One Solution to Pennsylvania’s Future Road Funding Dilemma, and It Can Start Now

A few months ago I saw a Facebook post by a woman who uploaded a video of a man vandalizing her Tesla automobile in a parking lot. She posted the video in an attempt to find the vandal and bring him to justice.

My first thoughts were probably similar to those of everyone else who saw the video: Good for her and I hope she catches the guy. You can’t just go around vandalizing cars. And, wow, how really lucky that someone happened to be recording the video so the perpetrator could be caught! This was clearly a case of modern technology (ubiquitous video cameras and the existence of social media) serving the greater good.

But instead of just avoiding the details and moving on to my real purpose for being on the internet at that time, something made me stop for a second and delve a little deeper into this post. One of those “my gut is telling me things” moments when there’s more to a situation than meets the eye. 

The first part, the vandalizing, was cut-and-dried. The video showed the guy was clearly keying and abusing the car; of that there could be no doubt (let’s not go down the video manipulation rabbit-hole just yet). The second part, that the victim was lucky to have the incident recorded on video, turned out to have an interesting story.

It turns out Tesla has equipped their vehicles with a number of cameras on the exterior. One of the uses of those cameras is to detect potential threats when a Tesla is unattended. They call this “Tesla Sentry Mode.” You can read details about it here. The gist is that because of the large amount of motor vehicle thefts and attempted thefts in the United States, Tesla uses the car’s external cameras to continuously monitor the vehicle’s environment, detect potential threats, and record video (among other security measures) when deemed necessary. 

Again, this sounds like a wonderful use of technology to thwart a serious problem, which, according to the FBI, results in nearly $6 billion in losses nationwide. Making the world a better place to live is a good thing.

Of course, something still feels a little weird here.

Sure, there’s the constant “Big Brother is always watching” concern many people have about video being everywhere in our lives, but why is Tesla the only manufacturer I’ve heard about that is loading up the outside of their cars with cameras? If car theft, or vandalism at a lesser degree, is such a major problem in this country, wouldn’t all car manufacturers be interested in helping their customers in this way? Tesla doesn’t have a monopoly on video technology. Wouldn’t Honda, Ford, General Motors and others want to use this as a selling point just like Tesla is doing? What’s the deal?

So I did an internet search for “Tesla vandalism” and it returned 3.1 million results. Listing after listing about Tesla cars being vandalized until I reached a lone result for the Tesla Science Center in Shoreham, New York, being vandalized. On the front page of the listings were these two topics as well: “Why is Tesla vandalism so prevalent?” and “Why are Teslas being vandalized?”

My interest piqued, I did a search for Ford vandalism – Ford being the manufacturer of the most popular vehicle in America for more than the last four decades (the F-150). It returned 9.3 million results, but only the first one was about vandalism to a Ford vehicle. The rest on the front page were about vandalism to the grave of former President Gerald R. Ford. Perhaps Teslas do get vandalized more often than other cars.

So I did what I advise most people never to do, and I clicked a few of the links on the Tesla vandalism list to see what people were saying about this topic. The rationalizations ranged from jealousy about the owners buying expensive vehicles on one end, to the belief that Teslas really don’t get vandalized more than normal — it’s simply because of Sentry mode that the vandalism gets publicized more. However, buried deep in one section of comments was an interesting thought: Electric cars are using roads without paying for them and that might make regular folks a little angry. 

Hmmm… I hadn’t thought about that.

Back in June I wrote a column about PennDOT’s proposal to toll a number of bridges on interstate highways in Pennsylvania. The logic is that if you are using the bridge you should pay for the bridge, and by extension all the rest of the roads. But that logic – and inherent fairness – only works if everyone is already on level ground with any other “payments” that support roadways. And electric cars are not on level ground with us gas-guzzlers.

When I fill up my car in Pennsylvania I pay 58 cents a gallon in gas tax to the state. Driving 15,000 miles a year with an average fuel economy of 20 mpg burns 750 gallons of gas, which results in the state getting $435.00. Money that electric car owners are not paying. 

According to PennDOT, 74% of their funding comes from gas taxes. The rest comes from vehicle fees (17%) and the General Fund (9%). As we see more and more electric vehicles, the greatest source of funding for PennDOT dries up. Unless we can somehow convince the electric companies to start tithing to PennDOT, and get car manufacturers to send a few thousand dollars from each electric car sale to PennDOT, there will soon be almost no money for road upkeep. That $9 billion funding gap that PennDOT says they already have is not going to get better – it’s going to get much worse. 

PennDOT has proposed many solutions to this problem – bridge tolling being one of them. But let’s stop looking for 15 solutions to this issue and keep it simple. Let’s find one solution.

Since this movement to all electric vehicles is gaining such momentum, has such positive ecological benefits (aside from the ugly windmills littering our landscape), let’s just plan now for the day when all vehicles are electric and see what we need to do. And the way to do it is through vehicle registrations. 

PennDOT says they need $18 billion dollars this year to operate safely and provide the roadways we Pennsylvanians deserve. Let’s go nine years in the future to 2030 with the hope that we are 100% electric vehicles by that point. And we’ll project a 3% increase every year in PennDOT’s expense needs between now and then, which means they will need $23.5 billion in the year 2030, 91% of which – the 74% gas tax and 17% vehicle fees – will now be covered by the annual vehicle registration. That’s $21 billion PennDOT needs to collect. 

To compute the other side of the equation we’ll look at the number of registered vehicles in Pennsylvania. There are currently 8.1 million passenger vehicles registered. Add to that 1.9 million trucks and RV’s weighing less than 17,000 pounds. That’s 10 million vehicle registrations that should be converted to electric vehicles in the not-too-distant future. We’ll leave motorcycles, trailers and buses out of this equation.

Now the math becomes easy: $21 billion in revenue needs and 10 million registrations to get it from. That means each vehicle registration – assuming we’re all electric – will be $2,100 per year. And there we have it – the environment is safe and PennDOT is fiscally sound.

So what do we do in the meantime? That’s obvious. If we know how much we’re going to need to collect from each electric vehicle owner nine years in the future, let’s just start now. Immediately raise the annual registration fee for every electric vehicle to $2,100. Hybrids will receive a 50% reduction and pay $1,050 per year. Gas vehicles will stay at their current rate. These payments will reflect the true cost of having safe roadways in Pennsylvania and put every vehicle owner on level ground with regards to their contribution to those roadways. And to the extent that any animosity and anger against electric vehicle owners exists, this should easily clear up any suspicions that electric vehicles are using the roads without paying for them.