Obama's Miles Driven Tax Plan

President Obama is a smart politician. The plan to replace the Federal gasoline tax with a tax on miles driven is certain to be wildly unpopular because it is wildly flawed. Leaving it to Republican Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to carry the water for the plan is politically inspired.

I understand the logic behind the plan. As gasoline use declines and as electric and hybrid cars that use little to no gas become popular using a gasoline tax to pay for road maintenance makes less and less sense. In the future it makes more sense to tax the miles a vehicle drives that the gas it uses. Just not enough sense.

The wear and tear on the road system is not just a product of miles driven but of the weight of the vehicles on the road. A heavy-duty pick-up gouges out a great many more potholes per mile that a mini. Roads pounded by those massive semi-tractor trailer rigs deteriorate at an alarming rate. A smarter system would calculate miles driven times vehicle curb weight.

The Hummer wagon has a curb weight of 7558 pounds, a Ford F150 tilts the scales at 4524 pounds empty, the Toyota Prius weighs in at 2921 pounds, while the tiny Smart ForTwo nudges the scales at only 1804 pounds. Motorcycles only weight a few hundred pounds. On the other hand those big semis can weight up to 80,000 pounds fully loaded and have a curb weight over 10,000 pounds.

Take a figure of, say, 1 cent per 1000 miles per pound curb weight. A Hummer driving 10,000 miles in a year would pay a tax of $756. A Prius driving the same distance would pay only $292. Those big trucks would pay a road use tax of about ten cents a mile. This is a rational way of taxing the true impact of driving on the road system. If it also directs shippers to using the far more energy efficient rail system over trucks, well that's just an added bonus.