Are We Slinking Ever Closer to a Universal Road User Charge? Part 1—the National Landscape: NMA E-Newsletter #549
A road user charge or RUC (also referred to as the Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax or VMT Tax and Mileage Based User Fees or MBUF) currently permeates nearly every discussion of how our country will pay for infrastructure in the future. Many transportation planners and elected officials seem to agree the time has come to […]
Paying More for Less Service: NMA E-Newsletter #534
By 2021, New York City will begin charging drivers who enter Manhattan below Central Park under the guise of congestion pricing. No one is surprised. City and state officials have been trying to make this happen for years. The rare alignment of views between the governor, the mayor, and the state legislature─each likely motivated by […]
A More Expensive (and Slower) Porsche
Porsches have never been inexpensive — but they’re about to become more so. You could call it the electric surtax — because that’s what it amounts to. And it’s probably going to be applied to us all, eventually. Porsche corporate — the company — just announced that it will expect all 190 of its U.S. […]
The Carrot and the Stick Approach to Vehicle Tracking: What’s wrong with congestion pricing and Vehicle Miles Traveled Tax Schemes?
This article first appeared in the NMA Foundation quarterly magazine Driving Freedoms Winter 2016 edition. Smart Growth supporters claim their transportation fixes will reduce congestion and lead to more accessible roads for all users. In practice, the opposite may be true. In the winter 2015 Driving Freedoms, a California NMA member described how congestion and […]
TheNewspaper.com Roundup: April 30, 2018
In this week’s TheNewspaper.com Roundup! –VA Supremes one step from banning License Plate Spying– –OH Supremes skeptical over municipal speed cam suit– –WA State VMT Tax experiment cost $2000 per participant– Friday, April 27, 2018 Virginia Supreme Court One Step From Banning License Plate Spying Police use of automated license plate readers (ALPR or ANPR) […]
Is an Infrastructure Apocalypse on the Horizon?
The US’s aging Infrastructure seems to be falling apart but what is worse is no one knows how to fund infrastructure. How much more can motorists pay before they can no longer pay any more? Motorists already pay a state and federal gas tax. Motorists already pay special wheel taxes or additional vehicle registration fees. […]
The V2V Bee Hive
Ayn Rand, for all her quirks, had some solid things to say. One of these was that civilization exists — or declines — in proportion to privacy. The less privacy you’ve got, the more uncivilized the society in which you live. Which is why this business of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) technology is so extremely uncivilized. It […]