Clare Nelson | University of Vermont

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Presentation Description

Surface transportation funding currently relies heavily on the gas tax, which is regressive, failing to keep up with inflation and is unable to raise adequate funding due to EV adoption. This has motivated many states to look for alternatives that will bridge the funding gap in the short term and stabilize funding streams in the long term. Exploring alternative funding options also presents an opportunity to address equity concerns. There are three general proposals for closing the funding gap: increasing existing fees, shifting revenue from other streams, and implementing new funding schemes all together. However, data to understand the equity of funding alternatives is frequently limited to aggregated statistics or small sample sizes rather than household travel data for an entire state. In this study, we use real data from over 150,000 households in Vermont to assess the equity of surface transportation funding options including flat mileage fees, variable rate mileage fees, increased registration fees, increased gas taxes, and more. The data comes from the Vermont Department of Motor Vehicles, where each unique vehicle registered in the state of Vermont in 2022 is associated with a mileage estimate from their annual vehicle inspection odometer reading, a home address as reported in their registration, and a fuel economy as matched with the EPA Fuel Economy database. We perform a robust analysis of funding equity across the rural-to-urban spectrum and across income groups using the vehicle data from each of these households. While this study is still in progress, the preliminary results suggest mileage fees are a reasonably equitable alternative to the gas tax, with rural and low-income households seeing, on average, cost savings relative to more urban and higher-income households. The findings also suggest that increases in flat fees, like vehicle registrations, are a less equitable funding scheme.

Speaker Biography

Clare Nelson is a research scientist at the University of Vermont Transportation Research Center. She recently graduated with her Masters of Science in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UVM and is now continuing her work studying transportation policy and travel behavior through a data science lens. Her current projects include using cross-cutting, large-scale data sets to create public dashboards with the aim of better advising policy makers about transportation planning.

Co-presenters

Gregory Rowangould
University of Vermont

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