That's a very good point, but I think most governments are trying to incentivize electric cars, so adding extra costs to them is not the goal yet. They're also only a small fraction of vehicles in the US, so they wouldn't really raise much extra revenue.
Indeed, and even if we don't switch to EV's, the fuel consumption of cars is going down. (if we disregard the uptick from people switching to pointless SUV's). Eventually, there will need to be another tax. In Belgium they've been talking about a tax per km you drive, initially only in Brussels itself, but I could see it expanded to the entire country.
I'm a little hesitant on electric cars personally, mostly because of three things: first, their range is fairly limited, especially considering how spread out things are in the United States. Second, I'm not convinced lithium mining is really that much better for the environment, and we would need to generate more electricity from somewhere. I think they have a place, I'm just not certain they are a true solution to our problems.
Cars are just incredibly inefficient ways of transport. Sure, they will take you from point A to point B, but you're lugging along nearly 2 tonnes of metal and plastic everywhere you go, so not so great energy efficiency, and a lot of resources for just 1-5 people. Considering most cars on the road have only 1 or 2 occupants, they're incredibly space-inefficient as well, which is why adding lanes and roads to 'solve' congestion leads to cities like LA, where most of the surface is made up of parking lots, 25-lane highways, and 6-lane stroads. This leads to everything being further apart, so everyone has no choice but to drive, and eventually everyone is still sitting in traffic all of the time.
Using a modern diesel bus to transport 50 people is better for the environment than using 25-50 electric cars, and it takes up way less space. I'm not saying cars don't have a place in our transport system, just that they should be used as little as possible in densely populated areas. A car only makes sense if you're going somewhere remote where no good public transit exists and you have to take several people and/or heavy stuff with you. (otherwise a motorcycle makes more sense). The problem is, of course that we're coming out of over half a century of car-centric zoning. Urban sprawl is terrible for public transport because people live too far apart, so either your busses are half-empty, or people end up having to drive to the bus stop.
We need to go back to spatial planning based on walkability and public transport, like we had before cars were widely available. I'm not saying everyone should be living in massive cities, just that at every level buildings should be clustered around public infrastructure as much as possible. Farms would probably be the exception here. You could have a choice to live in a relatively small village that has a bus-stop with regular bus service to nearby villages and the nearest train station, or in the town where the regional train station is located, or in a medium-sized city in which you can switch from the regional train to an intercity train which takes you to a major city, from where you can take high speed rail to other major cities, or planes to far-away destinations. Even within large cities, we need to vary the density of buildings, allowing for larger apartment buildings around metro and train stations, medium-sized apartment buildings around tramway/lightrail and brt stops, and clusters of munti-storey row-houses around bus stops. In the 'dead zones', you would have larger parks, and some semi-detached housing, from where you would have to walk further or cycle to get to public transport. Of course, a solid cycle lane network should supplement this public transit network.
This is a slow process, but it is happening, not by building new cities, but by modifying existing ones. Densification around train and metro stations is already happening in many growing cities as is. Instead of adding suburbs, or extending the urban area, increasing building heights around high-capacity public transit is just more efficient for everyone. In Flanders they've actually started giving houses a mobility score based on how accessible your house is by varied forms of public transport.
Similar here. Australia is close to the size of the US, but with a population of only around 26m, so once you get outside the big cities, everything is proportionally even more spread out. Where I live has a population of only about 375k, and I regularly drive about 35km just to go to cricket practice!
375k isn't that small. That's about the size of Charleroi, a rustbelt city south of Brussels (Yes Belgium also has a rustbelt...). So, looking at Charleroi, I would expect your city to have a decent-sized tramway system, two railway stations with trains at least every hour to every town over 200k residents around (and quite a few smaller ones), and lots of bus lines. Also, the beginnings of a network of cycle lanes around the main station and along the river/canal (if your city has one of those). And I do think Charleroi has a lot of room for improvement.
I suppose the US and Australia really do have a fair amount in common. I've always wondered, how do people generally travel from one coast of Australia to the opposite? There aren't many roads through the Outback right?
There’s a road across, in the south, including across the Nullarbor Plain (largely desert). You can get a transcontinental train (the Indian-Pacific) but most people would fly. Like you would say from NY to LA, for example.
Going from Sydney to Perth will probably remain more efficient by plane for quite some time, possibly for ever. Even then, the train is painfully slow. Sydney to Perth takes over three days, that's less than 60 km/h on average. If you consider that much of this rail line goes through the middle of nowhere, it's not like you're constrained to narrow curves by a dense urban tissue, or that the train has to stop every few kms. It won't be profitable to go all in and build HSR across Australia, but I don't see how rebuilding the slowest sections, adding some tracks in the busier sections, better timetable management and better rolling stock wouldn't be able to easily double that average speed at a fraction of the cost of building high speed rail. Bump up the frequency, and smaller outback towns on the line might have a truly viable alternative to driving when they need to go to either coast.
However, there is no good reason not to build HSR between Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne (except for lobbying from Qantas). Considering the distances involved, the HST would be more than competitive with the aeroplane (if your train only stops in Canberra and the HST goes from city center to city center). Sure it'll probably cost about 10 billion USD to build (if you get the Spanish involved, they're very good at building good HSR on the cheap, almost as cheap as china but with much higher labour costs), but it would all but eliminate one of the busiest air corridors in the world, and it would be profitable in the long run. Of course you'd need to produce clean energy to power the trains, and as you're getting nuclear subs anyway, now might be the time to start building nuclear power plants. Or just build solar, though you will then need massive battery arrays.
Oh, and whatever you do, don't get the guys building the US West Coast high speed rail project involved. They're putting too many stops on the line, and they're doing lots of needlessly expensive things, like buying the land only after the route has been announced. Not doing land swaps (outside of urban areas), where you only buy the land the track sits on, and reorganise the parcels so each affected land owner gets a new parcel that's entirely on one side of the tracks, and only slightly smaller. Not picking the most cost-effective route etc. Using very few contractors with actual experience building high speed rail etc. Alstom and a group of French contractors who built the TGV lines actually went to the government of California with a worked out plan that would cost a fraction of what they're building now, and those morons turned it down.
Finally, there is no point in switching to EV's if you're burning coal or gas to produce the majority of your electricity.
All right. I'll get off my soapbox now. This is the consequence of loving trains and having a father who is an urbanist.
