PO Box 6617 Oklahoma City, OK 73153-0617
Tom Elmore, Executive Director Tel: (405)794-7163 Fax: (405)799-2641 E-mail: gtelmore@aol.com
12-19-03 Re: Our Views "Uncreating a diversion - Fuel tax hike should be targeted"
Daily Oklahoman Editorial
It's said that "doing the same things over and over again while expecting a different result is a sure sign of insanity." Public officials do it so often because they hope they'll be retired when the bill comes due.
Current proposals to increase state fuel taxes come from the highway contracting and trucking lobbies. Strange alliance? It's simple - contractors make money building and repairing roads and trucking makes money tearing roads up. "Great deal" - unless you're a taxpayer.
Big trucks damage roads a LOT more than autos do. They should pay a lot more than autos pay. By paying for truck-inflicted road damage, the public is not only being robbed, but encourages more damage. Public subsidy frees trucking to buy more trucks, bringing more road damage, with money it should have had to pay for road use.
This is exactly what happened in 1987 at the last major fuel tax increase. State tax on both diesel and gasoline was 10 cents per gallon. Both were increased, but apparently to "encourage trucking," gasoline tax was raised 3 cents per gallon higher than diesel, to 16 cents and 13 cents, respectively. In the wake of that ill-conceived move, state road and bridge quality has fallen further, faster than at any time in history.
Today, the driving public probably overpays its cost responsibility on state roads - while the commercial trucking industry massively underpays. This long-term subsidy of trucking has helped skyrocket truck volume on state roads. It more than doubled between 1996 and 1999, from 5.6 billion annual miles to 13.4 billion. It's impossible for auto operators to tax themselves enough to stay ahead of damage caused by the crush of new truck traffic. Accurately charging the TRUCKS, however, both immediately makes more money available for road repairs, AND pressures truck lines to scale back the numbers of new trucks they would otherwise field.
Our first priority should be the completion of a reliable, scientific Highway Cost Allocation Study to tell us exactly what each class of vehicle should pay for road use. That data should then guide the complete reform of our roadway user fee structure, ensuring that all users pay for the damage they do and that none pays for damage done by others. The driving public should probably pay less, while trucking will certainly have to pay more.
How do we encourage truck lines to stay in Oklahoma once we've raised their road-use costs? By offering innovative tools enabling more efficient operations. Today's most profitable truck lines are those most aggressively "piggybacking" their trailers and containers by rail. Our state owns more railway, over 900 miles, than any other, in addition to its commercially owned rail lines. Using these assets to develop advanced technologies and methods combining road and rail we can benefit both truck lines, who can piggyback their loads for one-third the cost of over-the-road operations, and the state's railroads, while taking tremendous stress off our public highways.
There is no other answer. Our economy is at stake. Oklahomans can no longer afford to allow the wrong thing to be done in the name of short-term political expediency. More to the point, however, by "doing it right" we can move our state into a position of world leadership in the critical field of advanced transport technology and service - or we can let them blindly raise our fuel taxes once again, lining the pockets of self-serving special interests for a short while - and have it to do all over again in a few more years.