In a Bloomberg news article, Mark Niquette (“Higher gas tax needed to restore U.S. highways, report says”) again states the obvious: We cannot expect to maintain or expand our 2018 era highways using tax rates from past decades.
I agree with a substantial increase provided 1) that the increase is phased in gradually, say 1 cent per month, and 2) that any law passed to increase motor fuel taxes be joined with a requirement to find a weight and miles tax formula within five years to capture taxes from electric vehicles who now get the benefits of highways for free. In driving around the Vancouver area, I saw gas price variations of 20 cents per gallon today, leaving me to think that people can and do cope with amounts equal to the proposed tax.
I am a retired civil engineer and I am troubled by how politicians chant “no new taxes” to get elected even though they have to be smart enough to know that our infrastructure is failing due to shrinking tax revenue.
