Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Rideback
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

Ya she has a vehicle with a 'slip start' but it was just too much for the system and that's why it overheated. In the bad stuff I don't use the granny gear but the D3/lo range so that I can get some speed up and since it's better not to shift lo range when the car is moving I just keep it slow and steady. It's been a nasty winter for every vehicle.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 5:14 pm Were you using low range?
I have two friends that really had bad experiences. One overheated her AWD coming up her driveway because it didn't have the torque to plow through the slop and the second is a friend whose AWD couldn't navigate his driveway and he had to park it and walk in. Came in the next morning and pulled it out with his 4x4.

Both were extreme situations but beyond the capacity of an AWD.
yes using low range. the Crosstrek basically has a transmission akin to a snowmobile transmission so the automatic transmission Crosstrek doesn't have gears. It has a computer that changes the belt drive pulleys that simulate 1st and 2nd gear as well as low range.

The low range 4x4 in my truck works well if you are stuck or need to go real slow down a steep incline. For going up a steep slippery slope, low range doesn't work to well for the truck. In that situation speed and slip sliding the corners works best. With the Subaru a slow steady speed works best.

My driveWay is about as steep as they get around these parts with fatal consequences for driving off the road.

Often I have to chain up the front wheels of the truck where the Subaru does just fine without chains. Both run snow tires with studs.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

Were you using low range?
I have two friends that really had bad experiences. One overheated her AWD coming up her driveway because it didn't have the torque to plow through the slop and the second is a friend whose AWD couldn't navigate his driveway and he had to park it and walk in. Came in the next morning and pulled it out with his 4x4.

Both were extreme situations but beyond the capacity of an AWD.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 9:25 am This winter I heard too many stories of the AWD's that are so popular unable to navigate the snow slop that we had. 4x4 is difference than AWD and a true 4x4 that includes LoRange is a gift to be able to get up and down steep snowy driveways. Jeep has their EV model out which is a hybrid, qualifies for the tax incentive, and has true 4x4.
The AWD Subaru Crosstrek (which has a low range algorithm )did way better negotiating the slop this winter than my four-wheel drive truck with 600 lbs in the bed.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

Rideback wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 7:34 am Eventually the big rigs that tear up the long haul miles and run on diesel will be replaced by the various technologies and rigs that are being tested now so that they will run off of batteries as well.
As you may know, trains run on batteries that are charged by a diesel engines.

Imo, hydrogen fuel is the answer. Seems like it would be easy to adapt the current infrastructure and add that fuel the mix.

EVs and their supporting industries such as building many, many more new power plants, still represent a huge carbon footprint.

As far as home charging an EV off grid, I worked the numbers and it was a no go financially which means competition for the one public charger in Twisp. Also good luck adding the number of solar panels required to produce electricity in the winter to charge an EV.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

Having an EV charger installed into your home isn't all that expensive and it can run off the grid you're connected to or solar panels with battery storage. Some brands have even been including an installation credit into the purchase price.

It doesn't take much to add up the costs of an IC car that you already have and then recognize that after you drop the price of fuel & maintenance that those two charges alone go a long way into paying towards the loan to buy one and then of course there's the tax credit and the long life that an EV has beyond what a IC vehicle has, so you'll have more years without a loan payment every month.



Again, the hybrids are a nice way to get used to the idea, pricing has changed/dropped significantly since the demand of the pandemic era and poor supply chains. This winter I heard too many stories of the AWD's that are so popular unable to navigate the snow slop that we had. 4x4 is difference than AWD and a true 4x4 that includes LoRange is a gift to be able to get up and down steep snowy driveways. Jeep has their EV model out which is a hybrid, qualifies for the tax incentive, and has true 4x4.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by mister_coffee »

Electric vehicles currently have a higher sticker price than dinosaur burners. But the whole cost of ownership question is quite different -- you have lower effective maintenance costs and "fuel" costs which should be accounted for. One of the reasons that legacy auto dealers hate EVs is that they don't have a good way to make money on service, which is the most profitable part of the business for existing auto dealers.

