Induced Traffic, Congestion, and Peak Spreading Redux

I’ve written often about induced traffic and its near cousin congestion.  But they’re topics for which the lessons are non-intuitive and therefore bear frequent repetition.  There were times in my life when I would have looked askance at the concept of induced traffic and been in personal need of recurring lessons.  (I’ve learned to be more humble about my intuition.  The world is often more complex and counterintuitive than my instincts tell me.)

I’ve had conversations with folks to whom I carefully explained the phenomenon of induced traffic, including how it makes congestion almost impossible to solve.  The other parties nodded knowingly as I spoke, apparently following the thread of the argument just fine, and then, as their first question after I finished, asked “So what new roads must we build to solve congestion?”

Luckily, there are plenty of folks who are eagerly accepting the challenge of explaining induced traffic, including the answer that, within practical limits, there are no roads that will solve congestion.   (For the benefit of those in Petaluma, the answer has significant implications for the on-going Rainier Crossing discussion.)  Today, I’ll share the work of a couple of those folks.

Writing in Wired magazine, and a veteran of the Los Angeles freeways since early childhood, Stuart Dee reviews the current academic thinking on induced traffic, reporting the finding that traffic seems to increase in lockstep with newly constructed road miles.

As Dee summarizes the conundrum, “… we humans love moving around. And if you expand people’s ability to travel, they will do it more, living farther away from where they work and therefore being forced to drive into town.  Making driving easier also means that people take more trips in the car than they otherwise would.”

Dee’s solution is one that I’ve previously endorsed, congestion pricing, which is a modulated approach to a vehicle mileage tax.  Drivers, faced with a steep fee to drive through a particular location at a specific time, let’s say the financial district of San Francisco during the working day, will look for options to make their trip at another time.  If even just a few drivers adjust their trips, traffic congestion would ease and the streets would be more efficiently used for more hours of the day.

Looking at the same problem but from a different angle, Chuck Marohn of StrongTowns, based in Brainerd, Minnesota, likens a hierarchical road system, with local streets feeding onto collectors feeding onto arterials, to a water basin, with brooks feeding into streams feeding into rivers.

Marohn notes that downstream flooding is almost always the result of too much water escaping the upper elevations of the basin and overtopping the riverbanks in the lower elevations.  He then argues that the same is true of traffic systems, with too many trips congregating on the arterials where they become congestion.

The current regulatory approach to flooding is to require strict controls on the outflow from new development, typically through detention or retention.

Marohn contends that same approach would address congestion.  He argues that we need to build neighborhoods from which car trips never reach the arterials or in which daily tasks can be accomplished without cars.  In Marohn’s words, "For nearly seven decades, our national transportation obsession has been about maximizing the amount that you can drive.  We now need to focus on minimizing the amount you are forced to drive."  Luckily, we know how to do the latter.  It’s urbanism.

Two insightful writers with different life histories and different lifestyles looking at induced traffic and congestion and reaching similar and complementary solutions.  I use find that a sign of a fundamental truth, which beats the heck out of flawed intuition.

Before closing, I should note a related concept I recently came across.  At a public meeting of the Sonoma County Transit Agency, I asked a couple of SCTA planners and traffic engineers about their thoughts on induced traffic.  They admitted that their task was more the building of roads, but they were nonetheless well aware of the induced traffic phenomenon in their work.

But rather than calling it induced traffic, they called it “peak spreading”.  Their observation was the drivers who had time flexibility and an unwillingness to spend time in traffic adjust their travel times to drive or after the known peak time.  As a result, the duration of peak traffic gets longer over time.

I can confirm the description.  When my wife and I have a late afternoon appointment in Marin County, we make plans for dinner and perhaps shopping afterwards, preferring to burn a couple of hours rather than sitting in traffic.  We are induced not to travel during peak congestion and instead induced to travel at a slightly off-peak time.

And of course, the SCTA observation of peak spreading gives a window on the future when the third lane of 101 is built between Novato and Petaluma.  Rather than peak congestion diminishing, the principal effect will be reduction in its duration.  And then the duration will re-expand as induced traffic takes advantage of the new lane.

