Interestingly from a ‘Pigouvian’ tax viewpoint - i.e. polluter pays for externalities they impose; drivers should also be paying the price for any contribution to congestion that causes extra delay to others.
From this perspective, reinvestment in high capacity public transport in congested areas becomes pretty obvious. Or course that logic won’t stop many from wanting to widen low capacity roads instead.
Of course fuel taxes are not very localised in time and space, so they don’t really reflect congestion - not as as closely as they do pollution and noise.
If they cut fuel tax a bit and raised road prices targetting congestion, then reinvested in public transport that’d be good i think - because its closer to delivering the viable alternatives that might actually lead to some mode switching - that’s what you actually want to improve pollution, tax revenue can just be wasted, so rather have the actual switching and less tax revenue.
The problem with fuel taxes is they’re fairly invisible and many people just treat them as an overhead or sunk cost. Fuel tax is just a lot easier to implement than road pricing.
But road prices can (should) simply be set a bit higher than the bus /train fare - giving a clear marginal price signal to use public transport as often as possible.
Interestingly from a ‘Pigouvian’ tax viewpoint - i.e. polluter pays for externalities they impose; drivers should also be paying the price for any contribution to congestion that causes extra delay to others.
From this perspective, reinvestment in high capacity public transport in congested areas becomes pretty obvious. Or course that logic won’t stop many from wanting to widen low capacity roads instead.
Of course fuel taxes are not very localised in time and space, so they don’t really reflect congestion - not as as closely as they do pollution and noise.
If they cut fuel tax a bit and raised road prices targetting congestion, then reinvested in public transport that’d be good i think - because its closer to delivering the viable alternatives that might actually lead to some mode switching - that’s what you actually want to improve pollution, tax revenue can just be wasted, so rather have the actual switching and less tax revenue.
The problem with fuel taxes is they’re fairly invisible and many people just treat them as an overhead or sunk cost. Fuel tax is just a lot easier to implement than road pricing. But road prices can (should) simply be set a bit higher than the bus /train fare - giving a clear marginal price signal to use public transport as often as possible.