Even more so, it is a reasonable bet that EVs will be far cheaper than IC vehicles in the coming years. Largely because they have fewer parts and the manufacture of the parts they do have is much more amenable to automated production. I also suspect that over time some of the more obvious resource issues with EVs (requiring rare earth elements) will likely improve dramatically over time, as less expensive substitutes will be found.

You can purchase a decent and quite adequate personal computer today for about $100. You can buy a cell phone that is a more powerful (and arguably better) computer than any system you could have purchased 25 years ago, at any price. Prices do change over time and relative prices often change quite dramatically. All of the pieces are in place for that to happen with EVs.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

I did look at the Hyundai IONIQ EV, because like the Tesla, is available in four wheel drive. There was one available in the State and the dealer wanted a $10,000 price "market adjustment" price increase over the MSRP. The lesser priced Hyundai Kona model was no where to be found.

We purchased a 30 mpg Gasoline fueled car instead. The charging infrastructure simply isn't here yet for someone living off the electric grid where home charging isn't an option much of the year.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

As the article that originally started this thread stated, the consideration is underway to 'eventually' replace the gas tax with a mileage tax. The consideration is underway to recapture the taxes the state is missing because the EVs are not paying a gas tax and taxes are necessary to maintain our infrastructure. So this is a preliminary step and since it's carried out singularly for EVs odomoters are a reliable and easy tracking system, why go out of the way to use GPS?

Also, most EV's currently registered are hybrids which means that they're particularly adept at short (30 miles or less) trips which covers the average communter drive. Eventually the big rigs that tear up the long haul miles and run on diesel will be replaced by the various technologies and rigs that are being tested now so that they will run off of batteries as well. A tax that compensates their usage would be an absolute must. That said, the idea of starting small with the EV's we have on the road now and figuring out how to be smart as well as reasonable to recapture the taxes seems more like problem solving than a red alert.

As for the Teslas. Not so much. They've been over priced because they held the innovation top spot but companies like Ford have come on strong in the last several years so that Tesla had to drop their prices substantially. There's more good choices, that are better priced, out there now and the used EV's have also come down in price (plus the tax credit incentive which Tesla can no longer offer since it's reached the max).
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by mister_coffee »

I don't buy that it is a problem. Or at least no more of a problem than people in Clarkston who drive to Lewiston to purchase fuel. I'd bet that the number of miles driven out-of-state by drivers with Washington plates is approximately equal to the number of miles driven in Washington by drivers with Oregon and Idaho plates.

If it did become a problem you could set up transfer payments at the state-to-state level and collect aggregate statistics (this might be as simple as counting vehicles and what state they are registered in at various places on our highways) to work out what those payments would be. Which is a lot less administratively complex than installing GPS trackers in every car and giving the state revenue folks access to them (it might be politically complex and you'd be trading administrative complexity for political complexity).

I think it is a safe bet that ninety percent of Washington-licensed vehicles put over ninety percent of their miles on roads in Washington.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

mister_coffee wrote: Fri Mar 10, 2023 6:35 am
Fun CH wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 6:01 pm
mister_coffee wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:03 am
So why are we making this so complicated?
many people don't want the Government to track them.
Sure, our phones track us but location can be turned off.

Do you drive an electric vehicle David?

Are you OK with being tracked? And yes, lots of people do drive out of state especially if you live near the border. So your plan= no good.
Yes, I own and operate an electric vehicle.

You see, this isn't complicated because all street legal motor vehicles come with an instrument known as an odometer. This instrument measures the number of miles the vehicle has been driven. That is the only tracking needed to measure per-mile use of public roadways. All of the manufactured "issues" about tracking per-mile usage of electric vehicles already exist with the gasoline taxes, and they haven't been shown to be a significant problem.
Yes, but GPS tracking is different than what the odometer does by just tracking miles driven. And tell me how you're going to separate miles driven out of the state of Washington from those driven in the state of Washington. What if I buy a tank of gas in Idaho where I'm taxed and drive back into Washington State where I'm taxed again for the miles I'm driving.

You ignore those points by saying not many people drive out of State which is not true.

