A state bill proposes that owners pay much more for their heavier (and deadlier) vehicles.
by Transportation Alternatives. Over the past decade, the proportion of SUVs and trucks has steadily grown in the city; as of 2020, these vehicles made up over 60 percent of passenger vehicles registered here. Their involvement in child deaths has also risen: Between 2014 and 2019, nearly half of the children killed on the city’s streets were struck by SUVs or other large vehicles. From 2019 to today, that number rose to 77 percent.
New York State already charges weight-based registration fees, but they’re laughably low. Currently, the owner of a 2,877-pound Honda Civic pays $47 every two years, while the owner of a vehicle twice that weight pays $112.50. These fees don’t reflect, in any way, the potential damage that such an increase in weight presents.
Heavier vehicles burden New York in other ways, as tragically demonstrated earlier this year when the century-old garage on Ann Streetof dozens of SUVs parked on the roof. The extra ton or more that each SUV and truck carries makes them far more destructive to roads, overpasses, and bridges than a sedan. Heavier vehicles also take up more space, requiring the overengineering of everything from parking spaces to lane widths.
The weight-based fee would be the first of its kind at the state level; the only U.S. comparison is apassed in Washington, D.C., last year. Such regulations could be mandated at the federal level, where the weight of passenger vehicles using public roads could be controlled to achieve Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s goal of zero fatalities on U.S. streets. But there isn’t much traction on the issue.
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