for Highway Finance?
The VMT – A Good Idea
BY ROBERT PITCHER GUEST WRITER
This country’s economy, the prosperity of its businesses, the well-being of its citizens, and its competitiveness abroad all depend on the soundness of the Nation’s system of transportation, the most important element of which is America’s highway system. Te adequacy of the highway system in turn depends on the soundness of our highway funding. Recently, however, at the federal level and in at least some of the states, there has been a persistent reluctance to raise the revenues necessary for building new roads and maintaining what we have.
In this connection, there is talk these
days at both the state and federal levels about replacing the fuel tax — which has long provided most, but by no means all, highway funding — with a vehicle-miles tax, or VMT. It is said by the proponents of a VMT that the fuel tax is or soon will be obsolete, as new engine technologies produce high- mileage vehicles or those that do not depend on liquid fuel, but on electricity or another energy source. Some of these claims, at least on the surface, sound plausible. So what is a VMT, would it
make a good replacement for the fuel tax, and does the fuel tax really need replacing? A VMT is a highway user fee imposed
on each mile traveled by a vehicle subject to it. As applied to commercial vehicles, a VMT is a weight-distance tax, sharing all the inequities and burdensome administrative features associated with the latter. Weight- distance taxes are almost universally opposed by motor carriers, and have shown
26 • TENNESSEE TRUCKING NEWS Q4 WINTER 2017
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