Here we are folks. Patrick has said during his campaign he doesn’t want to raise the gas tax. I am not aware of DiMasi’s or Murray’s position on the issue (but would love to know.)
Funny thing about roads, bridges and mass transit. They allow people to get to work that helps build our economy. They allow people to get to social events, or bring their kids to school. They allow commerce to move. Without them we are virtual islands in this place we call Massachusetts.
As far as I can tell, the state has a $1.3 billion spending gap and even if all of DiMasi’s or all of Patrick’s suggestions go through it will not be enough fix this.
Let’s at least take care of one problem that keeps MA’s economy moving – raise the gas tax, start fixing our roads, bridges and mass transit so we can at least keep our transportation system in order, even if we cannot improve it.
raise parking meter fees. It’s $1/hr to park in downtown Boston IIRC. A parallel parking spot is roughly 8’x20′ — 160 square feet of real estate for $720/month: That’s only $4.50 per square foot per month, and you get free utilities (lighting and sweeping).
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p>Meters are artificially cheap.
…city streets are public property and as such should be free for the public to park on.
Every time I drive anywhere near Boston, it amazes me how much of the traffic is due to 1 person sitting in a vehicle. And it also comes to me that must of the wear and tear on our infrastructure is due to those large vehicles ferrying around one person. Not to mention that all this guzzling merely increases the demand for foreign oil, which was geopolitical ramifications.
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p>What can be done to encourage carpooling? Can we have lower tolls on the Pike — or higher tolls for single-passenger cars as determined by the toll-takers? Zipper lanes anywhere?
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p>Though public transit has a place, there are many parts of the state where it insufficient or absent. How do we encourage conservation in those areas?
Cost of construction materials have gone up tremendously in the past few years, (nearly doubled since 2003), so the same dollar amount for road maintenance doesn’t go as far. Our Gas Tax rates are currently less than RI, CT, NY, ME, and the national average though higher than NH and VT, so people fueling up out of state wouldn’t be a big problem. While it would be added burden on already rising gas prices, the percentage of the gas cost going to the State is smaller than before. Furthermore, as oil supplies tighten globally gas price will continue to rise until consumption drops, so the government might as well get a cut of this windfall, rather than it just going to oil companies, who are already posting record profits.
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p>Sources:
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p>On Construction materials:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/BIZ/CO… (PDF)
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p>On regional gas taxes:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/gasol…
Gas prices are rising again and we want to talk about a tax increase?! I absolutely cannot support this. I’m already limiting myself to $20 per visit to the gas station which gets me just over half a tank. When I first got a car in 2001 I could fill my tank for $20 AND get change! I look forward to the day when all of us can afford hybrid cars, but I personally am definitely not there yet.
for you to make the switch to a high MPG vehicle like a hybrid?
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p>I admit this question is a little mischievous, given your post, but there exists a price signal at which the unthinkable becomes unavoidable.
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p>Sounds like, at today’s $3/gal., you still find that the cost of driving a cheaper but less-efficient car is less costly than the more-expensive more-mpg models. I think most drivers agree: they may be driving a little less, but basically in the same way for the same reasons.
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p>But what would change their minds? $5/gal? $10?
The lease for a Toyota Camry hybrid is $40 more a month than an old-school Camry (see http://www.actontoyota.com/men…
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p>That’s $480 a year.
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p>(This is an unfavorable scenario for the hybrid b/c you’re only looking at 3 years of operation, but it’s an easy case from a cash-flow perspective.)
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p>The Hybrid Camry gets around 35 mpg vs. 25 for the old kind.
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p>Let’s say you drive 12k miles a year.
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p>The cash flow break-even price of gas is $3.50 a gallon. We’re not there yet, but the avg. price in New England was $3.20 last week and has been rising (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html). Memorial Day could be ugly.
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p>Of course, if you drive 15k a year, the break-even price is $2.80 a gallon.
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p>If you actually bought the car, the break-even price over the life of the car would be lower (but there’s more math & it’s late).
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p>BTW my neighbor is probably selling his 1st gen Prius with 80k to get a new one (he’s tall & it has more legroom), if anyone is interested…
Looking back I can not think of a single example where it wasnt absolute folly to buy the first generation of anything new. When you calculated the costs you neglected to mention the maintanance upkeep of keeping the things on the move .. Im not certain that there is even enough info available yet to determine the appropriate add on.
So why is your neighbor selling? lol
lol- you didn’t read carefully; he’s buying a new Prius. The 2nd generation has more legroom than the first, and he’s a tall guy. He loves the current car but just wants a better fit. I think the Prius has been in the shop exactly 0 times.
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p>The Prius has been out for quite awhile; there is data. Loe and behold, the 5 year operating cost for a Prius is considered excellent; the 5 year cost is $10k less than “similar vehicles”.
