I’m definitely in the hate it camp. It’s as unfortunate as the Morgan Aero 8’s googly eyes if you done arx me. I’d still have one though.
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Too bad the math for comparing energy efficiency of buses to current automobiles only works with grossly misrepresented usage patterns on both sides of the equation. In our transit system, which takes 5% of our tax dollar to subsidize, the buses are barely used. A 40 foot Gillig low-floor NEVER has 70 riders all of the time. More like 10 at peak. I suppose more needs to be done to educate and encourage people to use the buses if we are ever to reach anything close to a self-sustaining system. We also have a terribly designed route system based on hub and spoke where every bus drags one downtown to a central hub, which is useless for many. It’s an hour/mile on the city fringe to go to a grocery store because you have to go downtown and then transfer back out…
Our city has spent a small fortune on bike lanes few use, and spent ZERO on adult education in bike safety or driver safety; we have had 2 bike deaths in as many months and several this past year. And in spite of all the talk and wish to ban cars from our downtown center, the City Council also continues to expand and build new parking structures - the ugliest and most useless buildings downtown. AND they don’t require new residential construction to provide enough on-site parking - which I was told is part of a plan to limit car use downtown but in fact has the opposite effect, now street parking and visibility is even worse in the near-downtown neighborhoods as new residents fight for street parking. It’s a real mess, and our Transit Board and City Planners don’t seem to have any answers.
These types of planning moves towards mass transit should include an increase in convenience for those of us who cannot use mass transit; the service people, delivery drivers, carpenters and trades people. They just won’t let me on a bus with 14 sheets of drywall and my tools Don’t make it harder for us to work because you hate cars - they recently gave all our loading zones away as Taxi Stands - where taxis now sit and idle in violation of our no-idle rules, and the trades have to fight for what little street parking can be found, or park illegally - it’s a real mess. Banning cars is not the answer, neither is touting the benefits of mass transit using dishonest statistics. Be honest about what is trying to be achieved.
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Speaking to your and @Ryuuga’s point: In Illinois, required state licensing of cars is prorated based on luxury and size of vehicle. It’s the same for the required city licensing in Chicago. So the mechanism is in place, partly, and everyone is already accepting of higher fees for some cars over others. No reason it couldn’t be more broadly applied.
And conversely: a number of years ago, then-Mayor Daley (Junior) decided that his goal was to make Chicago a place where middle-class parents would want to raise their children, as opposed to the standard strategy for many decades of moving out to the suburbs as soon as the first child became a toddler. One of his mandates to achieve this goal was to require that any new construction have a minimum number of parking places based on a formula. End result: lots more cars on narrow city streets with no room to expand, and a more suburban sense of one-car-per-driver for people living even in the best-served neighborhoods for public transportation and retail within steps of one’s home and workplace.
You win some, you lose some.
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It’s an excellent way to do it - I was thinking to make it proportionate to income, but was worried that people would just register their car on a poor relative or so. It would be a good way to do it. Of course, rich people could retaliate by driving cheap crappy cars, but I think everyone would enjoy seeing them drive something cheap and cheerful so much, that nobody would mind…
What about people who start with a cheap car and then retrofit it with quite some additional luxury? Who would assess the value, according to what criteria?
Let’s see if it would be a big problem. Sometimes there are easy ways around that people don’t actually stoop to use. One small piece of black plastic tape is enough to fool the road roll cameras over here into misreading your license plate, but numbers indicate it is exceedingly rare. Risk of getting caught is very low, since it isn’t a serious enough crime for the camera photos to get turned over to the police for investigation.
On the other hand, seeing rich people trying to look smug in some ridiculously pimped cheapo car could be very satisfying, too.
I am aiming more to the middle group, which still has to budget carefully but can afford something nice here and there.
Assessing based on fair market value should generally result in a fair result for all cases.
And even an expensive customization may actually decrease the fair market value of a vehicle — like a quirky paint job or performance-enhancing-mileage-reducing engine modifications, esp. with idiosyncratic design or nonstandard components.
Unless you get a good deal and the assessor disagrees with the cost and thinks you should’ve paid more.
Yay for double-profit! 
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That would be a bummer.
A really fair assessment system should require the assessor to investigate what a willing/able bona fide purchaser would pay for the modified vehicle and prohibit consideration of the owner’s costs ad not relevant. The modified vehicle will more often — appropriately — assess at a lower value since there are few (or none) examples of comparative sales.
Plus, that income was presumably taxed already. Unless it’s been used to create some sort of windfall, it’s not fair to tax it again.
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Seeing as people can’t be bothered to use a single piece of black tape, pretty much risk-free, to get around the system entirely, I doubt they’d go for complicated schemes for upgrade-able cars. But if we get a kustom kar kultur revival, I won’t be complaining. Cars around here look so dull it’s hard to tell one brand from another without close inspection…
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That’s mainly because the fuel efficiency requirements dictate the aerodynamic properties, and if multiple vendors put the same requirement to the simulation software built around the same laws of physics, they get the same results…
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