also done their part in ripping up their infrastructure or letting it rot (so you have to put your box on a truck to get it to the freight yard), running bigger trains slower and without a hard schedule, and generally being annoying to work with in the pursuit of better operating ratio.

Hell, a lot of truck traffic is moving freight from one rail yard to another.

Electric cars aren’t really giving them a run for their money. Road damage goes as the 4th power of axle weight [1]

A fully loaded semi is 80,000 lbs and has 5 axles so 16,000 lbs/axle.

A Tesla model S weighs 4500 lbs and has 2 axles, so 2250 lbs/axle.

16000/2250 = 7.1

7.1^4 = 2541

So the truck is doing 2500x the damage of the Tesla. Esentially all road damage is done by heavy trucks which is why semis have to pull over and get weighed periodically to make sure they’re under the limit, but cars never do.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

It really do be that simple sometimes. If they can convince people that “the lottery is here to pay for schools” I’m sure they’ll figure something out.

Yep, e.g. https://www.texastribune.org/2023/08/21/texas-new-law-electr...

This comment ignores that the general attitude towards taxation has changed severely in the past few decades. One party has extreme ideological opposition to enacting new taxes, and many states are effectively one-party states. The gas tax has not been high enough to pay for *half* of the upkeep for roads in any state in decades.

All states rely on the once-in-x-decades ""infrastructure"" bills to bail out their huge road maintenance deficit, and as a result, there is no incentive to invest in alternatives. There is unlimited money to subsidize all private car transportation and everything it requires: knocking down neighborhoods to expand highways, requiring 2/3-3/4 of lots be for parking and driveways, and funding it all with federal and state tax dollars (>90% of which is from money that doesn't come from gas taxes, auto registration fees, etc).

So no. The answer won't be new taxes, it'll be more of the same of every taxpayer paying tax money to subsidize 90% of car infrastructure with current taxation. The gas tax hasn't been relevant in decades outside of California.

You're downvoted for apparent irrelevance even though you're absolutely right. It's a shame that those of us who dislike car-centric design have no affordable options in the US.

Without a hint of irony, Musk likes to talk about engineers optimizing solutions to a problem that shouldn't exist. An EV is still a car, and still contributes to the impoverishment of our lives. Cars shed brake and tire dust. They necessitate huge scars across our cities, removing double-digit percentages of land from productive use with their 6-lane roads, and massive parking lots and structures, and ruin much of the rest of the land with proximity to noise and particulate pollution. They make (or made) suburbs economical, contributing to increasing loneliness and isolation, as well as raising the financial bar for participating in society. They've ruined what makes cities great, and without giving us anything in return except huge money and time sinks.

My vehicle enables my person to do so much more than I could do without it.

To focus on People, for me, would imply making vehicle transport easier and quicker. There's virtually nothing I'm interested in that's in walking distance (there are plenty of things in walkable distance - I'm just interested in none of them).

You are not wrong

SUVs cause almost no wear on roads. Almost all road damage comes from heavy commercial vehicles.

And how do you propose tracking miles? Keep in mind you should not be taxed for out of state travel, not for travel on private roads.

Miles seems like it might not be worth the added cost of administration. Also note that road damage as a function of weight goes up by roughly a power of 4. Doubling a vehicle's axel load causes 16x the road stress, though that may be in line with what you were suggesting and may even add weight to your point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

A tire tax is probably the easiest way to accomplish this. Tax a tire based on it's lifespan (measured in tons^4 miles).

That way bikes and escooters can also pay a tiny tax to dispell the idea that they are freeloaders who don't belong on the road.

Probably not, road damage is mostly from heavy duty vehicles (think semi trucks) or weather. See: https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-.... A few x heavier car will damage them more, but probably still trivially compared to heavy duty vehicles.

Not much? EVs have better weight distribution and axle loads are similar to the front axle of an ICE car.

The road wear goes up to the third power of weight so you really should be looking at semis for road wear.

Road wear is proportional to the fourth of vehicle weight (modulo contact patch size, but let's not complicate things), so let's tax in the same proportion!

Tangentially, I got a look at a Rivian's front tires today, wanting to spot-check the rumor that model shreds front mitts and they looked worse than the rears on the Mustang some friends welded the rear differential on.

Rivians are rumored to squat at highway speed and dump all their power (800 hp, is it?) through the front wheels. The suspension supposedly toes the fronts in for stability at high speed, which results in scrubbing, shredding the fronts.

These mitts, I swear, had wear flaps, where the tire was peeling up. The rears showed none of this. Mind you these were the stock Pirellis that are supposedly extra warrantied for the Rivians design.

Like a true moron I was too excited to go biking to get a picture, and walked off satisfied in validating the internet rumor with my own eyes and those of a couple buddies. One of whom is an insurance agent and just rolled his eyes, saying, "oh yeah we're having an awful time getting coverage for those".

Wouldn't it be more fair to tax on weight and mileage driven?

The Victorian government, in my opinion, is a backwards looking state in every sense.

In any case, the High Court recently had something to say about it:

https://www.drive.com.au/news/high-court-rules-against-victo...