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Think your registration fees are high now? just wait!

nakedape said:
Let's ask the important question: how much would you be willing to pay to see CHP and DMV fully funded?

On the one hand I would like to see a million people in CA priced right the fuck off the road. But without a viable public transit system that would be highly inequitable.

But when I hear (not just here) owners of $30K bikes and $90K cars rant about reg fees, it's just silly. The cost of private car ownership should be WAY higher, as well as insurance minimums that actually cover something. More CHP to do proactive policing instead of damage control. You know this.

I'll go first. The MTS is a few hundred to register yearly. I would consider it fair to match my insurance which would double that. Owners of $60K king cab duallys that AREN'T FOR WORK can fuck right off and pay for tearing up the roads and guzzling gas.

How much would you pay for gas? I'm moto commuting 200 days a year. I would pay $10 a gallon. This would cost me $30 per week. If you live way out in suburbia and work in the city, you would adjust. Car pools. Member those from the gas crisis? Ride shares are so much easier now. This would bring people together, drastically lower congestion, and allow road repairs to catch up. True commercial vehicles would be on a different schedule. But you know what, there's already a feasible plan for all this...

Pay by the mile MFers! And now it's a comin...and I can't wait. Should coincide nicely with autonomous vehicles, so not in our driving lifetimes. But we should support it.
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:laughing

How many BARFers are you thinking drop thirty large for a bike? Or six figures on a car? I'm guessing less than ten percent.
But honestly your entire rant seems elitist at heart. Price the little people out of the way so you can drive on empty roads. :love
And get them durn big trucks I don't like outta my way too! :afm199

Let's be realistic and listen to people that ride $8,000 bikes and $15,000 cars complain about tax and fee increases, shall we?
 
While I don’t have the answers, from my experiences in four different states (PA, SC, FL and CA) CA has been the worst in costs, time, efficiency, and customer service.

I don’t know if it’s the size of CA or the amount of people but it seems like CA dmv is behind the curve. I can renew my vehicle registration in FL for two years, reducing the amount of time needed to deal with registrations. Another good thing that CA could do is make the registration expire in your birth month so you always know when it’s due-simple things. To wait for over a month for an appointment at the dmv is ridiculous! Other states you typically get an appointment in a week and when you show up, there is no wait because you have an appointment.

Like I said, I don’t have the answers. However, if other states are more efficient and the residents don’t have as many problems or complaints, it makes me wonder why CA doesn’t adopt some pointers instead of trying to recreate the wheel that runs smooth elsewhere.
 
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mean dad said:
:laughing

How many BARFers are you thinking drop thirty large for a bike? Or six figures on a car? I'm guessing less than ten percent.
But honestly your entire rant seems elitist at heart. Price the little people out of the way so you can drive on empty roads. :love
And get them durn big trucks I don't like outta my way too! :afm199

Let's be realistic and listen to people that ride $8,000 bikes and $15,000 cars complain about tax and fee increases, shall we?
Click to expand...

To be fair, the people I hear complaining most and loudest about the reg increases are the ones that own multiple $50k+ cars/trucks, likely because they're the ones really noticing it.

I don't have a problem with expensive vehicles costing more to register. I do, however, think that there should be a discount for registering multiple vehicles to the same owner. For example, offering a reduced cost for registering a truck, bike, and car all to the same person. They will likely not get used simultaneously, split road usage between the three vehicles, so therefore split registration cost between the three. Iono just my $.02
 
Kind of amazed at the 30% number for the DMV when CHP is 60%. How many DMV employees are there and how much are they paid?
 
I’ve talked about this before in other threads but I think it’s worth bringing up for discussion again in the context of pay per mile :

Given the new license plate laws
Given that CA requires both front and rear plates

How much would it cost (vs gain) to simply make say, 101 and 880 toll roads? Hear me out here. In TX and other states they just put a bridge thing with cameras over the roads every few miles or so and it grabs your license plate then sends you a bill at the end of the month. No traffic increase or anything. No stopping to fumble for change at a booth. And it’s a few cents. Monthly bill might be $5.

But multiply that by the number of people driving through there...and you could make it a larger per-vehicle fee for the private busses while making it cheaper for public busses (or exempt them outright). Let’s say one of the Google busses holds 50 people - instead of charging them 50x the car toll, maybe make it 20x. Still a net cheaper way but you get a bigger chunk from a company that won’t even notice.

Apply the same systems at the bridges and you can cut some toll booth worker salaries, cut down on traffic, etc. The net gain of fewer hours sitting in traffic at toll booths (in terms of gas, exhaust, time wasted, etc) would vastly outweigh the cost of implementation imo. And financially you’d gain a lot too in terms of $$$ to pay the DMV and CHP.
 
Went to Clairemont DMV without an appointment 6mo ago. Waited 7hrs for an interaction that took 10min. DMV can DIE afaic.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
I’ve talked about this before in other threads but I think it’s worth bringing up for discussion again in the context of pay per mile :

Given the new license plate laws
Given that CA requires both front and rear plates

How much would it cost (vs gain) to simply make say, 101 and 880 toll roads? Hear me out here. In TX and other states they just put a bridge thing with cameras over the roads every few miles or so and it grabs your license plate then sends you a bill at the end of the month. No traffic increase or anything. No stopping to fumble for change at a booth. And it’s a few cents. Monthly bill might be $5.

