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I like the miles x GVW idea. It really is the fairest way to do it.
I knew this topic would come up as soon as the % of vehicles on the road that use little/no dino fuel became enough for the tax accountants to notice.
I also think that tolls are the worst possible form of road use tax. It is a horribly inefficient way to collect taxes and it mucks up traffic in a number of ways. It basically is a form of extortion. Government looks at certain things like tunnels and bridges where it knows you have no other option and it hammers you. The GWB, no not the recent president, is a good example. NY and NJ know you have no other way of crossing the Hudson, so they hammer you with a 13 dollar (last I checked, may be more) toll, on a bridge built close to 80 years ago. I suspect that the bonds are paid by now. Every other road/bridge around cost money to build/maintain, but, you have options, so they are free.
All of this makes absolutely no sense. Paying for infrastructure should not be dictated by how good of an extortion racket a particular road is.
I am generally very libertarian and believe that things should be handled at the lowest level of government possible, but there are cases involving paying for roads where a federal program makes sense. Take the highways going through NY and NJ. You have a ton of traffic going through that is from other states. Were there no tolls, these folks would be essentially getting a free ride. But as I said, tolls suck. So, why not have a modest fed tax that everyone pays which would be distributed by state based on that states interstate highway volume. NJ would get a lot. as the NJTPK is used by anyone needing to get anywhere in the northeast. A state like MN would get little as there aren't many people using their roads who are just passing through.
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