Letters to the Editor
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This Is Silly
I just did the math. I'm in the sweet spot for this, I suppose -- I have an 80 mile round-trip commute every day, for a total of about 400 miles a week, and my car gets 21.8MPG. This means on a weekly basis, I use 18.35 gallons of tax. At around $4/G (bay area, California), this means I spend $73.40/week on gas. And at $.184/G savings, this means I'd save $3.38/week -- or about 5%. Of course, if we were to use IRS mileage rates -- $.505/mile -- I'm actually paying about $202/week in gas, wear-and-tear, etc, and I'd still only save $3.38/week -- about 1.6%.
You know what? That's not going to make my life better. At all. I'd really much rather spend this money on infrastructure. And that's assuming that we actually get the $.184/G savings, whereas the author said that a nickel/G would be pretty good -- about $.92/week savings. Why are we still arguing that this would make people's lives so amazingly better?