It’s a painful, but quite real, truth.  We’re not going to build our way out of congestion.  We’ve had a nearly hundred years of trying and it just doesn’t work.  Not only is the failure empirically evident, but we now have a theoretical basis that confirms the empiricism.  And we have solutions, in congestion pricing and urbanism, to better manage congestion.

Do I think that all readers now fully grasp induced traffic and the resulting congestion?  Nope, I know that counterintuitive realities take time to gain a foothold.  But I’ll keep sharing the work of engaging writers like Dee and Marohn and hope to someday have worn away the granite of flawed intuition.

In my next post, I’ll muse upon a discussion from a recent hearing I attended, a discussion that led me to think that too many of us have forgotten what it’s like to be a kid.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

The Awesome Potential and the Scary Downside of VMTs

Two posts ago, I wrote about how, even though I live in a home that is slightly beyond the fringe of walkable urbanism, I still consider myself a good urbanist.  I feel comfortable making the assertion because I continue to work toward the day when I can move into a truly walkable urban setting and because I’m willing to pay a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) and higher gas and property taxes appropriate to my urbanist perspective.

In my most recent post, I wrote that we don’t charge correctly for the increasingly common alternative schooling decisions.  I made the argument because we don’t require parents driving children to more distant schools to pay a VMT or a gas tax that would cover the true costs of driving.  (It’s a concern that applies to all driving trips.  I just happened to have a good school choice anecdote with which to frame the story.)

Having touched upon VMTs twice, it seemed reasonable to complete the triptych by looking more deeply into the current state and future path of VMTs and to speculate about the good and the evil that might lie along that path.

In its simplest form, a VMT is a tax assessed per mile of vehicular travel.  In most current thinking, it’s considered an alternative to a gas tax, although I disagree with that direction for reasons I’ll offer below.

Writing in CityLab, Eric Jaffe gives eighteen reasons why the time is right for VMTs.  It’s not the most profound list you’ll read this week, but the arguments are largely sound and the list provides a good primer into VMTs.

Then, both the Atlantic and San Francisco Chronicle write about a VMT pilot project currently underway in Oregon.  Both articles describe the general outline of the pilot project and the alternative means by which miles can be recorded.  Both articles also note the opposition of some hybrid and electrical vehicle owners to the VMT because it reduces the cost incentives for those alternative vehicles.  Writing as a Prius owner, I can only say that the objections prove that wrong-headed thinkers can be found in pretty much any subset of the population.

(Acknowledgement: The best friend of my adult years was an early sponsor of the ideas that eventually led to the Oregon pilot project.  He first made his input as an Oregon State Senator and then later as the Oregon State Treasurer.  I would have loved to have had Ben offer his insights for this post for me, but he has passed away at an unacceptably young age.)

Before digging into the technology of mileage data collection, I’ll quibble with a couple of elements of the current VMT thinking as reported in both articles.  First, the general question seems to be whether a VMT should replace a gas tax.  I’ll argue that both are needed because they serve separate functions.

VMT revenues should be targeted toward optimizing and maintaining the transportation system.  (Although I would argue that a certain portion of the street network should always remain a general fund obligation.  Even the citizens who have found ways to live without driving still expect service from emergency vehicles so should pay a share of the road costs.)

Meanwhile, gas taxes should be targeted toward addressing the environmental and geopolitical implications of petroleum use.  And even the users of electrical cars, if they’re relying on a grid with fossil fuel sources, should be picking up some of those costs through utility bills.

The two uses of tax revenues are both legitimate, but separate.  We shouldn’t be having an either/or discussion of VMTs and gas taxes.  We need both.

Also, the discussion on the VMT rate seems to focus on the appropriate mileage charge to match the current gas tax.  For the Oregon pilot program, where the goal is to induce drivers to test the VMT in lieu of the gas tax, that’s a reasonable approach.  But eventually, if the VMT is to replace the gas tax, with the gas tax revenues directed elsewhere, the VMT will need to be at a higher level.

Right now, the gas tax is failing and the highway trust fund is in arrears.  To consider replacing the gas tax with another tax having a similar revenue stream is like discussing whether to patch the Titanic with cork or rubber, philosophically interesting but practically irrelevant. 

