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Within a few years, a driver who pulls up to the gas pump might pay two bills with a single swipe of the credit card: one for the gas and the other for each mile driven since the last fill-up.
That might be the result of what many transportation experts see as an inevitable revolution in the way Americans pay for their highways.
The flow of the gas-tax pipeline that has poured cash into one of the world’s premier highway systems has slowed as some people drive less and others choose more fuel-efficient vehicles. Maintaining that aging network and tackling the rush-hour congestion afflicting most cities will require billions of dollars.
As gas tax revenue dwindles, federal and state lawmakers have an option created by innovative new technology: charge the nation’s 201 million drivers for every mile they travel.
That prospect was raised last year by a congressional commission, a Brookings Institution report and a highly regarded non-partisan transportation research group.
But getting the public and its elected officials to accept that idea might not be easy.
The need for transformation in the way Americans pay for highways is in large measure the result of what they drive and how much.
Pennies a gallon paid at the pump have provided much of the tax revenue that states and the federal government have used to build and repair 8.5 million lane-miles of roads.
Since 1993, the federal government has collected a tax of 18.4 cents a gallon, while state rates range from 8 cents in Alaska to 46.6 cents in California.
When the two taxes are combined, Americans pay 46.9 cents on average.
If fuel consumption drops 20 percent by 2017, a goal set by President George W. Bush, gas-tax revenue will drop as well. But it could fall far faster. President Obama mandated that new cars get even better mileage – 35.5 miles a gallon on average – by 2016, and he designated $2.4 billion in grants for companies developing car battery and hybrid technology.
"As vehicles become more fuel-efficient, revenue from gas taxes falls," said a Brookings Institution report co-authored by Alice M. Rivlin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office. "A more sustainable solution … is road-use pricing."
Hybrids coming on the market soon are expected to get more than 100 mpg, and even-lighter vehicles in the near future might surpass 200 mpg. And the plug-in Chevy Volt, expected in showrooms this year, can go 40 miles on batteries alone. Why 40 miles? Because two-thirds of Americans drive less than that distance each day. For plug-in drivers, daily gasoline consumption will drop to zero.
By one estimate, cited in a Federal Highway Administration report, hybrids might account for 30 percent of the new cars sold within two years, and they are projected to make up 75 percent of the market by 2025.
If half of America switches from a 20-mpg car to a 50- to 100-mpg car in the next 20 years, much of the tax revenue now used to build and rebuild highways will evaporate.
The most immediate solution to the prospect of declining revenue is to increase gas taxes, but legislators need look no further than last year for evidence that when gas prices rise, people drive less. They’re also more motivated to trade sport-utility vehicles for smaller, fuel-efficient cars.
A study in Texas determined that the state might need an eightfold increase in its fuel tax to keep up, and another estimate projected that the state will face a $146 billion shortfall in 20 years unless it finds a fresh source of revenue.
A congressional commission concluded last year that the Highway Trust Fund, into which federal gas taxes flow, "faces a near-term insolvency crisis, exacerbated by recent reduction in federal motor fuel tax revenues."
After considering more than two dozen revenue options, including higher fuel and tire taxes, a federal vehicle sales tax, a driver’s license surcharge and a general federal sales tax, the commission recommended that the nation move from a fuel-tax-based revenue system to one "measured by miles driven."
If the confluence of plummeting revenue, good roads going bad and traffic gridlock resembles the perfect storm, technology might provide an escape route.
The wizardry to switch the highway funding formula from a per-gallon tax to a per-mile tax exists.
A new device linking the technology of a cell phone with a GPS unit and a car’s on-board computer could be deployed within a few years, experts say.
Existing and developing technology gives the policymakers in Congress and state legislatures many design options, among them the pay-at-the-gas-pump model.
The easiest and most private way to tax people for the miles they drive is to check odometers. The driver knows that the count is accurate, and no one else knows where he has driven.
But there would be no way of knowing which state was owed the tax money. Washington, D.C., where commuters routinely cross state lines, is the best example. Such a move also would raise questions of fairness, because heavier vehicles use more gas and are harder on the road.
"People will ask whether a Hummer and Prius should pay the same rate," said Martin Wachs, director of the Transportation, Space and Technology Program at the Rand Corp.
And it would defeat something called congestion pricing – the notion that people who opt to commute at peak hours or in special lanes should pay more than those who do not.
Another option would use a car’s on-board computer unit of the type that has been installed since 1996. The unit would keep track of a vehicle’s travels, sending the information to a government billing center either in real time by roadside beacons (they might be cell phone towers) or through regular electronic downloads.
Rates for use of different roads and traveling at peak or off-peak hours of the day would be computed at the billing center. Use of the data also would ensure that each state received revenue for miles driven within its borders.
A third option – call it the gas pump model – would have the on-board unit handle everything but the bill. The OBU would collect data, calculate the amount owed and then transmit that information. It might send it to a government billing agency or just talk to a computer in the gas pump.
The approach would provide far greater privacy, but it wouldn’t reassure the driver that the bill was correct.
