Just Raise the Damn Gas Tax!

Vehicle mileage taxes are stupid on many levels.  But they keep coming up.  You can read here a good (and less emotional) overview of why the VMT idea should die.

Natural Gas Fueled Vehichles

Ok, I'll go out on a limb and say that these will NEVER catch on.  I'm not sure you could try and come up with a more monumentally stupid idea, and I am mystified every time I see an ostensibly knowledgeable person bring it up.

There are lots of reasons LNG vehicles are never gonna be a player, but the big two are infrastructure and competitive technologies.  It would require massive infrastructure changes to make LNG vehicles sensible for most people, and when looking at that vs. competitive technologies, the benefits are approaching zero.

Gas fueled cars and gas/diesel hybrids go further, cost less and require zero change to existing infrastructure.

Plug-in hybrids and electric cars have somewhat less range, but the cost advantage comes sooner and the infrastructure is in place for most people (long-haul options like quick charge stations, battery swapping would help with getting more of these on the road, but really are not necessary).

Even if you are an efficiency/emissions nut LNG is just a really piss-poor alternative.  It retains the inefficient internal combustion engine (but with slightly higher efficiency!).  There is no conservation mechanism when coasting/breaking...

In fact the most infuriating thing about that article is the notion that municipal vehicles like buses and trash trucks were the hope for LNG!!!  Those are the types of vehicles for which electric makes the most sense.  They start and stop a lot...no combustion engine is ever going to hold a candle to an electric motor with regenerative breaking.  Hell, use a big batch of supercaps and you can make these about as efficient as my little 2003 Mazda!

LNG is a colossal waste of time, money and energy.  Granted, it is largely pushed by people in the natural gas industry and so I can't really fault old T-Boone, but when it gets passed on by people that should know better it is very frustrating.

Holy Bad Idea, Batman!

The frequency with which vehicle miles tax (VMT) pops up is insane.  It is a very, very bad idea (in our current situation, and maybe in any situation).  A higher gas tax in superior in almost every way imaginable...

1) We already have a gas tax, so increasing it incurs ~$0 in terms of collection costs.
2) There is no "government tracking" issue to deal with.
3) There is nearly zero fraud potential to deal with.
4) It appropriately encourages people to shift to higher mileage vehicles which:
   a) provides additional benefits in terms of lower carbon emissions and
   b) are generally lighter and do less damage to the roads than heavier vehicles.
5) Congestion pricing is built in, albeit very small by comparison.

There are maybe a couple downsides to a gas tax over a VMT.  One is that that congestion pricing is not really very good, but the VMT would almost have to be the [much more unpopular] GPS type to account for this.  The other really doesn't come up until we live in a more utopic society: basically if a very large fraction of cars don't use gas, then there will be less revenue from the gas tax, but we will still have road damage.  While I see this "problem" as a huge benefit, and one I think we should look forward to having to deal with, it is a long, long, long way off (and when it ever arrives some form of weight-adjusted VMT may be an appropriate solution).

Oh, and as for increasing the gas tax being politically difficult: I can't even begin to comprehend how it is that people think that the VMT will be [comparatively] popular.

Price "Gouging"

Further the gas line discussion earlier, I have seen a few people saying that restrictions on "price gouging" are part of the problem in Jersey.  The best pro-gouging (overall) piece I've seen is probably Yglesias', the only sort of detailed anti- bit I've seen so far was on Digby's blog. I don't really completely agree with either.

While my policy preferences would change things, right now, gasoline is a necessity for a large swath of this country, a luxury for a subset and totally useless for yet a third group.  Letting the market dictate prices benefits the luxury segment at the expense of the high need.  Restrictions in price changes that lead to huge lines disadvantage both, but, again, this falls more heavily on those that need gas than the others.  Straight up rationing works, but maybe not the easiest thing to implement, particularly in a crisis, and it may not prevent the lines anyway.

So what's the solution in these cases?  Some form of hybrid rationing would probably be best.  Everyone can get up to maybe 2 gallons at the normal price, then anything over is $$$.  The total volume locked in a the low price must be small enough to prevent lines but high enough to let people get somewhere.

Update: Really good read on this subject from Mark Thoma.

Gas Lines

The entire state of NJ is less than 2 hrs from me, and less than 1 hr from an open gas station without a mile long line.  So why are people waiting 2 hrs in miles long gas lines? (Yes, I realize that 2 hrs to me then 2 hrs back is 4 hrs, but there are closer stations that are open without ridiculines, probably some in Western Jersey.)