In my last two posts, I suggested that a VMT of a dime per mile might be appropriate.  With the Oregon pilot program using 1.5 cents per mile, the dime might have been high.  But to repay current deficits in the trust fund, to repair failing roads, and to position the roadway network for the future, a nickel might be appropriate.

With those quibbles noted, let’s talk about the data collection underlying the VMT.  The Oregon program, which goes under the name OReGO, offers GPS and odometer options, with the latter for those who have privacy issues related to the former.  I understand those concerns, but it’s hard not to get excited about what a GPS data collection system could do.

Among the possibilities with GPS would be variable destination pricing so a destination in a particularly congested district, such as Chinatown in San Francisco, could trigger a congestion charge.

Even more fine-tuned, time of day pricing could be implemented, with a trip on a busy freeway having a different mileage charge at 2am than at 8am.

Or certain routes could be favored over other routes, with drivers taking the longer but usually less congested route paying a lesser mileage.  This could even be used to encourage drivers to stay away from routes used for emergency services.

The possibilities for encouraging driving behaviors to optimize the road system could be nearly endless.

But even more exciting could be the possibilities when the car isn’t being driven.  Parking meters could become obsolete, with charges being automatically noted when a car parked in a metered district.

Parking beyond posted time limits could automatically trigger fines, along with email warnings when the time limit is nearing.

Parking lots that are restricted to shoppers of a particular store could be monitored automatically, with the GPS noting the car in the parking lot and then awaiting proof of a transaction or other validation from within the store, without which a fine could be assessed.

And parking management districts could be managed more effectively.  Earlier this week, I sat through an extended public hearing during which one of the leading neighborhood concerns was street parking.  The neighbors reported that an existing apartment project was generating excess cars, with the result that those cars were consuming street parking for blocks around, inconveniencing neighbors, and leading to testy sidewalk discussions.  Based on the existing parking issues, many of the neighbors opposed a new apartment project.

But imagine a GPS car monitoring program under which parking an unpermitted car on a parking restricted street would be electronically known.  Upon the first couple of transgressions, the car owner would get an email warning about changing parking habits.  As the violations piled up, fines would be incurred.  Eventually, the owner would be advised to begin his day at the city impound lot.  It’s a parking management solution that would quickly alleviate the problems in the neighborhood.

But as cool as some of these possibilities sound, there is also an Orwellian concern in the data collection.  There are probably more than a few drivers who don’t want the government having digital records of where their cars spend nights when their spouses are out of town.  Or don’t want a government server knowing about the midnight runs to fast food places on five consecutive nights.

And any reassurances that the government could keep data safe or delete it regularly aren’t credible.  If Target and Ashley Madison can’t manage that task, I certainly don’t trust a government hiring low-bid consultants to achieve it.

I think the concept of a VMT is great.  I encourage its adoption in the near future.  And I’m excited by the prospects that a GPS-based VMT system would provide for better managing our roadway and parking resources.  But the spectre of digital leakage scares me greatly and I don’t know how to reconcile the optimism with the fear.

Perhaps that’s just the nature of life in the 21st century.

Above, I mentioned a recent land-use hearing for which street parking was a major concern.  The same hearing included concerns about driving speeds.  I have thoughts to share on that question in my next post.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

An Urbanist and His Lifestyle

My wife and I live in a neighborhood that is on the fringe of walkability.

The Walk Score folks assign a score of 63 to our home, which is better than average, but not exceptional.  (For comparison, the apartments above Theatre Square in downtown Petaluma have a Walk Score of 94.)  And as much as we enjoy having a deli, tavern, and small grocery store within a couple of blocks, I understand that much of our Walk Score is the result of living within walkable range of elementary, junior high, and high schools.  My wife and I live in great location to raise a family, but that isn’t our time of life so much of walkability value is wasted on us.

Using my own measure of walkability, we’re 0.8 miles from the nearest bookstore, which isn’t bad but somewhat beyond the comfort zone for an after-dark or wintertime book walk.

