征收卡车行驶里程税以提高美国道路的可持续性

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION|JULY 2025CONTENTSKey Takeaways................................................................................................................... 1Introduction....................................................................................................................... 2U.S. Highway Infrastructure: Current Condition ..................................................................... 4Trucking Costs to the U.S. Road Network.............................................................................. 4U.S. VMTT Implementation Experience ................................................................................ 5An Efficient VMTT .............................................................................................................. 6Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 12Endnotes......................................................................................................................... 13INTRODUCTIONThe Highway Revenue Act of 1956 created the U.S. Highway Trust Fund (HTF) to fund the U.S.Interstate Highway System. It was designed to assure that adequate funds were available tomaintain and expand the U.S. roadways to ensure their sustainability. The HTF is fundedprimarily through fuel taxes at a flat rate per gallon, which slowly rose from its inception to 18.4cents per gallon for ethanol and 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel in 1993, but has not risen sincedue to its unpopularity and subsequent political resistance.1As a result, the fund is chronicallyin deficit, and projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to be a cumulative total of$188 billion short by 2030.2In order to stay solvent, the HTF is funded by the U.S. public viatransfer payments from the general fund. For example, the JOBS Act in 2022 allocated $550billion to help revive the nation’s transportation infrastructure, with $350 billion allocated toU.S. roadways; and in 2015, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act allocated$52 billion to the HTF.The two laws represent a transfer payment, subsidizing heavy users of the roadway system at theexpense of light users and nonusers. The public subsidization of the road network treats it as apublic good rather than one that is funded by user fees, an inherently inefficient fundingstructure. Winston (2013) pointed out that the root cause of the inefficiency lies in the pricing ofthe road resource, creating what is commonly referred to as the “tragedy of the commons.”4Ashared resource will be overutilized if it is free or underpriced; individually, rational userspursuing their own self-interest do so at the expense of the greater good, and the common poolresource deteriorates. Thus is the case with the U.S. highway network.The problem has grown as the public subsidy has grown over time, allowing users to pay less andless of the total usage cost and forcing a transfer payment from nondrivers and light drivers toheavy drivers. Certainly, the deficit has grown as the fuel-based tax has not kept up with inflationover the 30+ years since 1992. Further, vehicles have become more fuel efficient and some areusing alternative fuels, obviating the tax altogether while still contributing to the deterioration ofthe road network. The HTF will continue to be underfunded at higher and higher deficits if thestructure of the tax is not altered. PAGE 23 INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & INNOVATION FOUNDATION|JULY 2025PAGE 3A Vehicle Mileage Traveled Tax (VMTT) has been proposed as an alternative approach. The VMTTis a well-known concept. Manson (1906) was the first published suggestion found by the authorfor such a fee in the United States, and that article makes reference to Roman taxation of a peruse road fee.5More recently, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure FinancingCommission recommended VMTT as a means of financing road infrastructure that wouldeventually replace the fuel tax.6This sentiment was echoed by CBO in its own independentreport, which emphasized the disproportionate damage caused by trucking.7Given the magnitudeof this problem, the ongoing failure of a gasoline-based tax, and the future prognosis of expandedshortfalls due to more fuel-efficient and alternative-energy technologies, an alternative taxstructure is required to produce sufficient funds to support the U.S. road infrastructure.This research summarizes the literature on and current state of the funding of the U.S.transportation infrastructure, focusing on the vehicle mileage tax option to support the interstatehighway network. In order to limit the scope of the research, it will focus mostly on applyingVMTT to trucking. There are three reasons for this focus. First, though a healthy transportationnetwork may be considered a public good, a vast portion of the benefits from the use of thenetwork by the trucking industry goes to private profit-seekin