This morning, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit is holding a hearing tailor-made to tout the trucking industry. It’s a political version of fan service.
Is the trucking industry important? Sure it is. In fact, I worked my way through college and my first graduate degree working for the trucking industry. After class, I would change clothes and drive to the freight yard, where I would enter freight waybills into the computers, and when I was finished, I would go out on the dock and help finish the unloading of local trucks and the loading of scheduled loads.
I learned a lot about life, and about deregulation, working in the trucking industry.
But methinks the purpose of today’s hearing is defensive for the trucking industry, because it’s becoming clearer and clearer that trucks simply aren’t paying their fair share for our shared transportation infrastructure.
And we are facing a crisis in how we pay for transportation infrastructure.
The crisis is being driven by two major factors. First, freight trucks put an inordinate amount of pressure on infrastructure, and they don’t pay their fair share. A study by the North Carolina Department of Transportation found that trucks with four or more axles underpay by 37% to 92% for the infrastructure damage they cause. A Federal Highway Administration study in 2000 found that 80,000 lb. trucks underpay by 20% and 90,000 lb. trucks underpay by 50%.
Second, fuel taxes are on a downward trend, not only because of greater fuel efficiency, but also because of remote work and the migration toward electric vehicles. If you don’t commute to an office, you don’t pay fuel taxes, and of course electric vehicles don’t pay fuel taxes, either.
Policymakers need to begin considering new ways of funding transportation infrastructure that properly allocate the costs of maintenance and repair. We are intrigued by the idea of a commercial vehicle miles travelled tax (VMT-C) that would tax commercial vehicles by the miles driven, but which would omit passenger vehicles.
Limiting the VMT-C to commercial vehicles would preclude any concerns about government “tracking,” since commercial vehicles already report miles travelled for tax purposes. A mileage tax restricted to commercial vehicles would pose no violation of privacy to American drivers, and could properly allocate the costs of transportation infrastructure according to the relative burden on our roads.
The trucking industry knows this is coming, which is probably why they asked for this fan service hearing. But rational policymakers have to begin considering a commercial vehicle miles travelled tax as the best, more targeted means of paying for transportation infrastructure.
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Is the trucking industry important? Sure it is. In fact, I worked my way through college and my first graduate degree working for the trucking industry. After class, I would change clothes and drive to the freight yard, where I would enter freight waybills into the computers, and when I was finished, I would go out on the dock and help finish the unloading of local trucks and the loading of scheduled loads.
I learned a lot about life, and about deregulation, working in the trucking industry.
But methinks the purpose of today’s hearing is defensive for the trucking industry, because it’s becoming clearer and clearer that trucks simply aren’t paying their fair share for our shared transportation infrastructure.
And we are facing a crisis in how we pay for transportation infrastructure.
The crisis is being driven by two major factors. First, freight trucks put an inordinate amount of pressure on infrastructure, and they don’t pay their fair share. A study by the North Carolina Department of Transportation found that trucks with four or more axles underpay by 37% to 92% for the infrastructure damage they cause. A Federal Highway Administration study in 2000 found that 80,000 lb. trucks underpay by 20% and 90,000 lb. trucks underpay by 50%.
Second, fuel taxes are on a downward trend, not only because of greater fuel efficiency, but also because of remote work and the migration toward electric vehicles. If you don’t commute to an office, you don’t pay fuel taxes, and of course electric vehicles don’t pay fuel taxes, either.
Policymakers need to begin considering new ways of funding transportation infrastructure that properly allocate the costs of maintenance and repair. We are intrigued by the idea of a commercial vehicle miles travelled tax (VMT-C) that would tax commercial vehicles by the miles driven, but which would omit passenger vehicles.
Limiting the VMT-C to commercial vehicles would preclude any concerns about government “tracking,” since commercial vehicles already report miles travelled for tax purposes. A mileage tax restricted to commercial vehicles would pose no violation of privacy to American drivers, and could properly allocate the costs of transportation infrastructure according to the relative burden on our roads.
The trucking industry knows this is coming, which is probably why they asked for this fan service hearing. But rational policymakers have to begin considering a commercial vehicle miles travelled tax as the best, more targeted means of paying for transportation infrastructure.
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Today's PolicyByte was written by Tom Giovanetti, president of the Institute for Policy Innovation.