Taxes & Fees

Transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft came onto the market with the mission to reduce congestion in cities, however data from major cities around the U.S. shows that they may be having the opposite impact on congestion and public transportation.

“The introduction of driverless cars could affect how much money cities collect in parking, traffic citations, traffic cameras, towing fees, gasoline taxes, licensing, registration and other revenues.”

This study examines the impacts of transportation network companies (TNCs) such as Uber and Lyft on trends in travel, parking, car-rental and the economy by analyzing the effects of ride-hailing at four major airports in the U.S.

Large San Diego parking company Ace Parking has reported lower parking rates due to the increasing popularity of Uber and Lyft.

The closures of brick-and-mortar stores are causing towns in the U.S. to miss out on sales, income, and property taxes that local governments rely on for revenue.

A study of five U.S. cities, New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Des Moines, and Jackson, Wyoming was conducted to analyze how much land and money is being devoted to parking.

Cities around the country are beginning to change their parking minimums in order to reduce vehicle dependency, lower construction costs, gain back valuable real estate and make urban areas more desirable.

In this book, Donald Shoup reports on the progress cities have made on the principles outlined in book The High Cost of Parking. Remove off-street parking requirements, charge the right prices for on-street parking and use that revenue towards improving public services.

Recent research on autonomous vehicles (AV) has shown a substantive dive into the technical aspects of AVs, but our understanding of the secondary effects of AVs is minimal in comparison (Glancy, 2015; Mitteregger, Soteropoulos, Bröthaler, & Dorner, 2019; Terry & Bachmann, 2019). This article offers a look at how automation of one of the cornerstones of many municipal government—solid waste collection—could be altered with the advent of AVs.

“Donald Shoup argues that free parking has contributed to auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl, extravagant energy use, and a host of other problems.”

The report is intended to provide guidance to Australia and New Zealand in planning road changes for the introduction of automated vehicles. Key issues that are discussed in this report include physical infrastructure, digital infrastructure, and road operations. The analysis of each issue includes different possible use cases of automated vehicles and includes discussion of optimal conditions required to support the introduction of automated vehicles.

Ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are changing how travelers get to the airport. This trend is negatively affecting airports, which depend on parking, rental car, and taxi fees as a primary source of revenue.

“New York City will be the first city in the US to charge motorists extra to enter the busiest areas, after the state agreed to a congestion pricing plan as part of its fiscal year 2020 budget.”

Policy Guidebook for urban transportation and land use decision makers.

Surveyor app from Coord to collect accurate curb asset data in half the time with the power of augmented reality.

Provides a platform to analyze, share, and collect curb data.

Guidelines for cities to implement sustainable and environmental mobility strategies for people and goods.

Free, open source tool that can support presenting budget flows in transport in a particular city through a sankey visualization.

The former mayor of Portland, Oregon, outlines what a smart ride-hailing tax looks like for American cities. He discusses how the City should price the TNCs and other shared mobility to ensure the urban equity and affordability goal. He provided six ideas for the full-benefits of a tiered ride-hailing tax and addresses likely downsides.

This report combines recently published research and newly available data from a national travel survey and other sources to create the first detailed profile of TNC ridership, users and usage. The report then discusses how TNC and microtransit services can benefit urban transportation, how policy makers can respond to traffic and transit impacts, and the implications of current experience for planning and implementation of shared autonomous vehicles in major American cities.

Seattle City Council passes in a 7 to 1 vote a plan for large parking reforms including separating parking costs from rent and increasing bike parking requirements.

Is Paris in the position to be able to offer free transit to all? This article breaks down the barriers and examines how it has become reality in other cities.

This article outlines the ebb and flow of Lyft's finances and how things have played out since they went public in March.

"This paper explores the relationships between transportation, land use and taxation. It investigates how current land tax and regulatory practices affect the amount of land devoted to roads and parking facilities, and how this affects transport patterns. It discusses ways to measure the amount of land devoted to transport facilities, examine how this varies under different circumstances, estimate the value of this resource, evaluate how tax policies and regulations policies treat this land, and analyze whether current practices are optimal in terms of various economic and social objectives."

Local governments, municipal planning organizations, and transit agencies are understandably circumspect in their actions to regulate autonomous vehicles. Policymakers must strike a delicate balance between crafting forward-thinking regulations and being so quick-to-act that decisions are rendered obsolete by the changing marketplace. In this case, however, it is crucial that metropolitan actors do not fall behind the wave of technological progress—now is the moment to envision their ideal land use and transportation scenarios.

