Funding roads (taxes, user fees etc)

[SammyOES]

I'm curious why you would think wealthy people would be subsidizing the driving of poor people? I can't think of much progressive about the way we fund roads. Property taxes are slightly progressive, but not to a great extent- especially as equity in one's home is a smaller proportion of wealthy people's wealth than poorer people's, and other types of property taxes are passed on to renters and consumers.

I think its safe to assume (although don't know for sure) that property tax is highly correlated with wealth. Roads are also funded out of general tax revenue - which is mostly based on progressive taxes.

I also don't see that there are "a lot" of other costs related to miles driven. Gasoline, for sure; and depreciation, but not on a 1:1 relationship: depreciation is a function of more than just how much the car was driven. Maintenance works similarly. Insurance cost isn't related to miles driven, either, more than to a small degree.

Maintenance is highly correlated with miles driven. Insurance is as well (both directly in that you pay more based on your standard usage and miles driven, and indirectly in that number of claims are correlated with miles driven).

There's a reason that the CRA/IRS use numbers around $0.50/km. They're not being nice - its actually a pretty fair number in aggregate.

Cost per kilometre driven definitely falls as more distance is driven. I think most of the incentives are more use, not less.

Sure, unit cost goes down (like most things), but its not negative. It's not an incentive to use more.