Good post Robbie. You laid it out well.
On 3/5/2015 2:40 PM, Robbie Webber wrote:
One problem with a wheel tax in larger cities with large employment
center (such as Madison), is that it taxes people that have their car
registered in the municipality, not the people that drive in the city.
Madison sees a daily influx of commuters by car who use our local
streets and don't pay a penny to fund the roads. We Madisonians pay
the property taxes to fund these local roads. The folks from Verona,
Dodgeville, Sauk City, and Fort Atkinson don't pay for Madison roads.
Assessing a wheel tax will simply put more burden on Madison taxpayers
to fund roads used by others. And Madison taxpayers are more likely to
ride the bus, walk, or bike for many trips because they are more
likely to be within walking, biking, or busing distance, so I'm going
to guess that Madisonians have a lower per capita number of (motor)
vehicle miles traveled than those commuting in from outside the city,
thereby putting less strain on the roads.
Obviously, this is true anywhere that has huge numbers of commuters
coming into the city every day, so it's not just Madison. Places with
tourism, sports venues, or other event destinations tend to have local
taxes that capture that revenue (hotel taxes, taxes on event tickets,
etc.) One way some cities capture the costs of the commuters using
their infrastructure is with local income taxes, i.e. you pay a tax
based on where you work.
One of the problems in Wisconsin is that we cannot assess local sales
taxes (with few exceptions, but only counties can, not cities.) That
means we can't capture the revenue from food and retail sales from
those commuters.
There is no perfect way to fund transportation. There are advantages
and disadvantages to all methods. And some can be seen as "fair" or
"unfair" to various groups. Gas taxes, registration fees, property
taxes, local assessments for infrastructure, wheel taxes, tolls, and
per mileage fees all have reasons that they are more or less fair to
some groups. None perfectly capture revenue needed to pay the costs of
transportation or live up to what most people in the U.S. believe is a
goal of funding transportation: User pays.
Robbie Webber
Transportation Policy Analyst
608-263-9984 (o)
608-225-0002 (c)
[email protected]
All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily reflect those
of my employer or any other group with which I am affiliated.
_______________________________________________
Bikies mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
_______________________________________________
Bikies mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.danenet.org/listinfo.cgi/bikies-danenet.org