The survey results described here provide a new window into ride-hailing utilization in the Boston Region. Our findings confirm many widespread assumptions about ride-hailing, but also provide new insights into previously unexplored and unmeasured topics. Ride-hailing is used by a wide variety of Metro Boston residents, and riders are relatively representative of the region in terms of race and income.

This document provides background on micromobility and what it is, answers the question "Who uses shared micromobility?" and identifies current policies and practices.

Nashville faces one of the biggest votes to date, a plan to approve or deny a $5.4 billion plan to overhaul the current transit system.

This report examines the impact of TNC growth on traffic conditions in the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD), defined as 60 Street to the Battery, river to river. Using newly available data on TNC trips, the report presents a more detailed analysis of CBD traffic conditions than has been possible previously, isolating the impact of TNC growth in the Manhattan CBD during the most congested part of the day -- weekdays between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m.

This article outlines how parking demand pricing is working in Washington, DC to help mitigate congestion issues in the city.

This report presents findings from a detailed analysis of the growth of app-based ride services in New York City, their impacts on traffic, travel patterns and vehicle mileage since 2013, and implications for policy makers. The analysis utilizes trip and mileage data that are uniquely available in New York City, providing a detailed and comprehensive look at the expansion of app-based ride services and their impact on critical City goals for mobility, economic growth and environmental sustainability.

This info-graph and write-up display the costs that parking spaces incur and how they are bundled into our lives.

It is no secret that transit systems are chronically short in funding and increases to their budgets are tough to nail down. This article describes the common way that this funding is being sourced and why it may not be the best way.

"This research analyzed the competitiveness of freight tricycles, low- capacity freight delivery vehicles, as compared with diesel vans in urban areas. Freight tricycles, also known as electric-assisted trikes, are low- emission vehicles powered by a combination of human effort and an electric engine. This research developed a cost model that incorporated vehicle ownership and operation models as well as logistics constraints such as time windows, cargo capacity, fuel consumption, and energy use. Unlike previous research efforts, the model was tailored to the unique characteristics of freight tricycles and diesel van deliveries in urban areas. The model was used to analyze the competitiveness of freight tricycles against diesel- powered delivery vans. "

This article describes the potential need for an increase in taxes for City municipalities to maintain their budgets as a decrease in speeding and red-light tickets had the potential to become nonexistent due to autonomous vehicles.

"In the United States, road infrastructure funding is declining due to an increase in fuel efficiency and the non-adjustment of fuel taxes to inflation. Legislation to tax plug-in vehicles has been proposed or implemented in several states. This paper assesses (1) the magnitude of the decline in federal fuel tax revenue caused by plug-in vehicles and (2) quantifies the revenue that could be generated from a federal plug in vehicle registration fee.

The future of department stores in suburban malls is grim, this article explains the rising trends and what is causing the push.

The Seattle Department of Transportation is currently conducting a study to determine how best to implement congestion pricing equitably. The article mentions other cities as cases and scholars' suggestion to discuss how to make congestion pricing more equitable.

"This paper presents a comprehensive discussion of the value capture mechanisms that cities can and do use to help finance their public transport systems. It highlights the most important findings from the literature and adds to it with new insights gained through case studies of public transit finance in six European and American cities. The objective is to inform a lively and productive dialogue on non-fare sources of public transport finance, and ultimately to find the best ways to finance the maintenance and extension of transit service in cities around the world."

The purpose of this document is to identify and outline the policies, programs and strategies being adopted by the City of Portland (City), as part of a regionally coordinated effort to promote and integrate electric vehicles (EVs) into our transportation system and to capitalize on local economic development opportunities from this emerging industry.

This article discuss the reasons for Seattle's success in transit ridership increase in terms of transit service, mode prioritization, and traffic management.

This book is about on-demand delivery and its logistic process. It also presents the trend of on-demand services.

As public transit stagnates in most U.S. cities, central Seattle continued its rapid growth by adding roughly 10,000 morning transit commuters last year, new local data show.

This paper models the market potential of a fleet of shared, autonomous, electric vehicles (SAEVs) 20 by employing a multinomial logic mode choice model in an agent-based framework and different 21 fare settings.