To make the home location work, I own a car, a Prius that is quickly approaching 11.5 years old, an age that almost exactly matches the 11.4 years of age for the average American car.

The Prius is our only family car and we put a moderate number of miles on it.  A few moments ago, I tallied my miles for the past twelve months.  The result was almost exactly 10,000 miles, a modest amount compared to many, but still more than I would like it to be.  But a major task of the past year was moving a parent from a long-time family home to a senior living facility and then selling the home, with both tasks requiring multiple driving trips around Northern California, so it’s likely that my annual driving mileage will soon decline.

(Plus, the reality is that we live in a world in which a car is virtually required for many daily tasks.  As much as I’d prefer to use my car even less, it isn’t a reasonable option much of the time.  I admire the folks who manage to make do without a car, but that life requires compromises that I’m can’t justify right now.)

Overall, I live a moderately low-impact life.  If I were to give our household a letter grade on an urbanist scale, it’d probably be a B-.  I tried to justify a full B, but just couldn’t do so.  It’s an okay grade, but there is room for improvement.

And yet, I write an urbanist blog.  And there are some who would try to blast me for what they perceive as an inconsistency between the housing and car choices I make and the words I write.

Admittedly, there aren’t many who take that approach, but there are a few.  I had one particular adversary who was frequent in his antagonistic comments, some of which took him into head-scratching illogic, but he seems to have disappeared in last year or so.  I sometimes fear that he succumbed during a fit of apoplexy, but prefer to think that he’s now ensconced at home in his recliner, reading “Suburban Nation” and “Walkable City” and beginning to grasp that I was onto something.

But even in that correspondent’s absence, I still have occasional folks who engage in the strawman exercise of claiming that I believe that we should all drive our cars to the edge of town for a giant bonfire and then move downtown into Soviet-era unadorned concrete apartment houses.  They then castigate me for not living that life myself.

To keep those few folks in place, I occasionally feel moved to debunk their flawed argument.  Today is one of those days.

The debunking is surprisingly easy because, over nearly four years of writing and nearly 600 blog posts, I’ve never once suggested a forced relocation into urban cores or a mandatory confiscation of automobiles.  You can spend my entire oeuvre and you wouldn’t those find those ideas anywhere.

Also, my wife and I have twice considered a move downtown, even going so far as picking homes from the plans for downtown projects for which I was the civil engineer.  But neither project could overcome the institutional biases against urbanism, so both succumbed, leaving us in our semi-walkable location.

Besides, what I believe isn’t that everyone should live downtown, but that people should have the freedom to live wherever they wish as long as they bear the fair costs of their life choices.  It’s a simple model and one that is based on both logic and free choice, but it’s a model from which we have largely strayed in recent years.

Let me apply the model to my own life.  To begin with, it’s likely that my wife and I aren’t paying enough in property taxes to sustain our community.  Even though we live moderately close to downtown, there are still infrastructure costs of single-family neighborhoods that aren’t adequately borne by property taxes under Proposition 13.  Potholes and aging waterlines are only the most evident manifestation of that underfunding.

Because my wife and I bought our home near the peak of the real estate market before the Great Recession, we haven’t benefited from the Proposition 13 cap on annual property tax increases.  However, it’s likely that even the one percent rate at which we’re paying is deficient.  My preferred property tax model is one in which the tax rate gradually increases from the urban core to the urban fringe as the demand on municipal services increases.  I’ll make a guess that 1.2 percent is the sustainable property tax rate for my neighborhood.

In a recent post, I roughly estimated that an overall rate of 1.4 percent was necessary in the North Bay.  However, I think I can safely use a slightly lower rate here because I’m unbundling road costs in my next calculation.

Although there are legitimate technological and privacy questions depending on implementation approach, I remain committed to a Vehicle Mileage Tax (VMT).  Much as we pay per gallon or per kilowatt-hour for water and electricity, I like the idea of paying per mile for road usage.  Elsewhere in the country, there are VMT trials underway for which rates of one to two cents per mile are being applied.  However, those are only tests.  I suspect that an appropriate VMT is closer to a dime per mile.

