Why shouldn’t you pay for using car infrastructure? You’re damaging the environment and damaging the roads, it’s a lot more sensical for the cost to be put on you, the driver, instead of burdening everyone else with higher income/sales taxes.
Funding for the development and maintenance of roads in the U.S. come from a variety of taxes such as vehicle registration fees, wheel taxes and taxes on gasoline and motor fuel. So , we do pay for using car infrastructure
Yes, but not nearly enough. Those kinds of taxes are extremely low (especially compared to e.g. the EU) and form a very small part of the actual cost of car infrastructure.
All those hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in infrastructure bills, all the regular car infrastructure maintanence costs, a large chunk is paid for by taxes that everyone gets regardless of how much they use a car. And all the extra non-tax costs (in both time and money) that non-drivers have to pay because car-dependent infrastructure fucks up transportation for everyone else, that is a massive charge.
The simple answer is to make commercial/industrial users pay fairly. Practical studies have shown that road damage is related to the fourth power of vehicle weight. The damage attributable to private cars is less than a rounding error compared to commercial vehicles, and commercial users have the most directly-atttibutable profit from road use.
I just said – you’re burdening other people with taxes for damage that you cause. Car infrastructure meant for drivers destroys the fabric of cities/towns, destroys the environment, and costs a shit ton of money on top of that.
Using more toll roads and similar things means you can “tax” people a lot more proportionately to how much they use cars on public infrastructure, instead of punishing people that don’t use cars or use them less than others. It would be entitled to assume that everyone else should pay more taxes because you want to use an expensive destructive and dangerous mode of transportation rather than just take public transport or bike.
I also find it hilarious how my state gives tax credit for using/owning an electric car, but not for not using any car at all… this kind of shit is representative of the norm across most of the US, car drivers are directly subsidized by non-drivers.
(It’s obviously a lot more complicated than “make more toll roads” since some jobs actually need vehicles, plus it’d make sense to mostly do it around densely populated areas)
I pay for schools i dont go to, hospitals in places ill never go to, roads i dont use. The point of taxes is to pay for the things that better everyone even if you yourself dont personally use them.
Okay, but schools and hospitals don’t destroy the fabric of cities and don’t destroy the environment. Schools and hospitals actually improve society a lot and SHOULD be subsidized.
A majority of the money spent on car infrastructure does NOT go to improving society. In the current state of things, cars harm society, and the majority of people using cars don’t need cars. Most of the money spent on car infrastructure should be put into actually making transportation not car-dependent, and as I said earlier car drivers should subsidize this.
It would be great if we could shift to a better system integrating better and much more robust public transit, but in much of the U.S., driving a car is the only option. I understand being upset with the system we have, but taking out your frustrations on many people who don’t really have a choice is counterintuitive.
Wait but cars don’t damage the road (much) - trucks do. We should all be mad we are so heavily subsidizing the cost of moving goods to our grocery stores, construction sites, and anywhere else.
Invalid feelings + wrong opinion
Based and accurate
Why shouldn’t you pay for using car infrastructure? You’re damaging the environment and damaging the roads, it’s a lot more sensical for the cost to be put on you, the driver, instead of burdening everyone else with higher income/sales taxes.
Funding for the development and maintenance of roads in the U.S. come from a variety of taxes such as vehicle registration fees, wheel taxes and taxes on gasoline and motor fuel. So , we do pay for using car infrastructure
Yes, but not nearly enough. Those kinds of taxes are extremely low (especially compared to e.g. the EU) and form a very small part of the actual cost of car infrastructure.
All those hundreds of billions to trillions of dollars in infrastructure bills, all the regular car infrastructure maintanence costs, a large chunk is paid for by taxes that everyone gets regardless of how much they use a car. And all the extra non-tax costs (in both time and money) that non-drivers have to pay because car-dependent infrastructure fucks up transportation for everyone else, that is a massive charge.
Even in the EU, car related taxes can’t pay for all the car related infrastructure. Building and maintaining roads is crazy expensive.
People who don’t drive don’t pay any of those taxes that were used as examples. I’d love to see the numbers that you’re basing your argument on.
Let me google that for you: https://frontiergroup.org/resources/who-pays-roads/
There are literally tens of thousands of articles like this one.
TLDR:
No, drivers pull their own weight in regards to car related taxes.
The simple answer is to make commercial/industrial users pay fairly. Practical studies have shown that road damage is related to the fourth power of vehicle weight. The damage attributable to private cars is less than a rounding error compared to commercial vehicles, and commercial users have the most directly-atttibutable profit from road use.
The point the seems to have missed you is that taxes should be what pays for the road
I just said – you’re burdening other people with taxes for damage that you cause. Car infrastructure meant for drivers destroys the fabric of cities/towns, destroys the environment, and costs a shit ton of money on top of that.
Using more toll roads and similar things means you can “tax” people a lot more proportionately to how much they use cars on public infrastructure, instead of punishing people that don’t use cars or use them less than others. It would be entitled to assume that everyone else should pay more taxes because you want to use an expensive destructive and dangerous mode of transportation rather than just take public transport or bike.
I also find it hilarious how my state gives tax credit for using/owning an electric car, but not for not using any car at all… this kind of shit is representative of the norm across most of the US, car drivers are directly subsidized by non-drivers.
(It’s obviously a lot more complicated than “make more toll roads” since some jobs actually need vehicles, plus it’d make sense to mostly do it around densely populated areas)
I pay for schools i dont go to, hospitals in places ill never go to, roads i dont use. The point of taxes is to pay for the things that better everyone even if you yourself dont personally use them.
Okay, but schools and hospitals don’t destroy the fabric of cities and don’t destroy the environment. Schools and hospitals actually improve society a lot and SHOULD be subsidized.
A majority of the money spent on car infrastructure does NOT go to improving society. In the current state of things, cars harm society, and the majority of people using cars don’t need cars. Most of the money spent on car infrastructure should be put into actually making transportation not car-dependent, and as I said earlier car drivers should subsidize this.
It would be great if we could shift to a better system integrating better and much more robust public transit, but in much of the U.S., driving a car is the only option. I understand being upset with the system we have, but taking out your frustrations on many people who don’t really have a choice is counterintuitive.
Wait but cars don’t damage the road (much) - trucks do. We should all be mad we are so heavily subsidizing the cost of moving goods to our grocery stores, construction sites, and anywhere else.