“Aren’t those fuel efficient cars supposed to be lighter, therefore wear much less on the roads?”
No , closer tolerances in manufacturing, direct injection engines combined with computer control of valve timing, spark ignition and air/fuel mix have made for an incredibly efficent vehicle that sill weighs in at 3000 lbs.
The weight of the average car produces very little highway wear. I read once that one fully loaded 18 wheeler causes nearly 10,000 times the damage of one passenger car.
You are close to the problem but still wide of the mark.
The problem with federal hiways, especially interstates is the truck traffic and then poorly designed roadways to begin with.
The right lane is first to fail because that’s where the big trucks drive. The load on the roadway causes it to fail. Many of us that regularly drive on interstates always drive in the left lane because it is a better road.
The second really significant maintenance problem is old concrete roadways. Although the portland cement concrete is very durable and in theory better than flexible asphalt concrete, the edges at the expansion joints are not. The square edges at the expansion joints break off, and wear into rounded corners. The result is a discontinuity at the expansion joint resulting in a bump and noise at every joint. The defect is extremely expensive to remedy.
Many states have paved over the portland cement concrete with asphalt only to discover that the flexible asphalt gets squeezed down into the gap and the whapa whapa whapetee continues. The left lane is generally not as bad because there are no trucks, no serious loading on the road way.
In the end, the problem for the roadbed is one of too many psi, for too long. One solution would be to add additional wheels to trucks to reduce the psi loading. Those lacking the wheel and large psi loading would be required to pay a fee.
The implementation of a psi tax would be preferable to a general rise in fuel tax
You'd think so, but (for example) the current VW Golf is nearly 50% heavier than its 1984 ancestor.
Besides, it's the heavy trucks that do most of the roadway damage.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is implemented yet again.
The only crime in the Universe that is ultimately punished is that of stupidity, and for which there is no appeal of the sentence. It can wipe out an entire species if that species persists in doing stupid things.
Humanity is getting dangerously close to triggering that response from the Universe.
The funds collected for the maintenance and improvement of our roadway infrastructure were more than sufficient for that purpose, if the funds had not constantly been raided for unnecessary and unrelated purposes, or simply “borrowed” for the general fund as in the instance of Social Security and Medicare.
It is one thing to borrow on a temporary basis, it is another entirely to take with no program or intent to return the funds.
Not merely stupid. Stupid raised to an art form and on an exponential curve.
Yes Virginia, there IS a maximum level of stupid.
And it won’t be the Empire that strikes back, it will be the whole Universe.