[jl6]

The unintended consequences of this would be:

Massive increase in the cost of public transport as buses pass their tax costs onto users.

Massive increase in the cost of freight shipping, which would be passed on to consumers, i.e. everybody, since virtually every part of the economy depends indirectly on freight transport.

It would amount to everybody paying, and thus being more or less equivalent to public funding of roads.

[gamepsys]

Freight -- Ideally this causes more investment into freight rail and more freight to be moved by rail/boat. This might cause short term price increases to expand the infrastructure, but long term it's much cheaper/greener/efficient to move this stuff on rail. Last mile (maybe last 100 miles) will always be by truck, but we have way too much long haul stuff.

Public Transport -- If tax payers are currently paying for the external costs of public transportation (via taxes to repair roads) then it won't cost anymore public money if taxpayers continue to cover that cost. For private busses this is a case of tax payers unfairly subsiding their external costs.

[dataflow]

> The unintended consequences of this would be: ... public transport ... freight

You could obviously tweak legislation to treat such vehicles differently if you wanted. I was just getting the core idea across, not suggesting my comment should be copy-pasted verbatim into the next bill Congress is passing.

[dwattttt]

It's worth noting that unless the roads are degrading and not being repaired, those costs are already being paid. It's just a question of who is paying it.

[AdrianB1]

Intended consequence would be: cars pay for the damages they do to the road. Even buses. What is wrong with that?

[AnthonyMouse]

It removes the implicit subsidy for buses, but we want to encourage people to use buses over cars and SUVs. Also, the damage from cars/SUVs is so small that the cost of collecting the fee would exceed the amount of the fee.

[enaaem]

The correct pricing of goods and services is essential for a well functioning market based economy.