For sure, my friend. I live in Washington, and we have something like 40 cents in gas tax, but we are still something like three billion dollars in the hole, down from one billion, if I remember my numbers right. At any rate, IT DOESN'T HELP. All that money goes to the piddly and slow development of roads in settle and Olympia: most people don't ever even see a cent of it work. And when you do, you get to see it forever, as they have been trying to widen nearby road for FIVE LONG YEARS. Tax us all you want, if you have idiots for leadership, then the money means nothing (they will just print more and further inflate wages).

Seriously, if you want to live in Europe and have all the problems that Europeans have, MOVE. I want to live in AMERICA thank you, not Amsterdam, not London. By the way, has taxing helped London's pollution problem?

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Kattleox, I'm pretty sure that this $0.39 "fee" is on top of any gas taxes that Ca has.

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Okay so what do you say to a poor person in driving a 1985 Mercury Grand Marquis to his low-paying job about an hour away? You probably don't care because you want YOUR immediate surroundings to be all pretty and rosy, that's the problem with environmentalists, they are selfish, they don't care about the people they care about their OWN breathable air. Unfortunately these loonies make it into government and leech onto Democratic party which in turn makes things worse, although not as bad as the current Neo-Conservative party in charge.

Problem is California is a huge mess, its housing market has completely collapsed, people are poor and have no means to pay for their debt. Government is still too fat and California is going to be the first one to fall in this 50 state domino effect.

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Look we need to kill our dependence on oil, now is the BEST time, gas is cheap now. Once the economy improves gas will cost more and you will simply say that ohhh gas is pricey already why put tax it now.

I am a Republican, for 8 years Exxonn was my President, for 8 years i was told that saudi arabia was our closes ally in the middle east, i think it's time to move on.

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Wow. Today I saw a man, a woman, and a small child in a 4 passenger Maybach...weighs more than most SUVs! LOL. How horrible that people have a choice in this country what to drive.

They should all be in Fiat Unos with no more than 500cc engines!

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Tiger, hmmm, interesting, choice is a powerful word, you make it sound like i want to stop people from pursuing what they want.


Big cars eat a lot of gas---gas comes from middle east----we send 14+ billion dollars a month to middle east to pay for oil---they use that money to arm themselves---wage wars--wage jihad. Plus there's this whole environment thing, but who cares about that

Also, just because here in USA we had one terror attack that does not mean that our "allies" in middle east are up to no good, they attack USA once in a while but where do you think Hezbolla gets money, what about Hamas, i wonder if those Mumbai attacks had something to do with oil money, and of course there's that whole war in Iraq thing, fellow Americans getting killed so Joe Doublechin can express himself with that Maybach, but no one cares about that.


So yeah, you enjoy that view of a family of 3 driving Maybach, while i'll enjoy a sight of family of 4 driving a Civic, Prius, Cobalt, Impreza and even Fiat.

Merry Christmas

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Sea Urchin, maybe their other five kids/family members were at home?

See, vehicles in the US are too expensive for most people to afford one for each task. So people buy one vehicle that will cover all possibilities. Good enough mileage for commuting, enough space and power for hauling the family off on vacation, etc. The typical solution of "buy a cheap used car" only works so long as most people don't do that (if everyone did, there would be no cheap used cars due to supply/demand). There are no 1 or 2 seaters on the market that make economic sense for most people either.

I wonder when the US will be ready for a "Kei" class car like in Japan. Small, light, simple and inexpensive is what we need. Gets good mileage without expensive technology, doesn't take up much space in a driveway or parking lot and could be made at a low enough price to be affordable as a commuter-only type vehicle.

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Some people don't put that many miles on their big cars and SUVs.

An Escalade driven 20 miles per week still uses less gas than a Prius driven fifty miles per day.

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@Noidor
"Okay so what do you say to a poor person in driving a 1985 Mercury Grand Marquis to his low-paying job about an hour away?"

I'd tell that guy to move closer to work and demand better public transportation. I save a huge amount of money by taking light-rail and buses when I can. Where I live, public transportation is pretty good by American standards but pretty dismal by standards of most other developed countries.

Since we (Americans) built our system for personal transportation with the assumption of affordable gasoline even for people near poverty level, it does have its limitations when gasoline gets expensive. So rather than coddling these guys who took jobs an hour away from where they live, we should put a tax in place that will be used to improve our transportation system.

There is NO FREE LUNCH and there WILL BE SOME PAIN in dealing with our poor planning in the past. However we will all be better off if we plan for a future of $5/gallon gasoline rather than being caught like deer in headlights when it does. Efficiency is not a bad thing but will take some short-term sacrifice. Sacrifice is a word that people have forgotten the meaning of these days.