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p>You can have your own opinions, but not your own facts.
at Edmunds:
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That is basically the dilemma. Increasing the gas tax is absolutely going to hurt. However, it hurts a lot less than failing bridges while loved ones are using them. It hurts a lot less than monstrous traffic jams caused by bridges that fall causing people to use alternative routes for months on end, etc.
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p>Our bridges and roads and mass transit aren’t free. You maintain your car so it doesn’t fall apart. You maintain your home so it doesn’t collapse. If we want our bridges to be safe and stable we need to provide upkeep and that doesn’t come free.
That the city owes you free parking?
Just paid for by taxes like the rest of the street on which I travel, since I have never seen tolls on a city street.
The latter is too close to a Bush for comfort…
any increase in the gas tax would be DOA, at this time. Gas has gone up too much, too quick. Too many people are already hurting paying current gas prices.
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p>They might get away with changing the gas tax to a percentage of the price of gas now – as long as no new revenue is raised. If they’d done that 15 years ago, the infrastructure backlog might not exist, and average MPG for vehicles owned in the state, I suspect, would be marginally higher.
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p>The gas tax as it is structure is now problematic. It has eroded by inflation, while also falling because fleet mileage is higher than when the tax rate was set. A tax that used to, well, at least came pretty close, to paying the cost of roads, doesn’t come close any more.
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p>I suspect, while a gas tax would be DOA with the general population in MA, and probably with the legislature too, that it would at least be more popular among Deval Patrick’s core constituents than Casinos were.
Deval tried to quench his thirst for tax revenues with casinos. Now it is on to the gas tax.
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p>How far will this governor go to squander a vision?
The main article argues for a gas tax, and say that Deval Patrick’s against it. The idea behind the article is to get the Governor and Speaker DiMasi to change their minds.
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p>You assume that Deval will in fact change his mind and agree with the writer. Quite a leap.
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p>May I suggest next time you look before you leap?
Who Killed the Electric Car? With all this talk of hybrid cars, what about doing something to move the state towards electric cars? It might not work for everyone, but for most people an electric car would give enough charge to make it through much more than 1 day.
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p>And while where at it, how about a couple of electric busses (used in Las Vegas) to areas outside of Boston? If the busses ran more often (maybe even make them smaller like shuttle busses so they are more efficient) then it would be more of an incentive for folks to use them (I live on the south shore and used to take the train in to boston – if I missed the 5:05 I would have to wait a half hour for another one – if I missed the noon one I would have to wait like three hours and If I missed the 10pm one I was hailing a cab). People use cars for the convienence, and if they make it convienient more would take advantage of it.
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p>I know this doesn’t solve the tax problem… but if we could push a new industry in this state it would help with the job situtation which in turn would help the tax situation.
Deval needs to tax more for the’greater good.’ The governor can’t help himself. Any claim of not supporting new taxes is just posturing on his part.
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p>We wonder why the Republicans held the corner office on Beacon Hill for 16 years.
This is a true dilemma for the Gov.
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p>Either he tries to raise the gas tax, merge the Turnpike and Highway which will fail making him look even more powerless or he has to kiss Sal’s ass for an appropriation to prevent another toll hike.
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p>Since MassTrans seems to be going nowhere this looks like a train wreck before he even gets the bill filed.
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p>He has needs a win but Transportation is not a winning hand for him. I’m sure he wished that he sucked it up and put a higher toll hike through earlier before the economy went south.
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It seems unpalatable to increase gas taxes only because the status quo is that they are low. But generally in economics you want to tax things to account for externalities that they incur, in this case climate change, congestion, and local pollution; and/or to tax things that society wants less of (e.g. cigarettes etc). Driving cars costs our society a lot of money, we subsidize it tremendously with our (failing) infrastructure of roads, bridges, etc. If driving was gradually priced closer to its real societal cost through gradually increasing the gas tax, we’d gradually as a society 1) use more mass transit, 2) carpool more, 3) buy more efficient vehicles, 4) chose to live in closer proximity to work. I’m a big fan of letting the markets do their work. It’s not about Christopher saying I won’t pay that. It’s not personal, its not righteous or didactic, and it shouldn’t be political (someday soon it would be I’m sure). It also doesn’t mean everyone needs to buy a hybrid either, or that individuals can’t choose to buy a Hummer (they just have to pay out the wazoo for their gas). Just price things as they really cost and society as a whole will change. It’s a beautiful thing.
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p>I like to imagine what America would be like with a real fantastic high speed train, like the Japanese Shinkansen or the French TGV. They should send it out to Upstate NY and Ohio and Chicago as well. It would make Ohio bluer for sure (weekends trips to Boston/Cleveland for baseball games…).
Just for context:
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p>Today you can travel by rail across France, from Paris to Marseilles, in three hours.
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p>That is like the distance from Boston to Virginia.
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p>By contrast the fastest Acela is three and a half hours to New York and nearly seven to Washington.
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p>I will admit that the Amtrack web site is almost as frustrating to navigate as that of the French national railway, SNCF.