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In the US, we tax roads by usage via fuel (gasoline and diesel) tax [^1]. It's a simple solution: the more miles you drive, the more fuel you use; the more fuel you use, the more tax you pay. Vehicles that use more fuel per mile driven tend to be larger and thus cause more wear on the roads.

It's not without its faults though. Fuel usage isn't directly related to cost of road maintenance, it's just a very rough approximation. Fuel usage has mattered less and less over the past couple of decades with hybrids and EVs – though this is addressed in some places by imposing an extra EV tax (since EV drivers would pay no fuel tax but would still cause wear on the roads).

[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...



A minority of roadbuilding funds come from fuel taxes in the US. https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/states-road-funding...

The additional problem with this is that road wear scales a lot faster than fuel usage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law


A lot more wear on the roads in a lot of cases, as it's exponential (~fourth power) with respect to weight and EVs weigh a lot (~30% more than a comparable ICE car).




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