The truth is that gas taxes don’t work any more and really haven’t worked very well for several decades. The only reason we use gas taxes to pay for roads is because collection costs were low compared with tolls. Now that we have the technologies to collect tolls or vehicle-mile fees at a reasonably low cost (and without necessarily invading people’s privacy), we should make the switch.Talking about road use fees.
No, gas taxes most closely represent use of the actual road. Gas is energy and represents the cost of moving mass over roads, and correctly represents the wear and tear. Gas is also proportional to volume moved, hence gas taxes fairly represent the space used.
Finally, let me point out that the technology that measures miles can also measure gasoline, they are both digitized within the car.
Technology can be used to measure anything, if it has a measurement, technology is there. Cars have the technology, hell, my television and toaster have the stuff.
When do we want to measure mileage? When we are dealing with drive by mile insurance, or very congested conditions. However, given that the technology can also measure mass moved, directly, we can easily compute wear and tear on road use by converting from miles driven to asphalt worn.
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