Deputy Director Justin Behrens convened the California Transportation Commission’s Vehicle Weight Safety Study Task Force on Oct. 29, 2024, for a daylong webinar that included a policy overview from Dr. Matthew Raifman of the University of California, Berkeley. Raifman presented six categories of possible “weight‑based” mechanisms for passenger vehicles: registration fees, a point‑of‑sale weight tax or surcharge, tolls or express‑lane differentials, cordon/congestion pricing for urban centers, mileage‑based road‑user charges, and parking or permit fees tied to vehicle footprint or mass.

Why it matters: Heavier passenger vehicles — especially larger SUVs and pickup trucks — contribute greater injury severity to pedestrians, bicyclists and occupants of smaller vehicles in collisions. Policy tools that change the relative costs of heavier vehicles could, in theory, change purchasing and usage patterns and generate revenue that could be invested in safer infrastructure. But the legal authority, distributional effects and likely behavioral responses differ sharply across the options.

Raifman explained California already uses weight in registration for commercial vehicles and many pickup trucks; electric vehicles are subject to a different registration schema. He emphasized that a straightforward way to extend a weight fee would be to “decouple weight from commercial vehicle status” and apply a weight‑based surcharge at registration to all vehicles, but he warned that the distributional impacts of such a policy are unclear and that exemptions (for example, for persons with disabilities, certain professions, or low‑income households) would be politically and administratively complex.

He summarized examples from other jurisdictions: Maryland and Florida use short banded schemes that distinguish cars and trucks; Washington, D.C., applies much higher passenger‑vehicle registration fees for vehicles over 6,000 pounds and gives a time‑limited discount for new electric passenger vehicles; Hawaii applies a per‑pound approach with tiered rates. Raifman said those examples show a wide range of design choices — from modest flat supplements to steep per‑pound charges.

Several other mechanisms carry particular implementation constraints. A point‑of‑sale, weight‑sensitive sales tax would be a one‑time levy collected on purchase but is uncommon for passenger vehicles nationally. Tolling or express‑lane differential pricing by weight requires linking vehicle identity to tolling accounts and faces federal constraints: toll‑facility rules and demonstrations historically limit some differential exemptions and vary by program. Cordon or congestion pricing — fees to enter an urban center — can in principle be weighted by vehicle size, and would naturally target places where pedestrian and micromobility exposure is high; but those programs typically operate at the local level and raise equity and administrative complexity concerns.

Raifman also framed weight as a proxy for safety, not a perfect measure. He and the task force discussed alternatives — vehicle footprint, specific safety ratings (for example, NCAP-style assessments that explicitly measure risk to vulnerable road users), or combinations of attributes — and noted that a fee calibrated to safety performance rather than weight could better target the social harms that policy is trying to address, though such metrics are not yet standardized for non‑occupant risk.

Task force members asked about towing capacity or gross vehicle weight versus curb/curtail weight metrics, the practicalities of means‑tested exemptions, and how a fee might interact with state goals to accelerate electric vehicle adoption. Raifman warned that electric vehicles frequently weigh more, so exempting EVs to promote decarbonization could blunt any weight‑reduction effect. He stressed that federal preemption issues, tolling authorization and the political landscape are real constraints on some approaches.

The meeting closed the policy segment with discussion of where revenue should go. Public comment from the Coalition for Clean Air urged dedicating revenue to active‑transportation projects — sidewalks, protected crossings and bike lanes — to reduce pedestrian and cyclist fatalities.

What’s next: CTC staff will circulate a draft meeting summary to task force members; staff said task force comments will be incorporated into the summary that the Commission will use to prepare its report to the Legislature under AB 251.