dc.description.abstract | Lack of sustainable revenue generation for transportation infrastructure has created a
need for alternative funding sources. The most prominent of which is the Mileage Based
User Fee (MBUF), where drivers would be charged based on the number of miles they drive,
thus holding them accountable for their use of the roadway. While numerous equity related
issues have been addressed, the interrelation of transportation taxation and expenditures on
all levels of government (State, County, and Local) is not well understood.
Using National Household Travel Survey data and information collected from over
one hundred agencies, roadway taxation and expenditures were assigned to individual
households in the Houston core based statistical area (CBSA). Using both Gini Coefficients
and Theil Indices to analyze equity relationships, the research demonstrated that
implementation of a MBUF would not have a pronounced effect on the current distribution
of transportation taxation and expenditures, with the number of miles traveled and the total
transit ridership remaining mostly unchanged. This also means that the equity of a MBUF is
mostly equivalent to the current fuel tax. The relative winners of the current system are rural
and high income urban households, while the relative losers are all other urban households.
Increasing the MBUF to meet the Texas 2030 Committee recommendations would
decrease the average benefit to taxation ratio, causing households to receive less than they
pay into the system. Additionally, it would decrease the total number of miles traveled by
22.8% and increase transit ridership by as much as 10.2%. Still, equity of this scenario
changed little from the equity of the current transportation funding system. However,
excluding public transit expenditures resulted in a statistically significant and undesirable change in the Gini Coefficient, indicating that public transit has a positive impact on equity
when considering the transportation system as a whole.
Due to relatively flat rate taxes (vehicle registration, property tax, sales tax, etc.), the
higher the miles driven, the lower the effective tax is per mile. When miles traveled are
decreased by 22.8%, the effective tax per mile increases, which is the reason why the
average benefit to taxation ratio was reduced. If transportation related taxation were to shift
towards user based methods, then the benefit to taxation ratio should tend towards a value of
one, indicating that all users receive exactly the value they pay for. If revenues are increased
while the methods of taxation remain the same, low income urban households will be
negatively impacted to the greatest degree. | en |