Americans, and Californians above all, live in a motor-head democracy. More adults hold driver's licenses than voter cards, and taxes on automobiles have been disappearing as fast as Democrats from the U.S. Senate. Red, blue and even Golden states have rushed to slash vehicle taxes, even as Hummers have flooded the highways.
So it was news this week when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger -- the bane of California car fees -- nominated Joan Borucki to lead the Department of Motor Vehicles. Borucki, the media quickly revealed, was on record as supporting a tax on driving. That's right -- a tax on every mile driven in the state! And it might be collected by tracking devices in cars or by spy satellites overhead! That, at least, was the tone of some of the media coverage.
The back story, as usual, is much more nuanced. Borucki's position turns out to be as middle-of-the-road as a double-yellow line, and it's only one of a menu of innovative transportation taxes that states will opt -- or be forced -- to turn to in the future. Here's the rub: The gas tax cannot collect enough money to keep up with needed road work because vehicle technology is hurtling toward alternatives, such as plug-in hybrids and fuel cells, that rarely need refueling. California's motor vehicle emissions standards for greenhouse gases are hastening the arrival of these fuel-sippers, and the faster they arrive the more quickly gas-tax dollars will evaporate.
So in recent years, when representatives of Big Transportation get together, the subject that most rouses their passion is how to keep paying for roads. The emerging, bipartisan consensus? A different kind of tax: user fees such as tolls and mileage charges.
New, "phantom tollbooth" technology allows toll collection without stopping. In the best of these systems, overhead scanners mounted on scaffolding debit the appropriate charge from a prepaid "smart card" on your dashboard. On highways such as Orange County's 91 Freeway and Interstate 15 in San Diego, such a system is already in place, and the fees vary with the volume of traffic -- you get a break if you travel when those routes are less crowded.
But one-route-at-a-time tolling cannot fund the construction and upkeep of an entire highway network. The only hope of doing that is through comprehensive regional or even statewide systems. In my home city of Seattle, a pilot project is trying to perfect wireless tolling that covers the entire metropolitan area. Each of the 500 vehicles in the pilot project will have an onboard "taxi meter" that announces and deducts from a prepaid account the price for driving each street, based on congestion.
