Dem-led push to tax drivers per mile has GOP fuming in California — why they say citizens are being ‘treated like ATMs’

California Republicans displayed a passionate case of road rage recently, despite the fact that they weren’t behind the wheel at the time.

Instead, they were reacting to Democrats in the State Assembly moving forward with a bill (1) that requires the California Transportation Commission to produce a report analyzing the projected impact of implementing a statewide road charge program.

The state describes the road charge program, which would replace California’s gas tax — the nation’s highest at $0.612 a gallon (2) — as “a ‘user pays’ system where all drivers pay to maintain the roads based on how much they drive, rather than how much gas they purchase” (3).

Despite the fact that the bill only requires the Transportation Commission to deliver a report by January 2027, to be used for further discussion among lawmakers, GOP State Assemblyman Heath Flora decried it as “piling on another tax” (1), while Bruce Lou, another California Republican, said that “citizens shouldn’t be treated like ATMs” (4).

Democratic Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson, who put forward the bill, countered by accusing state GOP members of “completely lying and mischaracterizing the bill” (1). State research into road charges has been ongoing for at least a decade (5), and this bill will simply further that by requesting a concrete report. And when implemented, road charges generally replace existing gas taxes, and are not levied in addition to them.

Partisan politics aside, however, the reality is that there may be a real need to replace gas taxes with another revenue stream, like a road charge — and one that could extend beyond California in the coming decade.

California is among 17 states (6) engaged in studying the introduction of road charges — also known as a road usage charge (RUU) — to replace a gas tax. And that’s in addition to four states — Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Virginia — that have already implemented voluntary RUCs.

The reason for doing so is that, due to everything from more fuel-efficient cars on the road to the rise of electric vehicles (EVs), people aren’t heading to the pumps as often. As a result, revenues from gas taxes — which help pay for the building, repair and upkeep of local infrastructure — aren’t keeping up with the needs of states.

A 2025 California state assessment (7) identified the need for $757.5 billion in total transportation funding through 2035. However, the state is only projecting $572 billion in revenue during that period as a result of reduced fuel consumption, partly due to the state’s environmental initiatives. The assessment projected a loss of $31 billion in revenue over the next decade — and an overall transportation funding shortfall of $216.4 billion.

“The current per-gallon fuel tax is no longer keeping up with highway funding needs because vehicles can travel much farther on a single gallon of fuel,” transportation researcher Christopher E. Ferrell told the Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) at San Jose State University a decade ago (8).

“But it has been difficult to convince voters to increase that tax. If revenue were based on a fee per mile traveled, it could be more realistic.”

And while some may blame the Golden State’s focus on more environmentally friendly vehicles — including a law (9) that will require all new vehicles to be zero-emission by 2035 — for its ongoing transportation funding woes, California isn’t alone in this budgetary bind.

State revenue from the gas pump is falling across the country. Authors of a 2025 report by the National Association of State Budget Officers (10) noted that “motor fuel taxes had declined as a percentage of overall transportation revenue, going from 41.1% in fiscal 2016 to 36.3% in fiscal 2024.” The authors estimated a slight uptick, to 36.5% in 2025, but the overall downward trend remains clear — especially as more EVs and other zero-emission cars hit the roads.

In fact, Tax Foundation researchers (11) found that using the traditional model of roadway-related revenue like gas taxes, tolls, vehicle licence and registration fees and more, “only three states — Delaware, Montana, and New Jersey — raise enough revenue to fully cover their highway spending.” As a result, they write that switching “to a direct user fee on each mile driven” via a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax, which is the same as an RUC, would provide “a better long-term fix” to state revenue woes.

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“The legacy approach to funding our nation’s surface transportation infrastructure through a fuel tax will soon be far too insufficient,” Jay Golden, environmental sustainability and finance professor at the Dynamic Sustainability Lab at Syracuse University warned in a 2024 report (12) for The Pew Charitable Trusts.

“States across the country must quickly develop new transportation funding strategies, or we will face a significant national crisis.”

Those who champion RUCs often cite it as a more equitable option than a gas tax, leveling the playing field and ensuring all drivers — regardless of their vehicle — pay to maintain the transportation infrastructure that everyone uses.

“It’s probably a more fair way to make sure everybody pays something, and pays the same amount per mile,” Nate Bryer, who directs RUC development at the engineering and design firm WSP, said in an interview with Government Technology (13).

With RUCs, drivers pay per mile driven, as opposed to the flat gas tax. And research shows that, compared with the gas tax, the difference in cost is marginal to the average driver.

In a University of California study (14) in 2025, authors noted that the cost of an RUC “ranges from 30% cheaper to 25% greater than the gasoline tax,” with a difference of “only +/-5% in most areas.” In total, they said the percentages amounted to “a difference of only a few dollars over the course of the entire year.”

Similarly, authors of a report by RUC America (15) — a group of state transportation organizations — noted that RUCs led to a maximum added monthly cost of $1.35 and maximum savings of $3.32, with rural areas benefitting most because they “have less fuel-efficient vehicles than urban drivers on average.”

Methods for collecting RUC payments vary by state and range from using specialized apps to mileage recordings during annual car safety inspections to odometer plug-ins — including some with non-GPS capabilities for those concerned about privacy and movement tracking.

“You could do congestion pricing. You could do layered pricing. You could use that data for multiple things, and you can still do it in such a way to protect people’s privacy,” Bryer said (13), calling it a “win-win for everybody.”

An added bonus, the Washington State Transportation Commission notes (16) on its Road Usage Charge info page, is that RUC pricing offers the ability to allot discounts to help “reduce the tax burden on low-income motorists.”

And while RUCs may be a tough sell to Americans due to anything from worries about added costs to privacy concerns, a MTI survey (17) suggests that the framing of the initiative makes all the difference.

When asked, only 39% of respondents supported a flat-rate RUC in lieu of a gas tax, but that support jumped to 51% when the charge incurred was tied to a car’s emissions.

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ABC 10 News (1); IGEN (2); CA.gov (3); @RealBruceLou/X (4); CARoadCharge.com (5); National Conference of State Legislatures (6); California Transportation Commissio (7); Mineta Transportation Institute (8), (17); California Air Resources Board (9); National Association of State Budget Officers (10); Tax Foundation (11); Dynamic Sustainablity Lab (12); Government Technology (13); University of California (14); RUC America (15); (16)

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