This article discusses the problems with public funding for transportation costs, particularly roadway, and how the new concept of distance-based taxation could help keep floundering revenue afloat. Although developed from the basic concept of the toll road, distance-based taxation uses electronic tolling, which is already used widely in a more conventional way, in combination with a network-like GPS infrastructure which tracks the distances that individual automobiles drive. Despite the seeming practicality of this sort of taxation, there is a considerable amount of criticism levied against the implementation of it. Environmentalists, for example, worry that this sort of tax would not keep with the current trend of increasing fuel efficiency. Other groups worry about privacy issues stemming from the detailed tracking of vehicles that would be prerequisite for a network suchas this. The article closes with a brief synopsis of the three options for the levying of future tax for transportation purposes: first, to allow the fuel-tax to wither in efficacy and eventually be rendered useless; second, to inaugurate an electronic tolling network; or third, to allow the fuel-tax to keep pace with inflation until such a point as it is no longer economically viable.
Abstract