Colorado Piloting Eliminating Gas Tax

In Colorado?
Who cares?

There's only about 4 or 5 hippies out there that live outside the corridor anyway, and they never drive anywhere.
The thing is, you can make a tax completely fair, or you can make it work.

The whole point is that you're raising enough money to maintain roads, and maybe build new ones.
So....you can develop a simple low cost methodology that fits on the back of a post card, is mostly fair, and actually accomplishes its primary goal.

Or?
You can get into turtle tunnels and bike lanes, carve-outs for the eco-chic or donors, and 'brother-in-law' deals for equipment suppliers.....and have laws that take up thick volumes, employ scores of sleazy lawyers, and collapse under its own weight.
That's setting aside the privacy concerns of letting dot.gov track your movements, which I mostly SET aside for three important reasons:
1. Dot.gov is inefficient and lazy.

2. Unless you're wearing underwear made by DuPont, or you're moving gigabucks worth of money or illicit drugs? Dot.gov doesn't really CARE where you go. This may come as a shock to the precious little snowflakes out there who carry GPS equipped, Broadband enabled, camera and microphone festooned tracking devices everywhere they go, photo-documenting their every movement, but nobody really gives a rats. If you're up to no good? See #1.
Dot.gov is too busy catching the lazy and the stupid.

3. Even if I'm wrong about reasons #1 and #2, I really have other things to worry about.
Dot.gov took the dashes out of my SSN decades ago.
Unlike certain unemployed politicians that I can think of, I really DID have to go through an extensive background check (Including fingerprints and DNA), and uncle Sugar knows enough about me that they're really not interested in tracking me.

One of the advantages of living in America is that we have 50 more or less autonomous 'laboratories (or lavatories) of democracy.'
The GPS tax will either work or it won't.
I was just offering the opinion that if you want to do a per-mile road use tax that odometer affidavits will work for 90-pervcent of the folks out there. You can build in a XXX or a XXXX mile deduction per vehicle for out-of-state trips to the mouse-house every year, and offer other people the ability to slap a GPS tracker on their vehicle if they more regularly travel outside the state.

Win-win.

 

A gas (the word is petrol!!!!!!!!!!) tax pretty much covers CO2 emissions in an equitable way. Some sort of mileage tax does not. So I'm in favour of a gas tax for that reason. Also, it is, as @ETC(SS) says, simple. Tracking people by GPS is not.

Beyond that, there's the pricing issue. Gas taxes in America are much lower than they are in much of the rest of the world. This means your base prices are lower, but it also means that you get much more of a shock from global oil price fluctuations than the rest of us do: a rise in oil prices that might increase British petrol prices by 10% could increase American petrol prices by 50%, and that can really make a dent in people's carefully-planned budget.

So the tax covers CO2 emissions, encourages people to drive more economical cars, and gives a degree of price stability. And it's simple. What's not to like?

 

I am a financial analyst for the Republic of California. Anything the State does is far more expensive than it should be. But that is the way it is, and it is not going to change. I doubt that the gas tax would go away if there were a "miles driven" tax. It might be reduced, but we will still pay more overall. One way to reduce the need to raise taxes for roads is to mandate four 10 hour work days on a rolling basis (ignore the weekends). 1/5th of the traffic will disappear.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if CO2 isn't found to be a valuable commodity in the near future. At that point we will be paid to drive!

 

Human performance does not work that way. It tends to get sloppy at the end of the day leading to rework and lost productivity. It is one of the reasons we have FAA, professional driver, and railroad employee work hour limits. A recent example: Sleep apnea warning issued by regulators after deadly New Jersey train crash - CBS News

In this case, a train engineer was subject to 'micro sleeps' from his sleep apnea and ran it into a fatal accident.

Bob Wilson

 

To whom it may concern:-
Petroleum spirit.

 

I might have to cut down my driving. I'm afraid California cars will be full of smoke! It's already bad enough we got so many drunks and stupid distracted drivers on the highways... Now you can add potheads to the mix.

