I’m glad you recognize the flaws of this scheme.

Road congestion is a result of a very free market at work. Anyone can use almost any road at any time they please, and almost every business is free to set any working hours it wants without distraint.

If everyone wants to work roughly between 8a and 5p, resulting in congestion between 7a and 9a and 3:30p and 5:30p that’s just the way things are.

The solutions being bandied about on here of “encouraging” businesses to change their working hours and “incentivizing” drivers not to use the roads at certain times are just another form of government force being bandied about by faux-Libertarian statists, with the intention of handing over the use of public assets paid for equally by all and which should be open to all to those with the most means.

Frankly, its the usual sort of Communistic prescriptions you typically find coming out of the so-called “right”.

People are perfectly capable of sorting out their own desires in a rational way. If they really didn’t want to be stuck in traffic every day, they would change their job, business, or lifestyle. If they are stewing in congestion, its only because that is their choice. Its not like there are not other options open to them today without various new complex tolling schemes.

Eighty percent of the population will never support a mileage tax unless the gas tax is entirely removed and promised to never be replaced. And the other twenty percent will want to impose a new carbon tax on gas. People are not so stupid as to support a new tax without getting rid of the old one.

Agreed. It’s just a matter of the particular implementation, I suppose.

You could force everyone to have their odometer read at each annual inspection, and then pay a tax based on miles travelled on the spot. Or even better, based on ton-miles travelled.

So say the rate was 2¢ per ton mile and you have a 2 ton vehicle that was driven 20,000 miles. You would owe $800 = 80¢ per gallon @ 20 mpg.

And if you don’t want to pay the tax because you have no money, a system of vehicle seizure and impoundment could be implemented. This would also be a great time to collect unpaid parking, speeding, and moving violation tickets as well as check on mandatory insurance coverage. You could even run a check for outstanding arrest warrants on the driver.

Just imagine the possibilities.

I guess you wouldn’t. Maybe the “permanent residency” state or where the car is registered gets the dough. It’s not perfect, I’ll give you that. I suppose it’s harder and would have heavier administrative costs.

But the gas tax isn’t perfect either. I think another problem on the horizon for the gas tax is the inevitable and ever-increasing popularity of fuel efficient cars. Wouldn’t a mileage based system be better equipped for this change?

By definition, traffic flows cannot exceed maximum roadway capacity.

If X cars per hour actually move along a road, then the road has the capacity to handle at least that much traffic.

I would imagine you are really talking about capacity at a given speed. However, we all know that maximum speed is not the point of maximum capacity.

You really seem to be arguing for a god given right to drive at 70+ mph unobstructed by traffic 24-7. The investment to make this possible is simply not worth the cost, as most of that new capacity will be idle 22 hours per day 7 days per week, and the whole day on weekends.