You don't happen to drive a Tesla? I'd switch to one of those in a heartbeat except EVs are not accessible to many of us due to price concerns.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by mister_coffee »

Fun CH wrote: Thu Mar 09, 2023 6:01 pm
mister_coffee wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:03 am
So why are we making this so complicated?
many people don't want the Government to track them.
Sure, our phones track us but location can be turned off.

Do you drive an electric vehicle David?

Are you OK with being tracked? And yes, lots of people do drive out of state especially if you live near the border. So your plan= no good.
Yes, I own and operate an electric vehicle.

You see, this isn't complicated because all street legal motor vehicles come with an instrument known as an odometer. This instrument measures the number of miles the vehicle has been driven. That is the only tracking needed to measure per-mile use of public roadways. All of the manufactured "issues" about tracking per-mile usage of electric vehicles already exist with the gasoline taxes, and they haven't been shown to be a significant problem.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Fun CH »

mister_coffee wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 7:03 am
So why are we making this so complicated?
many people don't want the Government to track them.
Sure, our phones track us but location can be turned off.

Do you drive an electric vehicle David?

Are you OK with being tracked? And yes, lots of people do drive out of state especially if you live near the border. So your plan= no good.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by realoldtimer »

In the interest of accuracy --

The Declaration states, "that all men are created equal," Jingles.

"Equal" is important, especially in today's 'woke' world.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

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Was told long ago by a much wiser man than me or thee do not read anything into what is written. One problem we have is the bleeding heart Lib---ds read what they want it to say instead of what it does say.
I.E. The Declaration of Independence reads "All men are crested, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" it does not say you have the right to be Happy or even the right to happiness but you as an individual have the right to Pursue happiness, also no where does it say you have a right to not be offended if someone else does something to offend you. BUT you do have the right to suck it up Buttercup and from what I'm seeing a majority of Your Liberal leaning Constitutional scholars are woke Karens
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

Jingles:
Thankfully we have Constitutional scholars who can interpret the Constitution for us as well as apply the social contract. Your opinion isn't based on the Constitution but how you wish you could reverse engineer it.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

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mister_coffee wrote: Thu Mar 02, 2023 6:56 am JINGLES

Under the constitution, if you've read it, you will recall that governments have the power to tax. After that is a legitimate political debate about what and how we pay for government. If you want to starve the government of funds and have no functioning public services, you are free to vote for elected officials that share your beliefs. Just as others who expect the roads to be properly maintained, bathrooms in public parks to be cleaned, and emergency services to be provided are free to vote for elected officials who will make sure those things happen.

Many countries, like Russia, have at the very best horribly inadequate public accommodations (like paved roads), at worst in many places they are nonexistent. And if you complain too loudly you get sent to prison or accidentally fall out of the window of a ten-story building. But their official tax rate for regular folks is extremely low!

I don't understand how a tax to pay for public roads, which we all use and which we all depend upon, is somehow a violation of anyone's rights.
Yes "The Congress has the power to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Impost and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States,"
The way I read this is they do not have the authority to collect taxes to pay for a war between 2 other nations when they should be spending said tax dollars to stop the invasion of illegals and drug trafficing coming across our southern Border with the drugs killing 1000's of people every month.
Yes I am one that says the government is a bloated fat cow and should be cut down both in size and spending, especially wasteful spending,. No I am not saying I shoukdn't pay my fair share in taxes however I do object to paying taxes twice to use the same facilities as other that only pay once, If you use something then you either use it free because you own it or you pay to use it. I pay the road use fee when I buy my vehicle license and fuel to run my vehicle, your EV's pay a license fee but do not pay a road use fee (tax)to use the roads nor do all the bikes that jam up the roads and act like they own them. If you don't pay to use something don't use it, As far as what roads are like in other countries I am well aware of what they are like as the only continent I have not been on is Antarctica and some places I have been are pure schitt holes.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by PAL »

Well stated David. Those that are so very concerned about rights are only concerned about what they think their rights are. Never mind that I do not want government interfering with my body.
We all use the roads and those roads are needed. Hence, we have to pay a small sum to keep things humming. What would our country look like if social services were stripped? For another post, but taking away school lunches.... give them the damn food. That's a travesty.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by mister_coffee »

JINGLES

Under the constitution, if you've read it, you will recall that governments have the power to tax. After that is a legitimate political debate about what and how we pay for government. If you want to starve the government of funds and have no functioning public services, you are free to vote for elected officials that share your beliefs. Just as others who expect the roads to be properly maintained, bathrooms in public parks to be cleaned, and emergency services to be provided are free to vote for elected officials who will make sure those things happen.

