Restriction on Mileage-based User Fee Expenditures

Restriction on Mileage-based User Fee Expenditures
Author: Paul Frisman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 3
Release: 2017
Genre: Motor fuels
ISBN:

Updates OLR research report 2016-R-0140, which discusses an application filed by the Connecticut Department of Transportation and four other states for a federal grant to study using a mileage-based user fee system to fund transportation projects.

Mileage-based User Fees for Transportation Funding

Mileage-based User Fees for Transportation Funding
Author: Paul Sorensen
Publisher: Rand Corporation
Total Pages: 34
Release: 2012
Genre: Transportation
ISBN: 9780833078421

This primer presents some promising and innovative mileage fee system designs and transition strategies. For states or localities that are just beginning to consider the idea of mileage fees, awareness of these strategies can help determine whether shifting from fuel taxes to mileage fees merits further consideration. For jurisdictions already engaged in detailed assessments of mileage fees, these concepts can help refine system design 0́4 with the ultimate aim of reducing costs and building public support.

Highway Trust Fund

Highway Trust Fund
Author: United States Government Accountability Office
Publisher:
Total Pages: 80
Release: 2013-01-16
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781482000269

Mileage-based user fee initiatives in the United States and abroad show that such fees can lead to more equitable and efficient use of roadways by charging drivers based on their actual road use and by providing pricing incentives to reduce road use. Mileage fees for passenger vehicles, however, continue to face significant public concerns related to privacy as well as cost challenges. Privacy concerns are particularly acute when Global Positioning System (GPS) units are used to track the location of passenger vehicles. Reliable cost estimates for mileage fee systems are not available, but implementing a system to collect fees from 230 million U.S. passenger vehicles is likely to greatly exceed the costs of collecting fuel taxes. Commercial truck user fee systems in Germany and New Zealand have achieved substantial revenues and benefits such as reduced road damage and emissions with fewer privacy concerns, but ensuring compliance in a cost effective manner presents trade-offs. Few commercial truck mileage fee pilots have been conducted in the United States, but efforts in two states suggest such fees pose fewer privacy and cost challenges than passenger vehicle fees. Mileage fee rates could be set to replace or supplement current Highway Trust Fund revenues. GAO calculated average mileage fee rates for passenger vehicles and commercial trucks needed to meet three federal revenue targets ranging from $34 billion (replace current federal fuel tax revenues) to $78 billion (increase spending to maintain existing system conditions and performance). To meet these targets, drivers of passenger vehicles with average fuel efficiency would pay $108 to $248 per year in mileage fees compared to the $96 these drivers currently pay in federal gasoline tax. These fees would affect users' costs differently based on each vehicle's fuel efficiency, because drivers of less efficient vehicles now pay more in fuel taxes than drivers of vehicles with greater fuel efficiency. However, like federal fuel taxes, mileage fees would comprise a small portion of users' overall fuel costs and thus only marginally increase users' overall transportation costs. A mileage fee for commercial trucks could also increase users' costs, particularly for larger trucks that log more miles. In 2000, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) estimated that heavy commercial trucks generally pay less in federal taxes than the road damage costs they impose. Adjusting mileage fee rates to account for vehicle road damage costs would increase rates for commercial truck users. However, FHWA's estimates may not reflect current conditions. Setting rates to cover these costs would require updated estimates of vehicles' responsibility for road damage. State departments of transportation (DOT) recognize the need for an alternative funding mechanism to meet future revenue demands, and many would support federal actions to evaluate mileage fees. Few states reported that they are likely to introduce such fees in the next 10 years, but more than half would support federally-led field tests of mileage fees for commercial trucks and electric vehicles. Although few electric vehicles are on the roads today, their numbers are expected to increase, and they do not contribute to the Highway Trust Fund. Without a federal pilot program to evaluate (1) options to more accurately charge commercial trucks and electric vehicles for their road use and (2) the costs and benefits of such systems, Congress lacks critical information to assess whether mileage fees for these vehicles could be a viable and cost-effective tool to help address the nation's surface transportation funding challenges.

Road User Charges Based on Mileage

Road User Charges Based on Mileage
Author: Jacqueline Russell
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781536104981

"A mileage-based road user charge would involve assessing owners of individual vehicles on a per-mile basis for the distance the vehicle is driven. Currently, federal highway and public transportation programs are funded mainly by motor fuel tax receipts that flow into the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). The tax rates, set on a per-gallon basis, have not been raised since 1993, and receipts have been insufficient to support the transportation programs authorized by Congress since FY2008. The long-term viability of motor fuels taxes is also questionable because of increasing vehicle fuel efficiency and the wider use of electric vehicles. Economists have favored the use of mileage-based user charges as an alternative to motor fuels taxes to support highway funding. This book examines consideration and viability of road user charges based on mileage."--Preface.

