How to Pay for Transportation? A Survey of Public Preferences

Abstract

States around the nation have been unwilling to raise fuel taxes high enough to cover desired levels of transportation expenditures, thus pushing state and local governments to look for new sources such as sales taxes and tolls. Another outcome of legislative reluctance to raise taxes or fees has been to put any potential revenue measure before the voters. As a result of these trends, transportation agencies are more and more searching for revenue options that have strong public support. This paper investigates how strongly California residents support a range of revenue options to fund transportation, including taxes and fees, bonds, and tolling. The analysis is based on results from telephone surveys of California residents. The surveys revealed fairly strong public support for some tolling options. Among the tax and fee options, the most popular was to increase vehicle registration fees by a variable amount depending on the vehicle’s air pollutant emissions and gas mileage. Three tax options – gas taxes, sales taxes, and the vehicle license fee – had virtually the same levels of overall support, about 40%. The analysis of demographic and other factors provides further insights. Overall, the survey provides some optimism for implementing new options, such as tolling, and more traditional options of user fees. The positive reaction to linking fees with environmental objectives should be explored further by researchers and policy makers.

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