Funding roads (taxes, user fees etc)

[danbrotherston]

Indeed. Today everyone (driving an ICE vehicle) has to pay gasoline taxes -- and pay the annual licence renewal fee. I would expect that the fee/tax could be scaled to the level of wear and tear on the roads, based on mileage, weight and possibly other factors.

My one issue, though, is that people will find a way.

Take for example water: We were told to conserve. We were given rebates on toilets, etc.  End result? People did exactly as asked, not enough money was coming in to take care of infrastructure, and now we have this infrastructure deficits for our pipes. Now our rates are triple of what they were.

Take electricity: We were told to conserve, given money to update appliances, ToU, etc. End result, we're paying jurisdictions money to take our electricity and have some of the highest rates in North America. Now are rates are triple of what they were.

The problem, both with these examples, and applying to driving too, is that they're an over simplification, that misses a very key detail. Costs do not scale linearly.

Take water, we were told to conserve, so that we don't have to build a pipeline to the lake.  Yes, because conservation efforts have worked very well, water utility revenue has decreased and thus rates have risen, because the rate breakdown did not accurately reflect fixed costs vs. variable costs.  BUT we still saved money.  Whether or not rates have risen, costs have risen far less, because we didn't have to build a pipeline to the lake.  This would have costs a billion or so...that would have been enormously expensive, and because we conserve we didn't have to do it.  

Same with garbage, although we don't pay fees directly, the region is going to save tons of money, by not having to open a new garbage dump, because we reduced our production of garbage, even though yes, our per ton costs could rise, because we're throwing out less.

And also the same with roads.  Yes, we will always need roads.  But we don't always need, four, six, eight lane highways.  And building wider roads is more than just twice, or four times as expensive, wider roads to carry the enormous number of single occupant vehicles we have are orders of magnitude more expensive than just building a road network.  So if we get fewer people to drive (and again, nobody is talking about banning, please stop accusing us of that), yes, we must still pay to keep a road network operational, but that doesn't mean that we won't still save money, because the costs will also be lower.