An interesting exercise on general road pricing for the U.S. (VMT not VKT) is to divide total annual driving mileage by total Federal, state, and local road transport spending. Google AI informs me that recent annual U.S. driving miles were 3.2 trillion (aka 3,200 billion), and recent annual government spending on road transportation across all levels was $520 billion. Now $520 billion road transport spending divided by 3,200 billion miles of driving equals 16 and 1/2 cents per mile. Not a very big number. Furthermore, there are well established existing sources for some of the needed money, for example fuel taxes, which a sustainable civilization wouldn't want to reduce too much. Truck mileage needs to be worked into this revenue and spending as well ... Remember, everything (all of it) in your house has been on a truck, probably more than a few times. But getting back to my main point, clearly, throwing a nickel charge per mile on every American's car usage would generate a lot of the needed cash to keep the existing roads maintained plus build roads to all the new places where houses are going to be built, so the building materials can get to them, plus when occupied, the emergency services, goods delivery services, trash removal services, home repair services, and oh yeah, so the people who live there plus their friends and relatives can get to and from them in electric cars with odometers telematically connected to government revenue collection authorities. Given the importance and popularity of personal motorized mobility on roads seen generally, this logic applies to all nations. So what am I forgetting?
You don't address administrative costs. To be fair, I chose not to do it in the post myself. But we'd need also to pay and maintain the telemetry for monitoring VKT, as well as ensuring privacy of the data, as well as an enforcement regime. I'm not sure how much this would cost, but it certainly seems affordable.
An interesting exercise on general road pricing for the U.S. (VMT not VKT) is to divide total annual driving mileage by total Federal, state, and local road transport spending. Google AI informs me that recent annual U.S. driving miles were 3.2 trillion (aka 3,200 billion), and recent annual government spending on road transportation across all levels was $520 billion. Now $520 billion road transport spending divided by 3,200 billion miles of driving equals 16 and 1/2 cents per mile. Not a very big number. Furthermore, there are well established existing sources for some of the needed money, for example fuel taxes, which a sustainable civilization wouldn't want to reduce too much. Truck mileage needs to be worked into this revenue and spending as well ... Remember, everything (all of it) in your house has been on a truck, probably more than a few times. But getting back to my main point, clearly, throwing a nickel charge per mile on every American's car usage would generate a lot of the needed cash to keep the existing roads maintained plus build roads to all the new places where houses are going to be built, so the building materials can get to them, plus when occupied, the emergency services, goods delivery services, trash removal services, home repair services, and oh yeah, so the people who live there plus their friends and relatives can get to and from them in electric cars with odometers telematically connected to government revenue collection authorities. Given the importance and popularity of personal motorized mobility on roads seen generally, this logic applies to all nations. So what am I forgetting?
You don't address administrative costs. To be fair, I chose not to do it in the post myself. But we'd need also to pay and maintain the telemetry for monitoring VKT, as well as ensuring privacy of the data, as well as an enforcement regime. I'm not sure how much this would cost, but it certainly seems affordable.
You are a poet