Zombie tax: emptying the streets, filling (robo)taxis

Taxis, ridesharing services and robotaxis all have a common feature: their effectiveness depends on their ability to be rapidly available in various places. In real terms, this means that vehicles roam the streets waiting for a customer to hail a ride, even riding with no passengers sometimes when demand is too low. This trend is known as zombie cars.

The zombie tax aims to steer autonomous vehicles towards certain uses (shared vehicles rather than empty vehicles), in certain areas (with limited public transportation) and at certain times (off-peak hours). It also enables authorities to have a tax lever at their disposal, the revenues of which could partially offset the drop in fuel tax revenues.

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What scale of implementation?

Local

Who pays?

Companies

What secondary benefits for the community?

Vehicle miles traveled by car decrease

Managed lanes: promoting some uses while funding infrastructure

Managed lanes meet three objectives: maintaining an optimal service level on the road in question or the motorway, achieved through a reduction in the volume of traffic by influencing the price or journey time, improving the commercial speed of public transportation lines and producing revenues to finance projects on the thoroughfare concerned.

Road usage charge: charging users rather than consumers

Faced with congestion, pollution and mobility funding issues, cities such as Singapore and States such as Oregon are currently testing a mileage charge system which entails charging users in proportion to their use of the road network.

L'affectation des taxes sur le carburant à la mobilité

Allocating fuel tax revenues to mobility

Traditionally, US States used vehicle registration fees, firstly as a one-off payment and then as an annual tax; from 1919 and the introduction of a fuel tax, infrastructure construction became financed through an indirect tax collected on the fuel sales price.

La Fabrique de la Cité

La Fabrique de la Cité is a think tank dedicated to urban foresight, created by the VINCI group, its sponsor, in 2010. La Fabrique de la Cité acts as a forum where urban stakeholders, whether French or international, collaborate to bring forth new ways of building and rebuilding cities.

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