Taxing public goods and congestion pricing

[mattbell]

Most of you are familiar with London's congestion pricing system, where you have to pay a fee of around $14 to drive into downtown London during peak hours.  The system was designed to eliminate its famous downtown congestion.  Reports of its success have been controversial, but positive enough that other major cities are looking at it. 

The Netherlands is considering a nationwide system that will continuously tax people based on what roads they are using, how far they drive on them, what time they're using them, and even how fuel-efficient their vehicles are. 

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/009146.html

(It's not approved yet, and even if it is approved, it will take around 10 years to fully implement)

This sort of system, which has only become possible with recent computer vision technology, will allow for much more accurate taxing for use of public goods.  Right now, Americans pay the same amount in taxes for roads and highways whether they drive for 1,000 miles per year or 20,000 miles per year.  That's unfair. (A commenter has pointed out that gas taxes do charge heavy users of roads more than light users, though gas isn't the only source of road funding)  It would be much fairer to have people pay according to how much they use the system.  This congestion tax covers two public goods -- roads and air cleanliness.  Cars that chew up the road more would be charged more for the increased maintenance that the roads will require, and cars that pollute more will be charged according to how much pollution they put out.  This helps people understand the true financial consequences of their actions and behave accordingly, which makes the whole system work better.

Comments

[agentsteel53.livejournal.com]

two points...

one: Right now, Americans pay the same amount in taxes for roads and highways whether they drive for 1,000 miles per year or 20,000 miles per year.

with gasoline taxes, this is not the case.

two: do I really want Uncle Sam tracking my every movement?

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

Good point about gasoline taxes. I did some googling, and while the internet was surprisingly unyielding of information right away. It seems like gas taxes provide much but not all of the funding for various transportation projects. California often has bond measures on the ballot for highway construction and maintenance. If you can find exact data I'd be very interested.

I would note though that gas taxes don't fully take the pollution level of a vehicle into account. Two cars with equivalent mpg but different amounts of pollution currently pay the same amount in taxes.

[browascension.livejournal.com]

Beware the marketing gimmick of "bond measures for X". Often the X is simply chosen to be some popular thing that can get the bond measure passed. You know, for the children.

Just because there are bond measures sold to the voters with highway projects doesn't mean that the gas tax isn't enough to cover highway expenditures. It's possible that the gas taxes go into a "highway fund" which has a surplus which goes into the "general fund".