Although close to the borders direct tax avoidance might also be a slight problem. The higher the disparity in prices the bigger the problem. Get it high enough and the savings will cover the drive with only a few 5 gallon jugs.

However if the tax was only a county thing, which it appears it might be the only possibility in WA then that kind of avoidance would be much MUCH more prevalent.

http://www.urbanrail.net/eu/vrn/hd/heidelberg.htm

Begin personal testimony. Skip if it isn’t your thing.

I used the Strassenbahn everyday to get from my flat off of Handschuhsheim to class (Adenauerplatz), to the Altstadt for hanging out (Bismarkplatz) and a couple times a week to the Main Train Station (Hauptbahnhof) to catch the S-bahn to Mannheim where my friend lived. As someone from bumf*** Alabama where your life was defined by your car andit was an hours drive to city where you actually do anything it was quite an experience.

I’ve been in love ever since.

Needless to say I was quite disappointed when I got to Seattle, after all my times and travels in Europe and the only big American cities I had spent alot of time in were Boston and NYC and I was hoping for a similar, if smaller transit system.

I support higher gas taxes to pay for transit but seriously, this zealotry is alarming.

Anyway, French cities are denser, roads are smaller, and cars are just generally more expensive so driving is impractical for a number of reasons.

You’ve got to realize that our entire way of life, everything from where we live, to what we eat, to how we get our goods, is based on the assumption of cheap fuel. Take that away too quickly and you have a recipe for disaster.

Timber/Fishing vs. Information economies, folks. Look it up and study the history of your region!!

Timber/Fishing almost destroyed the region. Information is saving it.

The world of 1974 (which should have been aware of the 1973 oil shock) is long gone and 35 years later the 18th amendment needs to be revisited. Not that I have any hopes for this to happen under a Kemper-lacky like McKenna.

The Highway Trust Fund was bankrupt last summer folks. Wake up!!

I’m really doubtful that’s the case. In many cases the bus is already cheaper than driving, and fares are subsidized by employers and the tax system. I think the big deterrents to transit use are pedestrian design, convenience, and quality of ride — issues that light rail is meant to address.

The case where transit is clearly not cheaper is the two-mile hop to the store. There, the cost of driving is nominal and the time required to walk to the stop and wait for a bus overwhelms everything else.

Not having fares at all does make things more convenient, although it also encourages the “rolling homeless shelter” phenomenon that makes riding unappealing for many people.

Of course there’s some price sensitivity, but I don’t think nominal fares would solve many problems.

Realistically in Washington we’re more likely talking about a modest increase in the excise tax on fuel (with perhaps automatic inflation indexing added on). If we’re really lucky we’ll also get the sales tax extended to fuel sales which won’t be restricted to only highway uses.

Food prices would skyrocket until we moved away from our current specialized, industrialized food system into a more localized diversified production and distribution system. Something that can’t be done overnight.

Everyday consumer items would skyrocket as the price for shipping increased 3 fold if not more. Until more rail capacity could be built, something that couldn’t be done overnight.

Home prices in the outlying suburbs would plummet as the cost of living there would rise substantially. You’d be looking at the housing bubble all overagain. Also your rent and home prices close to employment centers would skyrocket until more capacity could be built, something that couldn’t be done overnight.

Our entire lifestyle is structured around cheap fuel, you take that away without giving the economy YEARS to restructure, and that is a recipe for disaster. I’m talking food riots, unemployment and homelessness rates going through the roof… it would not be pretty.

In fact, a rapid increase in the gas tax might actually be a good thing for the economy, as it would give people a huge incentive to spend lots of money investing in ways to reduce their VMT. Demand for new, fuel efficient cars would skyrocket.

Politically, it would be a loser. Economically, it would be somewhere between a non-issue and a boon depending on how it was implemented.

Would it cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year? Yes. Would it increase transit ridership about 20x as much per dollar spent than building light rail? Yes.

Transit fares are an unimaginably wasteful policy based primarily on racism (white people resenting the idea of giving primarily black bus riders a “free ride”). Most transit agencies spend more money collecting fares than they actually make off of them.

The issue with the gas tax is simply exhaustion. It’s been tried and tried again to raise it – here and across the country – but those who decide what passes as insider knowledge are united that raising the gas tax is politically expensive.

Kudos to Martin for raising the key issues with a VMT tax. It is similar to a gas tax, but without any incentive to improve fuel efficiency. There are other problems as well — (1) it will be much more expensive to collect VMT taxes than gas taxes are, (2) it is not indexed to rise with inflation so has the same revenue issues as the gas tax, and (3) it will be just as hard to raise as the gas tax is.

My concern with VMT taxes is that, after huge battle to institute them, we will find ourself with a new tax that has all of the same disadvantages as the current one, without providing the incentive to improve fuel efficiency.

This is an issue that needs a lot more critical questioning – thanks for raising it.