Sunday, May 4, 2008

A Wheel Tax?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had an article today about a $10 car tab tax for transit operations. They call it a wheel tax. But here's another idea, what if we had a real wheel tax. Wheel's go on the road and deteriorate over time. Replacement is based on how much one drives. What if there were a small tax every time you got new tires? Ideally, the folks that would pay more are the ones who would drive more.

I think I get tires every 25,000 miles or so. I also think it's supposed to be more than that but I'm on my 4th set for my 99 Jetta. Given that it's got about 85K miles on it, I'm not paying as much because I don't drive as much. It's just another small incentive to take transit if you can. We might also make the tax vehicle size regressive, meaning the larger the vehicle you drive and the bigger the tire, the more tax you pay. I dunno, another idea for the funding mechanism pot. What do you all think?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds a lot easier and more legal than GPS-ing everyone's car and maintaining servers to track our movements...

Anonymous said...

I'd be a proponent of higher gas taxes before I went for this. They're more direct and consistent, which would be more likely to change people's behaviors.

Justin said...

raise the gas tax instead, this idea is lame. This may push people to ultra high mileage tires with less grip and safety, thanks alot.

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

You're welcome. I don't think anyone would ever implement this idea. But if we toss out a bunch of ideas we can get rid of the bad ones. Why even have thoughts or share them if some of the ideas are bad?