(Traffic accidents and deaths have gone up something like 40% in Colorado? Maybe somebody from that state can verify.)

 

Unpacking Pot’s Impact in Colorado

So "marijuana-related" traffic deaths have gone up 41% since recreational legalization, but marijuana metabolites persist long after the psychoactive effects are gone, meaning the data is poor - many of those "marijuana-related" deaths could involve someone who was not under the influence at all. Basically, the data's too poor to come to any full-on conclusion.

In any case, it's also worth looking at Colorado's total fatal crash numbers: Colorado Fatal Crashes since 2002 —

Looks like it's basically tracking vehicle miles traveled right now, although with a slight bump in 2012.

 

Stoners have been representing the benefits of natural selection for quite some time now, they're just easier to spot now that recreational use is legalized and/or decriminalized in more and more US states.

Every job I've ever held requires drug testing though, so it's a win-win for me.

 

What if some of it went for public transport - railways, metro systems, etc? That way you've got the "sin tax" aspect of it, using the tax to discourage consumption, and you're putting money into transport, which is kind of in line with your roads-and-bridges thing, and you're using the "sin tax" money to build something that will actually lessen the sin.

 

Surely the dataset is corrupted - through the metabolite persistence - in the same way now as it was before legalisation? So that would suggest there's still been an increase.

I'm pretty much the only person in my non-work social circle who doesn't partake: I just get more out of alcohol.

@bhtooefr , I agree that there's a definite problem with testing currently, as, as you say, you can currently test positive when you're not stoned. However, if what @MrMischief is saying is true - and I don't doubt it at all, but I haven't been to Colorado - there are a lot of people who don't fall into the tests-positive-in-spite-of-not-being-stoned category.

And to those people, I have to say this. If the pot you have smoked does not impair your ability to drive safely, you need to have a very stern word with your dealer, as you are being ripped off.

I am all for legal pot, just as I am all for legal alcohol. But neither of these things mixes safely with driving.

 

But what if the reason that rail isn't economically viable is that roads are effectively subsidised? Because the gas tax is inadequate, road users aren't paying for the environmental damage that they do. If fuel were taxed appropriately - as it is in Europe and much of East Asia - rail could be economically viable (except in Britain, where it's run by idiots for people who don't understand money, but that's a whole different story).

I understand your objection to taxing non-users to make rail work. But if you're imposing a gas tax as a sin tax, then part of the point of taxing those non-users is to turn them into users.

It depends on your priorities, obviously. If you want to deal with climate change, you impose a gas tax as a sin tax and use the money to develop lower-emission transport solutions. If you don't want to address climate change, then it could conceivably make sense for a gas tax to only be used for road infrastructure and related services. (Although if that were the case, I would hope that your state sales tax only covers renovations to shops, and not payment for schools or court or the police or anything, and that your federal income taxes only pay for services provided to people with jobs.)

 

And I'm not saying that pot mixes with driving, and am definitely not advocating it.

Just saying that deaths haven't gone up 40% - they've gone up consistent with vehicle miles traveled. And, while deaths where someone who tested positive was involved have gone up 41%, false positives could be part of that 41%.

 

Yes, but surely false positives would account for a similar proportion of positive readings both before and after the 41% increase?

 

i can't wait until all vehicles have mandatory ignition lockouts for those under any influence. although, self drivers might get here first.

 

I'd love a self-driver. It would be great to not have be stuck with lemonade when I'm the designated driver (and given that my wife doesn't drive, that means every time we go out for a family meal that isn't within walking distance).

Of course, while self-drivers will be safe when you're drunk, they might not prevent poor decisions. Perhaps there should be an additional lock-out system.

 

I don't like using percentages when people or dollars are involved. A 41% increase could mean just a few, or many thousands. And a 2% increase didn't mean much when I was making $1.82 in 1976. I do agree that the issue of causation is difficult with the way mj influence is determined. Traces of metabolites point to use, not use that resulted in impairment. I am sure that THC can be measured in the blood, which might be keyed to impairment with sufficient study.