A report from the Mineta Transportation Institute found that nearly half of all Americans support a mileage fee and that 75 percent of Americans support a gas tax increase if the money is used on maintenance projects.
The report “What Do American Think about Federal Tax Options to Support Transportation?” is the 11th annual report that looks at public support for raising federal transportation revenues through gas taxes and mileage fees.
“Roughly half of American adults support some form of a mileage fee,” said Dr. Asha Weinstein Agrawal, one of the study’s authors and Director of the Mineta Transportation Institute’s National Transportation Finance Center. “For example, 49 percent supported replacing the gas tax with a ‘green’ mileage fee that charges an average rate of a penny per mile, with lower rates for less polluting vehicles and higher rates for more polluting vehicles.”
The survey also found that 54 percent of those surveyed support a fee on delivery and freight trucks, and 52 percent support a fee on taxis and ridesharing vehicles. The survey also found that while 75 percent of those surveyed supported raising the federal gas tax rate by 10 cents per gallon for maintenance projects, only 44 percent supported the same raise if the money was used more generally to support the transportation system.
Only 3 percent of the respondents knew that Congress has not raised the federal gas tax in more than 20 years.
Data was collected from 2,515 adults across the United States in online surveys between Feb. 14 and 28, 2020.