And there is the cost of gasoline.  Although we now have a gas tax, it’s only for road construction and maintenance.  The greater costs of gasoline use, addressing the looming threat of climate change and managing the geopolitical burdens of oil-dependence, are borne by the general fund.  And that isn’t right.

Early in the history of this blog, I linked a report that tried to estimate the fully-burdened cost of gas.  Depending on assumptions, of which there were many, the authors estimated that somewhere between $6 and $15 per gallon was the correct price for gas.  At the time, the study was several years old and another three years have passed since I linked the study during which the appropriate rates have climbed.  But to be conservative, I’ll suggest a rate of $10 per gallon.

I won’t show all my calculations, but applying a 1.2 percent property tax rate, a dime per mile VMT, and a $10 per gallon cost of gasoline to the current life of my wife and me would result in an increased household cost of $3,700 per year.  It’s a chunk of money that would likely cause belt-tightening elsewhere in our budget, but it’s a burden I’d gladly bear for a more financially sustainable community that properly incentivizes urban life.   And that makes me a card-carrying urbanist.

Plus I’d expect that applying these new costs to our lives would trigger more urban development, perhaps finally creating the right opportunity for me to move downtown.

I can already hear three objections to my proposal.  First, some will suggest that if I feel so strongly about my conclusion, I should write a check for $3,700 and deliver it to City Hall tomorrow.  But while there are some individual actions that can done in the furtherance of a more responsible lifestyle, such as driving an electric or hybrid car (done), installing solar power (done), and removing grass (done), other actions are only useful if done cooperatively.  Higher property taxes, a VMT, and greater gas taxes are among those.

Second, some will argue that many citizens can’t afford the additional cost burdens.  I agree with them.  That’s why I began suggesting these changes nearly fifteen years ago coupled with a long transition period.  I thought everyone should have a chance to adjust their lifestyles before the cost burdens became too onerous.  But that didn’t happen, so the now the threats of climate change, municipal dysfunction, and infrastructure collapse are more nearly upon us without the same window for a transition.

I still believe that a transitional period is appropriate, but with the need being more urgent, the transition must be more abrupt.  I wish it wasn’t so.  I know there will be pain during the transition, but less pain than if we continue to duck the inevitable.

Lastly, some will argue that they enjoy their acre lots on the urban fringe and their 30-mile drives to their places of work and ask why they should pay for those enjoyments.  To which I can only say that, as much as I like my Prius, I’d rather have a Tesla.  And perhaps also an original Mondrian for my office.  But I’d never suggest that the public subsidize those personal desires.  So why should I be asked to subsidize someone’s personal choice of a home?

Ultimately, none of objections hold water.

And ultimately, my willingness to pay my fair share of my cost of my community, and thereby incentivize further urbanism, makes me an urbanist, even if a less that fully-practicing urbanist.

In my next post, I’ll dig further into VMTs, along with offering some thoughts on how schools are organized in the 21st century.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Trying to Empty the File Folder

A week ago, I began digging through my file of follow-up thoughts and links about earlier blog posts.  The effort will continue today.  Maybe I’ll even empty my file folder.

Vehicle Mileage Tax: I recently wrote about a vehicle mileage tax (VMT) as an alternative or a supplement to the gas tax.  Eric Jaffe of Atlantic Cities writes about the difficulties of selling gas tax alternatives to the public.  He notes the VMT as one alternative, although one that is subject to the privacy concerns that I also noted.  He then identifies congestion pricing, a fee for entering city centers during peak times, as a strategy that works fairly well and becomes more acceptable to the public as they begin to understand it.

Also, a co-founder of a Sonoma County organization dedicated to the improved maintenance of rural roads contacted me to schedule a time to discuss the vehicle mileage tax.  He provided a link to a Wall Street Journal article about the flaws in the gasoline tax as currently instituted.   The article does a comprehensive job of reviewing the alternatives, such as an inflation-indexed gasoline tax, a VMT, toll roads, and increased vehicle registration fees, perhaps including a federal registration fee. 

Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds: My blog post about the future of the Sonoma Marin Fairgrounds elicited more response than almost any other post I’ve written.  I had long, thoughtful email exchanges with people who had personal interests in the fairgrounds.  And the president of the Fair Board invited me to lunch.  He and I shared a commitment to the future of Petaluma and a perspective on how communities could prosper in the future.  We disagreed on the some aspects of how the fairgrounds might evolve, but we found a basis for good conversations which I hope will continue.

Diners: I’ve written in the past about favorite urban diners in the North Bay, including the Butter Cream Bakery and Diner in Napa and Bab’s Delta Diner in Suisun City.  The recent holiday season offered opportunities to revisit both.  After my earlier visits, I was fond of both.  After my later visits, I was in love with both.

The food at Butter Cream remains solidly competent.  Perhaps not trendy or cutting edge, but good hearty diner fare.  I’d enjoy the diner for the food alone.  And the bakery aroma of warm sugariness is compelling on chilly mornings.  But the real star at Butter Cream is the sense of history and community.

When I visited in early December, I ate at the counter next to two couples who were enjoying breakfast before heading to San Francisco for a day of shopping and theatre.  It seemed to be an annual holiday outing, which all had been eagerly awaiting.  And having Butter Cream as the established starting point for their day says much about their long-term affection for diner.

When I returned to Butter Cream in early January, I had to step aside to allow a multi-generation family to work their way toward the front door.  Between the grandmother using a walker, a babe in arms, and the waitress bidding them personal farewells, it said much about the role of Butter Cream in the family and in the community.  Even if the food wasn’t as good, I’d return to Butter Cream to watch scenes like these.

Despite the fine experiences at Butter Cream, my favorite diner breakfast of the holidays was at Bab’s Delta Diner.  When I wrote before about the diner, I noted the high energy of the waitstaff.  During that visit, the staff was engaged in end-of-shift hijinks that I enjoyed watching, although I feared that others might not be as tolerant.

My December visit was in the middle of the shift, with a line of folks out the front door awaiting tables.  The high energy of the waitstaff was again evident, but this time the focus was on serving the customers.  There was still kidding among the youthful waiters, but it was all focused on good service.

A story illustrates the level of service.  I was in the final days of a cold, the time when hot tea with honey tastes particular good.  But I forgot to ask for honey when I ordered my tea.  Moments later, I softly opined to my companion that I should have asked for the honey, but that the place was busy and I wouldn’t inconvenience the staff.

At that moment, our eighteen-year-old waiter had his back to us and was entering our order into a computer perhaps eight feet from our table.  When he brought our breakfast, he also brought honey, noting that he’d heard me ask about it.  Which makes two points.  One, my sotto voce isn’t very sotto.  Two, he was a great waiter because he could have easily pretended that he hadn’t heard me.  We tipped well.

But even better than the service was the food.  I ordered the seafood omelet.  I know that ordering a seafood omelet in Suisun City in December smacks of foolhardiness.  And the omelet filling was mostly surimi with a few tiny shrimp.  But with the smooth texture of well-melted Swiss cheese, it was an excellent omelet.  And Bab’s offers fried rice as an alternative to breakfast potatoes.  That omelet paired beautifully with the rice.  Six weeks later, my mouth still waters when I think about that meal.  I’ll soon return.

That’s enough for today.  Nope, the file folder still isn’t empty.  I didn’t even come close.  Perhaps I’ll dive in again next week.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)

Taxing Driving by the Mile

A frequent criticism of transit is that fare box revenues are far less than the operating costs.  The charge is true.  Twenty percent of operating costs is the goal for fare box revenues, but ten to fifteen percent is the more frequent reality.  Those who oppose transit and the land-use paradigm that it represents often decry this as a “subsidy”.  Perhaps it’s a fair description.

But the description ignores that automobile use receives a similar “subsidy”.  Other than the gasoline tax, which is both inadequate and poorly apportioned, we don’t pay to use public roads.

Ah-hah, some argue, we pay for our roads through our property taxes.  Well, not really.  Even if we skip over the fact that property taxes support roads in the same way that income taxes support transit, and therefore either both are the beneficiaries of subsidies or neither are, a homeowner pays the same property tax bill whether he drives 1,000 or 100,000 miles per year.  There is no supplemental charge for the extra 99,000 miles of road use.

