“America’s Autos on Welfare” is the Sierra Club Website on the effects of subsidies for private motor vehicle use in this country.

While some Americans complain when the price of fuel goes up, motorists actually are not paying the full cost of driving. Motorist fees generally do not pay the cost of the vast amounts of land that are used for highways, local roads, parking and the sprawl that results from automobile-oriented land use. The value of that land represents the equivalent of many dollars a gallon if it were charged at the gas pump.
Making driving artificially cheap encourages ever-increasing distances driven each year and ever-larger vehicles.

There are many other costs created by private motor vehicle use that are not paid for by motor vehicle user fees. They are paid for by everyone, even if they go to great effort and expense to avoid driving. These include air, water and land pollution. Noise and vibration damage to structures. Global warming and eventual flooding of highly valuable coastal and low-lying land. Military intervention to secure the flow of petroleum and other motor vehicle resources. Trade deficits resulting from the import of such resources raises the cost of all goods. Medical, police and rescue expenses that are not covered by motor vehicle users. And, most insidious, the loss of other transportation options for those who cannot drive or do not wish to be forced into automobile dependency.

One expense that motorists historically did pay for through fuel taxes and other user fees is the actual paving and maintenance of road surfaces. Santa Barbara led the way to removing this accountability when they passed the Measure D sales tax in 1989.

The Measure D sales tax is paid by everyone, whether or not they drive. Yet it has gone almost entirely toward road maintenance. That money used to come from fuel taxes, but the fuel taxes have fallen for decades relative to inflation. This means that a person who walks to the store in Old Town Goleta to buy a shirt pays a sales tax on that shirt that effectively subsidizes the Lincoln Navigator owner in Montecito to keep his or her driving costs artificially low.

This is very relevant right now, as Measure D is up for renewal in the near future. There is much debate over what Measure D should fund. Most argue that this sales tax should lock in at least some guaranteed funding for transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects. But there has been no discussion of why any of this money should be going to subsidize private motor vehicle use, even though that is where most of the money would go.

It is the position of the Sierra Club that ecology and economics are inseparable. If ecologically harmful activity is economically encouraged, then ecological harm inevitably follows.

Subsidies can be for good or bad. We subsidize public education, preservation of public land and some minimal levels of emergency medical care, because these are seen as a public good. However, no one has ever made a case that it is a public good to subsidize pollution and consumption of resources for private motor vehicle use.

The Sierra Club is also committed to environmental justice. One-third of Americans cannot drive and these are generally the poorest and most vulnerable members of society. Does it make sense for these people to be subsidizing those who drive private motor vehicles?

Those who do not drive are far more likely to be among the hundreds of thousands of trauma victims of motor vehicle impacts each year. They are far more likely to live in places where they breathe the polluted air next to highways and busy roads.

They are far more likely to live in places where public transportation options have been lost and where it is dangerous to walk because of heavy traffic. Old Town Goleta is a prime example of a place where businesses have moved out to the Big Box and other areas that are not easy to reach for Old Town residents. Try walking from Old Town Goleta to Calle Real Shopping Center, even though it is not far.
Santa Barbara prides itself on its environmental and social justice awareness. If we want to live up to these ideals, do we really want to be economically subsidizing the opposite of what we believe? If we want to live what we believe, shouldn’t motorists be paying their way through fuel taxes and other user fees?
Shouldn’t sales taxes go for the public good rather than for environmental destruction? As Measure D comes up for renewal, let us make sure our ecology and our economics are in harmony.