But multiply that by the number of people driving through there...and you could make it a larger per-vehicle fee for the private busses while making it cheaper for public busses (or exempt them outright). Let’s say one of the Google busses holds 50 people - instead of charging them 50x the car toll, maybe make it 20x. Still a net cheaper way but you get a bigger chunk from a company that won’t even notice.

Apply the same systems at the bridges and you can cut some toll booth worker salaries, cut down on traffic, etc. The net gain of fewer hours sitting in traffic at toll booths (in terms of gas, exhaust, time wasted, etc) would vastly outweigh the cost of implementation imo. And financially you’d gain a lot too in terms of $$$ to pay the DMV and CHP.
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As long as it wouldn't impact surface streets too much from people avoiding toll roads.
 
295566 said:
To be fair, the people I hear complaining most and loudest about the reg increases are the ones that own multiple $50k+ cars/trucks, likely because they're the ones really noticing it.

I don't have a problem with expensive vehicles costing more to register. I do, however, think that there should be a discount for registering multiple vehicles to the same owner. For example, offering a reduced cost for registering a truck, bike, and car all to the same person. They will likely not get used simultaneously, split road usage between the three vehicles, so therefore split registration cost between the three. Iono just my $.02
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That depends on who you choose to listen to doesn't it?

Could it be that many people have given up and no longer say anything? Once people think no one listens or cares then typically they stop complaining.

The damage to the roads can partially be addressed by making better roads instead of the look pretty for two weeks slathered bullshit we call roads. Why do that when we can just use bad roads as a way to guarantee the monopoly on major road maintenance and constructions and then just raise taxes to pay for it?

When people see a value for the money they pay complaints usually aren't so persistent or loud. When all it looks like is a money grab to pay for inefficiency, corruption, poor quality then yeah, they complain.
 
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I was listening to Phil Matier talk about this on KCBS this morning.

The problem isn't DMV itself, but everything that the legislator's have added onto the responsibilities for DMV like Voter Registration, illegal alien driver licenses, US ID's, etc.

Basically, the legislator in Sacramento have been adding new things for the DMV to do but haven't increased the budget to accomplish those.

So, it's not DMV's fault, it's the legislator's fault for implementing pie-in-the-sky shit without providing funding for it.

Budman, sorry for adding in some politics into this, but it was impossible to continue this discussion without adding the relevant information.
 
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mean dad said:
As long as it wouldn't impact surface streets too much from people avoiding toll roads.
Click to expand...

Ideally, current registration fees would be reduced or done away with entirely as an incentive to use the toll roads. Additionally, traffic can't really get much worse - we're pretty much at capacity whether you take El Camino or 101. Could also only make the tolls on certain stretches - ie, near major exits / entrances to the highway, based on traffic mapping of the worst spots. Like use one of those time-lapse GIFs and you can see exactly where traffic starts every day and where the biggest hotspots are - start there with the toll cameras.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
Ideally, current registration fees would be reduced or done away with entirely as an incentive to use the toll roads. Additionally, traffic can't really get much worse - we're pretty much at capacity whether you take El Camino or 101. Could also only make the tolls on certain stretches - ie, near major exits / entrances to the highway, based on traffic mapping of the worst spots. Like use one of those time-lapse GIFs and you can see exactly where traffic starts every day and where the biggest hotspots are - start there with the toll cameras.
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As a former poor person, I would not utilize the savings from reduced-or-no registration fees to pay tolls.
I'd try to avoid toll roads, because those pennies add up.

Reduced number of vehicles on the road is paramount, imwo.
 
So if with registration fees you paid $500+ per year, but with tolls you'd only pay $100 per year, would you still be against tolls?

Kevin, point taken, but again - if the cost savings was significant enough, and traffic was the same regardless, I think it'd be a net gain even if plenty of people used side streets to try and avoid the tolls. Again, with strategic placement around certain major exits, it wouldn't make much of a dent to avoid them.

The caveat to all this is we all know that once implemented, the fees and tolls would quickly be seen as an ATM by the politicians here, and go up annually accordingly. Funds would get raided, and eventually we'd be right back to where we are now. So there would need to be some durability / long term lock clauses in place as well.
 
NorCalAthlete said:
So if with registration fees you paid $500+ per year, but with tolls you'd only pay $100 per year, would you still be against tolls?

Kevin, point taken, but again - if the cost savings was significant enough, and traffic was the same regardless, I think it'd be a net gain even if plenty of people used side streets to try and avoid the tolls. Again, with strategic placement around certain major exits, it wouldn't make much of a dent to avoid them.

The caveat to all this is we all know that once implemented, the fees and tolls would quickly be seen as an ATM by the politicians here, and go up annually accordingly. Funds would get raided, and eventually we'd be right back to where we are now. So there would need to be some durability / long term lock clauses in place as well.
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You think tolls would only add up to $100 per year? :wtf

I guess you haven't experienced the tolls along 580 through Pleasanton and Livermore.

Man, that must be good shit you're smoking! :rofl
 
Sure remove tolls and jack up registration. That way everyone in Sacramento, the Valley, Redding who don't use the toll roads can also contribute to makeup for the loss.
 
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