How should we pay for our roadways?

It's a question that's being raised these days in Sacramento, as outlined by staff writer Dave Downey in Monday's North County Times.

Pretty much since the automobile displaced the pony as the dominant form of transportation, we've paid for our roads through a tax on the gasoline and diesel that power our vehicles.

Whether the state gas tax replaced an earlier hay tax, I don't know -- but folks on the California Transportation Commission and the Department of Transportation are saying it may be time to get rid of the gas tax and find another way to fund our roads.

I trust that commission chairman John Chalker knows what he's talking about when he says the 18 cents per gallon state gas tax is no longer bringing in enough money to maintain our public roads.

And I'd hate to see California add any more toll roads. I grew up in the Midwest, home to the turnpike system -- freeways maintained by fees you pay every time you drive them. There's no way you can convince me that setting up a separate bureacracy for each toll road is a more efficient approach than having the state oversee road freeway maintainence, with cities and counties maintaining local surface streets.

So it might be time to raise the gas tax. It's not been raised in almost 20 years, and has thus fallen behind the cost of living.

If the gas tax has held steady the past two decades, the salaries paid to CalTrans workers have not, as they're adjusted annually for inflation. Nor have the costs of road-building materials stayed flat during that time.

I accept that our gas tax has fallen behind the real costs of maintaining our roads, and also accept that it needs to go up. I would think most people would agree with me on that -- although I reserve the right to be proven wrong. Regardless of reality (admittedly a recurring theme in this space), the fact is we should all be willing to pay an inflation-adjusted tax rate on gas to keep our roads up to snuff.

But replacing the gas tax with a mileage tax, as Oregon is considering -- and California transportation officials are also looking at -- strikes me as wrongheaded, on several fronts.

To start with, there's the matter of a government-mandated tracking device to measure how many miles you drive so the state knows how much to charge you. People uneasy with red light cameras aren't going to take kindly to having Big Brother in the car with them on every trip.

Then there's the fact that a mileage tax offers no incentives for conservation, which would seem to fly in the face of California's initiatives to lower gas consumption. If a Prius driver is paying the same mileage tax as a Hummer driver, not only are we not encouraging conservation, but in fact we're not taxing people according to the costs they create.

A Hummer does more damage to the roads than does a Prius, simply because of its greater weight.

And that's the beauty of a gas tax. It already charges more to those who drive more (because they're buying more gas), but it also rewards those who buy more efficient vehicles.

So if we need to, let's raise the gas tax. But let's not abandon a perfectly good model for maintaining our roads for an intrusive and unfair system.

Contact staff writer Jim Trageser at (760) 740-5406 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.

Additional information:

Is gas tax on its way out? (Feb. 9, 2009)