Attribute for the Ad valorem tax rate does not affect most output variables.

[JohnMillerVDOT]

The ad valorem tax rate (defined as “VehOwnAdValoremTax” and found within the input file azone_hh_veh_own_taxes.csv) did not affect any output variables except for one. The one exception is that VehOwnAdValoremTax did affect the cost of owning a vehicle—that is “OwnCost” increased by about two-thirds. However, this change in the ad valorem tax rate did not affect any other behavior such as the number of auto trips or transit trips. What we did was to double the attribute “VehOwnAdValoremTax” from 0.0457 to 0.0914 for two of our 3 Azones, and then for a third Azone we doubled this attribute from 0.0413 to 0.0826. We also added a $2,000 flat feet to the cost of each vehicle. Interestingly, a colleague also ran these types of changes on a hypothetical data set, and he found that there was a slight increase in the number of vehicle trips. We have details on this as scenario 7d in the following report: https://www.virginiadot.org/vtrc/main/online_reports/pdf/22-R21.pdf.