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They don't call California the "Left Coast" for nothing (coming from
an Los Angeles resident/former Dem.)...friggin' socialists are taxing
us to death!

http://www.dailypaul.com/
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

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McLovin:

People who take jobs an hour from where they live may well do so because there are no jobs where they live, and to move where they live and to move near where they work is beyond their means. You make broad, sweeping generalizations about situations you apparently have never experienced. I know, because I have been there. However, I will agree that there needs to be more public transportation available, especially for those people who have to work a hour from their homes. But demanding public transportation today does not put food on the table today or even tomorrow or next week. It's just not going to happen because "nobody" who lives in some areas wants to pay for it.

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I live in the San Fernando Valley, HUGE suburb right north of Los Angeles. And although I agree that we should use a much larger percentage of revenues for the high speed train, and better public transportation, to say that a $1 tax per gallon on gasoline is the way to do it is just incorrect.

See, America's, and more specifically, California's transportation problem (epidemic) is a catch 22. People don't want to use the public transportation (metro) system because it is too unreliable and dirty, and the public transportation system is unreliable and dirty because no one wants to use it. Trust me, I hated the wastefulness of driving 2 miles (3-5 minutes) to school when there was a metro bus that took that route every day. But sometimes, the bus would just not come, or be 30-45 minutes late, or, worst of all, be 20 minutes EARLY.

But there is hope, LA's new (2 years I think) Orange line connecting the southern San Fernando Valley with the Red line, which goes into Los Angeles and connects to the other lines has been an overwhelming success. I'm pretty sure it has already become profitable, and it has far surpassed expectations. I think (hope) this was an awakening to LA, and California that, when implemented correctly, that a public transportation system can be highly effective.

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SF public transport is slow and expensive. It costs me 7 dollars each way to go to a place 9 miles from my house on the "ever praised" BART train system. Driving there would not be much difficulty at all if it was not for the 5 dollar bridge toll and the fact that it takes 45-90 minutes in traffic. Hell, the train alone takes minimum 25 minutes and 35+ in rush hour.

the 9 miles which on a train should be rather quick, is not. The train tracks are extremely over congested and have not had any major expansion project done to fix the situation..ever. It has just been accepted as a design flaw.

Same with the highway system and confusion that happens. I have spent 30 minutes in traffic several times at the toll plaza just waiting to pay the toll. Even "fast track" gets backed up from the horrible bottle necking. This was obviously considered an acceptable design flaw as are the many other problems that do not need to exist.

So why do I want to pay more money, to use things that are not even made properly? the NYC Metro system is not near perfect, but at least its cheap. Constantly being improved though. Metro system in Chicago is always being repaired and in general expanded. Neither are perfect but are cheap.

In Orlando Florida, traffic on I4 is terrible. Horrendous, not any fun at all. But there are toll roads that run around the city that cost about 4-6 dollars depending on the route taken and are nice roads and faster. So there, you pay more and get benefits for it. I just dont see that happening in California through their legislation.

I HATE paying a lot of money for things that dont even work properly. If they were cheap you'd say "yeah oh well its how it goes". If Iam paying a considerable amount of money for poor services, then how about they be made good damnit?

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PMiddle has the right idea. The gas "user fee" is supposed to encourage us to use... what alternative, exactly? BART, which has all of twenty-odd stops on its entire service area (and costs more than driving)? Buses, which aren't cheap either (after factoring in transfer fees on the horrendously poorly-planned lines)? Cabs, which cost an arm and a leg since, unlike NYC, no one rides them here except airport commuters and tourists?

California's legislators need to recognize two things: one, that the state infrastructure--which they and their predecessors helped to create--is entirely designed around the automobile as the default unit of transportation, and two, that the homes and workplaces of the people that keep this state's economy running--largely immigrants and agricultural wage-earners--are well outside the reach of urban public transportation projects like BART.

A better "user fee" would be a tax on new vehicles based on their mileage. It's ridiculous to not provide public transportation options to the low-income laborers responsible for your state's commerce, and then tax them for buying 15 MPG vans that are legitimately used to transport large numbers of people, and are practically necessary just to get to work.

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I'm with you, Fatima. Make it an even $1... and do it now while the gas prices are low! A little pain now will make us that much more leaner and meaner in kicking the foreign oil dependence.

Once we get past this economic crisis, and oil prices increase again, the government can decrease the fee correspondingly to smooth out these absurd gas price fluctuations and give our industry a chance to plan & forecast.

In the meantime, having money to fix all the busted roads can't hurt in terms of reducing wear and tear on our vehicles and nerves.

Echelon Bob

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Fatima, America simply isn't laid out in a way that would work for public transit outside of several major cities. There are too many people too spread out and transit destinations are also too many and too far apart for public transit to work effectively. You'll either need a ludicrous number of buses going to an equally unworkable number of stops (too frequent stops slowing transit) or you've got to sell people on getting off at one stop and then doing several miles of legwork to get to their destination.

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