Many countries, like Russia, have at the very best horribly inadequate public accommodations (like paved roads), at worst in many places they are nonexistent. And if you complain too loudly you get sent to prison or accidentally fall out of the window of a ten-story building. But their official tax rate for regular folks is extremely low!

I don't understand how a tax to pay for public roads, which we all use and which we all depend upon, is somehow a violation of anyone's rights.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Rideback »

Jingles, Google the Social Contract.

As Mr Coffee's math demonstrated there's really no difference in $ to drivers if they pay at the pump or by the miles. But there would be a difference in govt, as in why keep both gas taxes and mileage taxes when one would suffice? The Feds and State want to capture the taxes but there's no need to add another tax (thus creating more work/workers/more govt) when the problem can be solved by moving to a single tax.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by Jingles »

Rideback po :idea: wrote:Sat Feb 25, 2023 7:13 pm Currently the EV's on the road are not paying a tax similar to the IC vehicles that pay at the pump. For now, that's a tiny bit of revenue lost to the state and to the Feds but as more ICs are replaced by EV's it will become a financial concern for govts.

I've noticed lots of insurance companies offering customers discounts if they'll put trackers on their cars and they general :idea: ly assess how much to charge or discount your rate based on the mileage you drive every year. Tracking isn't a new thing.

I suspect that the per mile charge would actually work out to be less than the taxes charged at the pump that we're paying now.
Would seem equitable that instead of charging everyone a tax on miles driven , charge only those that are not paying the tax through the purchase of the fuel to run their nasty smelly outdated IC engines. :idea: But that makes to much sense to only charge people that are using but not already paying a fee to use the roads

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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by mister_coffee »

PAL wrote: Sun Feb 26, 2023 8:42 am Do you think people would be totally honest? No tinkering allowed but how would "they" know until the car was sold whether or not people were honest.\
...
I think most people would be honest. A certain irreducible percentage of people would cheat on something like this on general principles, whether it did them any good or not. What I think would make it fair is that if it becomes obvious you cheated when you are attempting to sell your car, you need to pay the back taxes and a 200 percent penalty before you can sell your car. Or if the fraud is large enough the state gets your car and you get nothing.

Also if you tried to make the title transfer documents consistent with your tax cheating, that would constitute fraud and you can and should be prosecuted for it.

As a record-keeping function, you should be required to submit a photo of your dashboard with the odometer reading clearly visible when you get your tabs and pay your taxes.

Once again, this isn't that difficult.
:arrow: David Bonn :idea:
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by just-jim »

I agree - it isn’t awful at all; reporting should/could be easy, unless we choose to make it, unnecessarily, so.

As far as cost - I did the math on an older Toyota truck @ 10k mi/yr. It is just about a wash at $250/yr.

I think it is pretty equitable this way and gets the EV owners paying. As they should. If they’ve already received a subsidy in the form of a hefty tax credit on Fed income tax when they bought the vehicle, doesn’t seem to me they need additional breaks on use taxes. (Overall, I do support a subsidy for first time buyers of those vehicles, too)

I’m in favor, I think.
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Re: Drivers could soon pay per mile to use public roadways in Washington

Post by PAL »

Would we be reporting our odometer reading once a year or would some kind of device be reading it? Do you think people would be totally honest?
No tinkering allowed but how would "they" know until the car was sold whether or not people were honest.
You won't see me in Idaho or Montana. Absolutely right about those draconian states. Hmmm, the Draconian States of America. MIght as well throw Texas and Florida in there. But Texas is where tires are manufactured.
The EV folks really do need to pay their fair share. Maybe when they get their car charged.
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