VMT tax is fairest remedy for roads upkeep

At a time when Oklahoma’s infrastructure desperately needs repair, America’s highways are in danger of going broke. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the Highway Trust Fund will run out of money to pay its obligations by 2020. This could not come at a worse time, when Oklahoma’s highways face an $11 billion maintenance backlog. Nationwide, $420 billion in repairs are needed just to maintain current highway quality.

A modern highway system is essential for a competitive economy. Companies decide where to open offices based on infrastructure and ease of movement. In a state like Oklahoma where widespread public transit is impractical, those needs must be addressed by improving the highways.

Building the infrastructure we need requires additional revenue. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon has not been raised since 1993, while inflation has eroded its purchasing power and cars have become more fuel efficient. A modern driver pays less than a third in gas taxes of what her grandparents paid per mile driven once inflation and miles driven are taken into account.

This doesn’t mean we should raise the gas tax. The introduction of electric and hybrid vehicles, combined with advances in engineering, means fuel efficiency is only increasing. Instead, we should replace it with a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax that charges drivers based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gas they use. Oregon, California, Minnesota and other states have had promising experiments with this tax that could serve as federal models.

A VMT tax is a fairer way to fund highways because people pay for infrastructure based on how much they drive instead of what car they drive. Additionally, the VMT solves the problem of ever-declining gas tax revenues as fuel efficiency increases each year. Implemented correctly, the VMT puts the Highway Trust Fund on a path to solvency and avoids more severe tax increases when the fund runs out of money.

Understandably, the VMT raises some immediate concerns about efficiency and privacy. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes if politicians waste the money on useless pet projects. That’s why any VMT should include strict requirements that every dollar go to infrastructure. Many of these types of limits already exist with the Highway Trust Fund, but they should be strengthened.

Likewise, privacy concerns should be assuaged by designing a VMT tracking system that makes it impossible for the government to know where and when somebody drove. This is what the system tested in Oregon does — GPS devices only transmit the miles driven, not the car’s specific location.