SW17LS

We need trucks and busses. Operators of trucks and busses pay taxes like we do, and they provide a service that is vital to our society.

The cost of trucking finds its way into your pocket pretty quick. Levying some additional cost to trucking companies to repair roads because their trucks cause wear is just going to drive up the cost of trucking, which will drive up the cost of everything everyday people buy that gets delivered via truck...which is basically everything.

Busses (most of which are operated by local governments, who pays for them? Taxpayers but lets assume you mean private busses) are ridden for the most part by people lower in socioeconomic class, if you levy a cost to bus operators for the wear their busses do to the roads what will that do? Raise the cost of bus transport...meaning the burden is placed on the people who ride the bus.

All of this is ultimately cost for the taxpayer because the taxpayer pays for everything. We're the ultimate consumer for everything. So I would prefer to let taxes pay for it, rather than a backwards tax that we're just going to wind up paying for anyways.

Ever notice how we can't seem to build a new road anymore thats not a toll road? People don't want their "tax dollars" paying for it, but they don't realize that they pay more probably individually in tolls than they would if everybody was just taxed for the road.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

not necessarily because i think pretty much all public transportation is subsidized by other taxes anyway.

not if they don't drive on it.

MattyG

Well you can certainly have metric in the U.S. You would need to learn fuel economy ratings. So you would have to figure out that a late 2000's Chevy Avalanche uses fuel at a rate of 25 liters/100 km vs a Toyota Echo using around 5-7 liters/100 km.

The wheelbase of your average family sedan would be around 2500 millimeters and of course the curb weight of your compact CUV might be around 1700 kilograms. Maybe if you went all in you would have to understand that your V8 Lexus has a power rating of 220 kilowatts/400 Newton meters.

mmarshall

Of course they pay taxes....that goes without saying. But it is also a fact that large heavy vehicles (along with winter conditions) cause the lion's share of road damage. Why shouldn't those who do the most damage pay the highest taxes? That, to me, is simple common sense.

It's going to find its way in either way...from trucking companies if their taxes go up, or from governments if they have to raise their taxes to repair roadways and bridges. But you have the option of not buying some of the things that trucks deliver (as long as it is not daily necessities like food or clothes).....you don't heve the option of not paying taxes (unless you were the late Marion Barry LOL)


Tolls also keep the traffic level down and traffic jams from occurring. Look a your own neck of the woods, for example. The Maryland Beltway, which has no toll, is jammed every day, especially from Cabin John to Georgia Ave....but traffic almost always flows smoothly on the ICC (Intercounty Connector), a few miles north of the Beltway, which does have a toll.


Anyhow, we're getting a little off topic, which was not necessarily road financing, but Metric-vs.-English. Of course, it's true that it will cost money to convert if we ever decide to so so.

SW17LS

You miss my point. If you levied a higher tax on trucking companies you and I would pay for that tax in the form of increased cost for everything we buy. You saw that during the gas price hikes. trucking companies don't eat that cost, they raise their prices, and in turn retail establishes you shop with raise their prices to compensate.

In any event, they do pay more taxes than we do. They buy a lot more fuel, they pay a lot more fuel taxes. They pay a lot more tolls, etc.

You have to buy food. Have to buy clothes. There are things you have to buy, and trucking costs influence the prices of all those things.

Here's the thing about the ICC. If the ICC had no toll it would get used more, which would improve traffic on the Beltway. Lots of people just can't afford to use the ICC (its over $4 one way during rush hour). So the fact that its tolled reduces the improvement its existence could have for everybody.

You see the same thing in your area with the Dulles Toll Rd and Greenway vs 66. Now you have the toll lanes on the Beltway itself in VA. I use the hell out of all those roads because I can afford to, but many aren't so fortunate. I have to admit I kinda feel like a jerk riding along on an empty side road when everybody else is sitting in traffic on the free lanes on the Beltway because they can't afford to pay $7 a day not to sit in traffic. The kicker? Most of them probably pay more in taxes than I do because my business setup gives me the opportunity to get my effective tax rates down very low, while they likely make significantly less income than I do. Is that fair?

In the space it took to build those lanes (the media actually calls them "Lexus Lanes" because they're built for "rich people") they could have added 3 lanes to the beltway. Would that have done more for traffic for everybody? I think so.

My business partner's finance is a teacher in PG county, they live near the 270 start of the ICC close to where I live. She pays $8 a day to drive on the ICC, $160 a month just to use one road. She can afford to do that because she's married to my business partner, but on a teacher's salary she would have to sit in an additional hours worth of traffic because she wouldn't be able to afford to take the ICC. IMHO thats not right.

The roads are for everybody.

08gx470v8

Costs excluded, I'd like to see it happen, but it won't likely happen in my lifetime. I have driven in Europe and the UK a fair amount and it'd be nice to have signage like theirs that is not typically language based as well.

The fact of the matter is that metric will continue to creep in as it had been steadily doing so since I was a kid not too long ago. E.g., Doesn't the military use metric in most instances already?

dicer

Yeah go ahead, as long as the speed limits double what it is now.

geko29

They'd be 1.6 times what they are now

They can do what they want, provided that only ONE system is used on a given vehicle--which logically, should be metric. Nothing more aggravating than needing a 10mm socket AND a 5/8" to get a job done.

chikoo

I grew up learning economy ratings in km/liters, and now Miles/gallons. I wonder which fashion designer came up liters/100km ....