Driving Less to Save Money? State Plans End Run to Your Wallet

As we’ve mentioned before, Washington state is facing substantial declines in gas tax revenues; “State Transportation Revenue Craters” is how Sightline’s Eric de Place put it more recently, noting the long-range revenue forecast had dropped by $1.7 billion in the latest revision. So get ready for more road tolls, vehicle excise taxes, local taxes, and even a tax on alternative-fuel vehicles, as the state attempts to claw the missing amount from your wallet.

It’s not clear how much of the gas tax drop is due to people driving less and how much is due to greater fuel efficiency, but it is clear that it’s national in scope. The Washington Transportation Commission, who should know, puts fuel efficiency first and driving less last, without breaking out proportions of impact: “At the same time, we can see fuel tax revenue–the primary source of transportation revenue in our state–declining as the vehicles we use become more fuel efficient, people find new ways of traveling, and some choose to drive less.”

De Place says breaking out those exact proportions is on his to-do list, but that both fuel efficiency and vehicle miles traveled can be fairly said to be significant factors in reduced gas tax revenues. “Projecting into the future,” he writes in an email, “fuel efficiency is much more of a ‘given’ for analysts of all stripes (since federal standards are on the books already). And then a subset of analysts are bearish about the prospects of driving in general (for a whole variety of reasons, including demographics, expense, employment patterns, cultural changes, etc).”

If you include both state and federal gas tax monies, the WTC points out, “it is noteworthy that approximately 64 percent of current transportation funding is dependent on how much fuel cars and trucks consume.” So if we go on consuming less gas…well, it’s too horrible to contemplate.

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(In point of fact, it is problematic to depend so heavily on a single point of funding; the corollary is public transportation and the decline in sales tax revenues. However, because Washington state’s 18th Amendment requires gas tax revenues to be spent only on roadways, gas taxes have heretofore been a bulwark for the pro-highway lobby, who never had to worry about desperate times cutting into their piece of the tax pie. Not coincidentally then, Washington ranks seventh out of 50 states in total gas taxes.)

Like it or not, the WTC argues, the bulk of Washington’s major roadways were built from the 1950s to the ’70s, and are now worn out. (Check out our state’s bridge ratings.) With “limited resources, the focus should be on preservation and maintenance, with a lower priority placed on building new facilities,” says the WTC, though Seattle’s two megaprojects–the SR 99 tunnel and the 520 bridge replacement–are both smaller and larger, respectively, than existing structures. The tunnel doesn’t preserve capacity, and the replacement bridge would significantly expand it (at least until the choke points at either end).

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The commission has been working on updating their 20-year transportation plan–“the state will have unfunded transportation needs of about $175 billion to $200 billion through 2030, including $69 billion in local and regional projects,” summarizes the Times–and they have a solution to the gas tax crunch:

To improve or even maintain mobility in the state, the commission is recommending new ways to raise money beyond the gas tax: wider use of toll charges, a new vehicle excise tax, local tax options and a tax on alternative-fuel vehicles. (Seattle Times)

Of course, tolling can also have an effect on vehicle miles traveled. With the passage of I-1053, most if not all of these alternatives would require a legislative super-majority. The Seattle Times comments section is not frequently a bastion of common sense, but butthead01 supplies some anyway:

I feel like we’ve all been asked for years to conserve…”reduce the demand for foreign oil”…”use mass transit”…”slow down”…”carpool”…”reduce our carbon footprint”…”consider more fuel efficient cars”…etc, etc, and we have done that. So our reward is to get screwed by the WSDOT in the form of higher fares and reduced service. THANKS FOR NOTHING, A#*HOLES.

And in a surprise move, commenter Torq provides some cogent analysis:

Drive I-5 intercity, and you’ll see the traffic is dominated by long haul trucks. These loads should be on the railroads, which are far more fuel efficient and tracks are far cheaper to maintain. 

The reason they aren’t on the rails is the roads are heavily subsidized, and the rails aren’t, so the loads go on the roads. Washington needs to tax the trucks more, and use those revenues to subsidize the freight trains. 

So again, from an earlier piece on driving into the 21st century on ’50s-era transportation strategy:

Debt in itself is not necessarily the problem–for the long term, it’s a question of anticipated return, a question of efficiencies, and whether we’re not digging a deeper hole as we fail to maintain the infrastructure we’ve built. But it also a question, short-term, of allocation of available resources. If you force yourself to imagine the predicted incrementally slow recovery, lasting a decade–ten years of chronic unemployment and its concomitant ills, curtailed spending, foreclosures, homelessness–where would you direct $8 billion? Driving? 

It feels like the WTC can’t shake that habit; while rightly emphasizing freight mobility, their roads-first strategy asks everyone to pay much more as we gradually lose ground.