But some will now argue that the gasoline tax is how we pay for the extra miles.  There is some truth to the argument, but less than one might think.  The gasoline tax is a proxy for road usage, but a poor one.  The federal Highway Trust Fund has been running on empty for years, forcing Congress to loan money from the general fund.  And even then, the Trust Fund is only used for road construction and maintenance.  The other costs of gasoline use, particularly the geopolitical and environmental costs, are borne elsewhere in the federal budget.

One could argue for a much higher gasoline tax.  Indeed I’ve done so.  But the gas tax isn’t well apportioned.  A car getting 45 miles per gallon will pay only one-third the gas tax per mile compared to a car getting 15 miles per gallon.  (As a Prius driver, I’m not really complaining about it, but I’ll acknowledge the inequity.)  It’s an appropriate tax for the geopolitical and environmental costs of petroleum, to which its collections are not directed, and a flawed tax for road construction and maintenance, to which its collections are directed.  Don’t you love federal tax policy?

For these reasons, many argue for a new form of taxation, a vehicle mileage tax (VMT).  Indeed, when we talk transportation issues at Petaluma Urban Chat, the VMT is often noted as a key omission in the economics of transportation.

At its simplest, a VMT could be imposed by having an annual odometer check with a payment assessed for mileage traveled during the year.

But if a VMT was implemented using the upper end of technology, it could be a remarkably useful tool.  If every car had a sensor that allowed the movements of the car to be continually tracked, different mileage charges could be applied to different times of day.  Driving south on 101 toward San Rafael at 8am Monday morning would have a different charge than driving the same stretch of freeway at 11pm Monday evening.

And if vehicle location is collected on a short enough time increment, speed could be calculated.  If you travel 1.3 miles on 101 in 60 seconds, you can expect a speeding ticket for going 78 miles per hour.  The automated enforcement would immediately slow traffic, resulting in gas conservation and freeing police departments for other uses. 

In an application of particular interest to me, parking could also be monitored.  Spend three hours in a two-hour zone?  The fine could be automatically added to your bill.  No meter attendant required.  Park every day at the far end of the Safeway parking lot while carpooling to a job in the East Bay?  You’d be charged for the use of the parking space, with those funds passed along to Safeway.  (Note: Carpooling is a good thing.  Hopefully, the charge would be fair to Safeway while not enough to discourage carpooling.)

But there’s a dark side to a VMT.  Many people sense a “creepiness” factor in having their car being continually tracked.  I’m perhaps not as bothered as some about it, but I can appreciate the concern.  I wouldn’t be pleased about a technocrat in Sacramento knowing if I made frequent 1am runs to a liquor store.  Or if my car spent the night outside my girlfriend’s house whenever my wife was out of town.  (Note: Both examples are extremely hypothetical.)

Atlantic Cities has written about the creepiness factor.  Emily Badger acknowledges the concern and the need to balance improved equity in road use fees versus privacy invasion.  Unfortunately, Badger doesn’t come to any helpful conclusions, winding down with the thought that perhaps churches or schools can facilitate the dialogue.  It was an interesting thought, but doesn’t seem to lead anywhere.

Against this background, it’s interesting to note that Oregon is proceeding with actual road tests of a VMT.  They’ve identified a range of VMT implementation options from strong information/low privacy to weak information/high privacy.  At this time, they’re only testing the implementation with volunteers.  But the results will be available to the state legislature which will decide on the future of a VMT.

It’ll be an interesting experiment to follow.  Because if an effective VMT leads to a higher percentage of road costs being fairly collected from drivers, it could lead to higher transit fare box collections.

As a closing note, some may ask what would happen to current property taxes and income taxes if a VMT supplants some of the needs now covered by the first two.  If our taxes were already covering the annual costs of government and if we didn’t have a deficit, property taxes and income taxes should decrease.  But as we have deficits and unmet governmental needs, the reallocation of taxes would be a legislative decision.  And I never try to predict those.

As always, your questions or comments will be appreciated.  Please comment below or email me.  And thanks for reading. - Dave Alden (davealden53@comcast.net)