Comprehensive Equity Analysis of Mileage Based User Fees

Comprehensive Equity Analysis of Mileage Based User Fees
Author: Justin David Carlton
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2015
Genre:
ISBN:

Lack of sustainable revenue generation for transportation infrastructure has created a need for alternative funding sources. The most prominent of which is the Mileage Based User Fee (MBUF), where drivers would be charged based on the number of miles they drive, thus holding them accountable for their use of the roadway. While numerous equity related issues have been addressed, the interrelation of transportation taxation and expenditures on all levels of government (State, County, and Local) is not well understood. Using National Household Travel Survey data and information collected from over one hundred agencies, roadway taxation and expenditures were assigned to individual households in the Houston core based statistical area (CBSA). Using both Gini Coefficients and Theil Indices to analyze equity relationships, the research demonstrated that implementation of a MBUF would not have a pronounced effect on the current distribution of transportation taxation and expenditures, with the number of miles traveled and the total transit ridership remaining mostly unchanged. This also means that the equity of a MBUF is mostly equivalent to the current fuel tax. The relative winners of the current system are rural and high income urban households, while the relative losers are all other urban households. Increasing the MBUF to meet the Texas 2030 Committee recommendations would decrease the average benefit to taxation ratio, causing households to receive less than they pay into the system. Additionally, it would decrease the total number of miles traveled by 22.8% and increase transit ridership by as much as 10.2%. Still, equity of this scenario changed little from the equity of the current transportation funding system. However, excluding public transit expenditures resulted in a statistically significant and undesirable change in the Gini Coefficient, indicating that public transit has a positive impact on equity when considering the transportation system as a whole. Due to relatively flat rate taxes (vehicle registration, property tax, sales tax, etc.), the higher the miles driven, the lower the effective tax is per mile. When miles traveled are decreased by 22.8%, the effective tax per mile increases, which is the reason why the average benefit to taxation ratio was reduced. If transportation related taxation were to shift towards user based methods, then the benefit to taxation ratio should tend towards a value of one, indicating that all users receive exactly the value they pay for. If revenues are increased while the methods of taxation remain the same, low income urban households will be negatively impacted to the greatest degree. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/152470

Potential Benefits of Mileage-based User Fees to the Freight Industry and Industry Concerns

Potential Benefits of Mileage-based User Fees to the Freight Industry and Industry Concerns
Author: Ferrol O. Robinson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2012
Genre: Freight and freightage
ISBN:

The concept of funding surface transportation infrastructure through fees charged on miles driven has been receiving growing attention from transportation professionals and researchers in recent years. Highway funding in the United States has traditionally been done through user fees, most notably motor vehicle fuel taxes. However, there are growing concerns among some policymakers that fuel taxes are no longer adequate, sustainable, efficient, or equitable. Entities in the United States and abroad have conducted pilot projects or implemented mileage-based fees, including several specifically designed for heavy trucks. There are two major concerns related to truck travel: (1) heavy trucks consume a great deal of roadway capacity due to their size, operating characteristics, and annual miles traveled; and (2) roadway wear and tear caused by the combination of truck mileage and heavy loads is significant and disproportionate to the number of trucks on the road. The concept of mileage-based user fees has seen increasing support from a number of groups in recent years; however, it faces opposition from many in the general public and from the trucking industry. This paper is part of a larger effort exploring the benefits to the freight industry of mileage-based user fees, while highlighting industry concerns over its implementation.

Pay-as-you-drive Experiment Findings

Pay-as-you-drive Experiment Findings
Author: Jeffrey Buxbaum
Publisher:
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2006
Genre: Automobile drivers
ISBN:

The Federal Highway Administration and the Minnesota Department of Transportation co-sponsored a demonstration to test how consumers would change their driving behavior if some of the fixed costs of owning and operating a car were to be converted to variable costs. One hundred and thirty participants were given devices that recorded mileage and time of travel. Prices per mile were assigned randomly to each participant, ranging from 5 cents per mile to 25 cents per mile. The findings indicate that per mile pricing does result in measurable, but small reductions in driving. The largest effect is on weekend driving and on peak weekday travel (as some participants were able to substitute mass transit for their vehicle). One key finding in this experiment is that those households that are willing to change their driving behavior will do so with low per mile cost incentives. On the other hand it was also determined that those households unable to change their behavior do not do so even under relatively higher cost incentives. Therefore, the marginal effect of per mile prices seems to drop off dramatically after some point in the lower range of prices.