Transportation excise taxes vs. automobile-gasoline excise taxes

This comes up because Washcycle mentions that Rep. Blumenaur, at the Cities for Cycling event earlier in the week, offered up the idea that bicycle equipment could be assessed an excise tax to contribute towards bicycling-supportive infrastructure. (See "Cities for Cycling II," especially for the spirited comment thread.)

I have been thinking about this a bit. It's not unreasonable to have a bike tax, just as registration fees for cars go into the funding sources for the road system. Blumenaur discussed the outdoor recreation equipment tax, which helps support wildlife refuges and other outdoor recreation facilities.

There are lots of problems with the discussion of funding the transportation infrastructure, because there are many myths about how it works at present.

Note that the taxes collected are a combination of federal taxes, at 18.3 cents/gallon, and which haven't been increased for decades, and local and state excise taxes, which vary.

1. The biggest myth is that drivers pay their way through the gasoline excise tax, through the combined total of federal and state/local gasoline excise taxes.

Note that the impetus for a tax or "fee" per vehicle mile traveled is designed to deal with the fact that for the most part legislators fear raising taxes, and the funding system for transportation is grinding to a halt in many ways, especially as the bill for maintaining and replacing infrastructure mounts stratospherically.

2. The reality is that no more than 50% of the cost of roads are paid for by this revenue stream. The remainder comes from general fund monies, which are paid by all taxpayers, whether or not they drive. The financial need for total tax per gallon ranges from about $2.31 to maintain the system as it is to about $6.30 per gallon to have a fully operational, well maintained robust transportation system.

3. Not to mention the cost of the U.S. military and its maintenance of access to foreign oil. That's about $2.45/gallon.

4. The problem with myth 1 is that drivers think about the gasoline excise tax only funding roads, when we ought to think about it as an excise tax that contributes broadly to the funding of improvements to the transportation system--it's not just about roads.

We have to remember that having a robust transportation network benefits all of us regardless of how we consume particular "units" of transportation, because even if we don't drive or own an automobile, delivery vehicles bring goods to places we shop, repair people use these roads to come to where we live, emergency vehicles provide service to localities using the roads, etc. Some of these are free rider or externality type questions. There happened to be a great article in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago, "Arthur Cecil Pigou Provides a Guide to the Great Recession" about Arthur Pigou, who was the foremost analyst of the economic and social implications of these kinds of tough questions.)

5. So, thinking about maintaining system throughput, also known as reducing congestion (see "Study: D.C. area home to many of country's most congested roadways" for an article about this in the Examiner, although the stated methodology for the measurement of congestion is extremely flawed, relying on a constrained data set and failing to differentiate between types of trips), then it is extremely reasonable to consider providing financial support for walking, bicycling and transit from the gasoline excise tax funding stream because this reduces congestion considerably, making automobile trips more comfortable and quick for people using that mode.

It's all about the numbers (or optimality)

If 2 people (at best, as a typical automobile trip has fewer than 2 occupants) take up 162 square feet of space in a car on a road, well 6 bicycles with riders can fit in that same space, removing as much as 800 square feet of automobile-equivalents. Walkers on the sidewalks eliminate many more car trips. And a bus, using about 490 square feet of road can move 50-80 people in the space of 3 cars/6 people, reducing by at least 50, the number of cars on the road.

So every dollar that goes to "transportation enhancements" that shift more trips to more efficient modes (walking, bicycling, transit) has extra normal benefits in terms of "congestion reduction" and improving the use and throughput of the road network.

And automobile users should willingly pay for that improvement. Even though sure, we can tax shoes and bicycles to support transportation programs as well.