An ongoing decline in gas-tax revenue has prompted Washington state transportation officials to consider a pay-by-the-mile roadway tax system, The Associated Press reports.
A committee of transportation experts recently concluded a pay-as-you-go system would be feasible in Washington; the state must now determine whether doing so is a good idea—and how the new structure would be implemented.
Would you support a pay-by-the-mile tax system? Tell us in the comments section.
Washington's gas tax has long been the primary revenue source for highway repair and maintenance in our state. But the tax has been hit hard as vehicles become more fuel efficient and people opt to drive less. President Obama's new fuel-efficiency standards are expected to further exacerbate the problem.
"The gas tax is dwindling," state Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond told the AP. "It would be irresponsible for us not to look ahead and take care of our system in the future."
Pay-by-the mile is not a clear-cut solution. It has yet to be widely implemented by any state, and questions remain on how best to track miles without raising privacy issues.
Hammond said it could be a decade or more before Washington implements any new transportation tax system.
Our roads are crap because of decades of denial about our transportation infrastructure. We believed we could keep newcomers out by not building roads or mass transit. Well the newcomers came anyway, and we've got a lot of catching up to do. And we live in a place with complex geography that makes road construction expensive. Washington has no money for two main reasons. (1) We have the most regressive tax system of all 50 states. (2) The majority of state tax revenue comes from sales tax. When the economy goes sour, poor and middle class are hit the hardest, their spending goes way down, and state tax revenue goes way down. If you want the state to spend money on roads, either wait for the economy to get better or raise taxes. I have no argument with those who think that some of the money spent on mass transit is wasted. But there are some successes that should be expanded and duplicated. The Swift buses that run from Shoreline to Everett are a good example. I'd love to see bus rapid transit go into Seattle. When spent wisely, money spent on mass transit and HOV helps everybody by reducing the number of cars on the roads we've already paid for. I don't use mass transit much, but I'm happy to help pay for it because it makes the roads I use less crowded.
the best picture for historical comparison is in the expenditure side. Since our state cannot run a budget deficit, a.k.a. expenditures must equal revenue, see here http://www.fiscal.wa.gov/SpendHist.aspx and using terms like "per capita tax revenue" is just government speak for "adjusting gross statistics to make it look like a decline". When you throw an additional $1Billion at an agency year over year (i.e. K-12) and they are still asking for more, you can throw your "per capita" stuff out the window.... that's just called hemorrhaging money due to out of control cost management. Please note - our current budget for 2011-2013 is nearly $4 BILLION bigger than the previous. Our budget is not shrinking.
I don't understand your argument against looking at per-capita revenue. When government revenues don't keep pace with population growth, the amount they can spend per citizen gets smaller. And inflation is likewise relevant. I don't have any more time to sift through these numbers, so I'll leave this discussion to others. I appreciate your efforts to bring facts into this discussion.
I would also want to know more about how they can reduce the current cost of road building and maintenance. There is probably a fair amount of fat in production cost that could be trimmed.
The state has not shown any amount of prioritization. From their perspective 'everything' must be done. Just ask State Rep Clibborn who in the last Mercer Island City Council meeting made essentially this comment. The bid and labor processes / terms have not been considered. Prevailing wage is a crazy protectionist notion that should be illegal. In other contexts we call this price fixing, it is illegal and immoral. Market wage is what is required. It isn't just about paying less, it is about getting the best current rate that both parties agree.
population growth has occurred, but the rate of growth has been in decline (second). http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/planning/wtp/datalibrary/population/WSPopulationGrowth.htm Ignore the forecast because we don't see data about their prior forecasts to know how good they are (I bet they aren't that good). The state budget has nearly doubled since the early 90s. Yet I don't see the results. Our per-student spending is nearly 12K, but education suffers (apart from a few bright spots, which are largely driven by socioeconomic factors).
* Eliminate Prevailing wage * Increased data privacy and security laws beyond what exists * Reforms to the contracting process * Prioritization across the entire portfolio * Taxes on studded tires (I have always been surprised we don't account for the Ballard Blizzard drivers with their VW Beetle and studded tires driving around the city for 6 months trashing the street) * Removing all transfers of road & transit money from the general fund by law. All money collected by licensing, tolling, gas and transit revenue must be used for those purposes. * Transit must pay for 50% of its capital and operations costs with revenues (fares, advertising, etc) by law. This can be treated as a matching account, but the transit system must not be subsidized beyond a point. It already skews choice to sub-optimal levels.
ALL of us use the service, even if you don't actually ride. Every Metro passenger is one less car on the road.
If transit was such a winning proposition people would naturally find it worth the cost. Basically, you can't sell transit with massive subsidy. People are capable of making trade-off decisions on their own.
My argument isn't that there isn't a case for transit, I just think the subsidy level should be capped so that efficient choices are made. If you have to subsidize something more than 50% to approach viability then you are missing something. And when these systems (esp. trains) are sold the public is told of the grand utopia that awaits. But In the case of Seattle light rail, they didn't add park and ride facilities. Also, it took a long time for any sort of bus schedule coordination to serve the train. So to add insult to injury, the are oversold to get past the public's demands for an effective system.
Just keep taxing us out of our homes.... what a great concept.
Good, because you are paying $89 for every $11 in Sound Transit fares collected. Helluva deal...