"This research shows that public transportation (in its current form) will only remain economically competitive where demand can be bundled to larger units. In particular, this applies to dense urban areas, where public transportation can be offered at lower prices than autonomous taxis (even if pooled) and private cars. Wherever substantial bundling is not possible, shared and pooled vehicles serve travel demand more efficiently."

Everyone—from ride-hailing cars to delivery trucks to bikes and scooters—wants a piece of the curb. How can smart cities map and manage this precious resource?

A new report confirms what local officials in Oklahoma have been saying for some time: Internet retail sales are eating away at sales tax revenues.

As private mobility services such as car-sharing, ridehailing, and micromobility have rapidly expanded in cities, the public sector has historically had limited access to data on how these vehicles are changing travel patterns and the movement of people. Populus has launched a platform to change that.

"The aim of this paper is to show how TNCs could replace public transportation in the United States if subsidized at the same level of transit agencies."

Uber Eats will now deliver food to customers in the most unexpected of places—restaurants. The food delivery and pick-up app's "Dine-in" feature is now being pilot-tested in Dallas, Austin, Phoenix and San Diego, according to an Uber spokesperson.

In theory, e-commerce can be greener than a bunch of shoppers making personal trips in their own cars: Consolidating products and delivering them on one route to a bunch of homes requires fewer miles on the road. However, that calculus changes significantly if items are coming from further away and have to be sent immediately, which creates fewer opportunities for lumping deliveries together.

"This report explores autonomous vehicle benefits and costs, and implications for various planning issues. It investigates how quickly self driving vehicles are likely to be developed and deployed based on experience with previous vehicle technologies, their benefits and costs, and how they are likely to affect travel demands and planning decisions such as optimal road, parking and public transit supply."

This report talks about the development AV technology and its implication for low and legislative activity. It also focuses on the standards and regulations for AV technology, liability issues and provide guidance for policymakers.

E‐commerce has become an integral part of Americans’ lives and while it offers many benefits, it also represents forgone sales tax revenue for governments. Using a difference‐in‐differences model, this analysis examines how the Amazon tax affected local sales tax collections in North Carolina and whether that impact has been greater for urban, rural, or tourism‐rich counties. The results suggest that the Amazon tax increased revenues and urban jurisdictions benefit most. This finding is important for practitioners and policymakers as they consider the impact of policy changes, such as the South Dakota v. Wayfair ruling, on revenue capacity and financial management.

Many big-name insurers have stopped offering any form of sexual-assault coverage to ridesharing companies because large claims they’ve paid have made it too risky, experts say.

While the U.S. online food-delivery market continues to burn hot, data from KeyBanc suggests growth in restaurants offering the service may be slowing. That could limit the whole sector’s long-term growth, as restaurant selection is key to consumer adoption of delivery apps.

The Indiana Toll Road in the US has reduced traffic incidents by 30 per cent using Extreme Networks intelligent transportation system. The Indiana Toll Road Concession Company (ITRCC) deployed the software-driven network, which uses Extreme’s Smart OmniEdge technology to provide real-time updates on traffic patterns, enabling safer, more coordinated use of the roadway.

In many countries the revenue from gasoline taxes is used to fund highways and other transportation infrastructure. As the number of electric vehicles on the road increases, this raises questions about the effectiveness and equity of this financing mechanism. In this paper, we ask whether electric vehicle drivers should pay a mileage tax.

Since EV drivers zip past gas taxes, they don’t contribute to the federal fund for road maintenance. A new working paper tries to determine whether plug-ins should pay up.

The Mayor’s Proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2018-19 and 2019-20 Budget for the City and County of San Francisco (the City) contains citywide budgetary and fiscal policy information as well as detailed departmental budgets for General Fund and Enterprise Departments.

As more states and cities consider taxes on TNC services, policymakers should be cautious and thoughtful about how their decisions affect transportation behavior. As services like TNCs proliferate around the globe, it is important to understand what these fees are, what purpose they intend to serve, and how they fit into broader metropolitan transportation policies.

This blog post summarizes a larger article written by University of Michigan faculty member Saif Benjaafar's research on smart technology. It specifically focuses on his analysis of ride-sharing companies.

Autonomous trucking is coming faster than expected—perhaps within five years, according to panelists at the Transportation Research Board’s 96th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Summary of consumer expenditure data including the expenditures and income of consumers, as well as the demographic characteristics of those consumers.