Posted on 02/15/2005 10:18:28 AM PST by Attention Surplus Disorder
States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile CORVALLIS, Ore., Feb. 14, 2005
(CBS) College student Jayson Just commutes an odometer-spinning 2,000 miles a month. As CBS News Correspondent Sandra Hughes reports, his monthly gas bill once topped his car payment.
"I was paying about $500 a month," says Just.
So Just bought a fuel efficient hybrid and said goodbye to his gas-guzzling BMW.
And what kind of mileage does he get?
"The EPA estimate is 60 in the city, 51 on the highway," says Just.
And that saves him almost $300 a month in gas. It's great for Just but bad for the roads he's driving on, because he also pays a lot less in gasoline taxes which fund highway projects and road repairs. As more and more hybrids hit the road, cash-strapped states are warning of rough roads ahead.
Officials in car-clogged California are so worried they may be considering a replacement for the gas tax altogether, replacing it with something called "tax by the mile."
Seeing tax dollars dwindling, neighboring Oregon has already started road testing the idea.
"Drivers will get charged for how many miles they use the roads, and it's as simple as that," says engineer David Kim.
Kim and his team at Oregon State University equipped a test car with a global positioning device to keep track of its mileage. Eventually, every car would need one.
"So, if you drive 10 miles you will pay a certain fee which will be, let's say, one tenth of what someone pays if they drive 100 miles," says Kim.
The new tax would be charged each time you fill up. A computer inside the gas pump would communicate with your car's odometer to calculate how much you owe.
The system could also track how often you drive during rush hour and charge higher fees to discourage peak use. That's an idea that could break the bottleneck on California's freeways.
"We're getting a lot of interest from other states," says Jim Whitty of the Oregon Department of Transportation. "They're watching what we're doing.
"Transportation officials across the country are concerned about what's going to happen with the gas tax revenues."
Privacy advocates say it's more like big brother riding on your bumper, not to mention a disincentive to buy fuel-efficient cars.
"It's not fair for people like me who have to commute, and we don't have any choice but take the freeways," says Just. "We shouldn't have to be taxed."
But tax-by-mile advocates say it may be the only way to ensure that fuel efficiency doesn't prevent smooth sailing down the road.
can you just imagine the chaos, there will be college pranksters jamming these gas station signals just to watch the chaos of people unable to get fuel because the wireless network at the gas station is not functioning.
Stop making sense*. We're talking about West-coast politicans here.
*Wasn't that a Talking Heads album title?
Good grief! Liberals are like Dracula, unless you drive the wooden stake all the way through the black heart they'll continue to try and bite you.
"Will the gasoline tax be eliminated when the "per mile" tax is added?"
You're being sarcastic, right?
This proposal isn't about fairer taxes. That gas sipping hybrid weighs less and will cause less wear on the roads as well as using less gas.
We didn't see the government lowering taxes when people started driving gas guzzling SUVs did we?
This is just an excuse to find a new way to raise taxes.
Not long ago they were suggesting that the per gallon gas tax be increased in CA to punish people with their gas guzzling SUVs.
People switch to more efficient cars? The solution is of course to raise taxes by having a tax on the number of miles you drive.
Of course to be able to enforce this new tax they'll have to be able to keep a record of how much you drive each time you fill up with gas, and where you filled up.
Nothing the leftist government seems to like more than keeping more information on the habbits of their citizens.
"And it will cost how much to implement, oversee, gas police, et al...?"
It's free. It will all be part of the on board diagnostics systems in new cars. It won't cost the government a thing. They'll even get to collect taxes on the higher price you pay for the vehicle that includes this.
Oh... you mean how much will is cost us, the consumer? That information is unavailable, but they're sure it won't ammount to much.
The Autobahn pavement structure is a lot thicker that what I have seen of US highways. But there's also other things that went on the Autobahn. Tanks. In some cases, attack jets during exercises (Jaguars and A-10 Warthogs), however I doubt that is going on now.
That's true, over twice as thick, and meant to last twice as long (40 vs. 20 years). But there's still construction going on constantly. In 15 years there I can't remember a time when there wasn't construction on the parts of the A5 or A6 that I drove.
They did used to have a lot of tanks on the Autobahn, as NATO troops, including us, would use it all the time.
...Ms Chen, 37, who works for a trading company in Beijing, owns a five-seater, 2.5 liter car. Replacing the highway maintenance fee with a fuel tax is fair, she told The Standard.Ms Chen currently pays 1,320 yuan (HK$1,244) in annual road fees and spends 8,000 yuan per year on fuel. If the fuel tax rate were set at 35 percent, she would pay an extra 1,500 yuan each year. But if the tax is implemented, she said, she will consider replacing her big car with a smaller one...
Never heard of RFID, or BlueTooth?
There's your mistake. You have no right to privacy (unless of course you are a woman intending to murder your unborn child)
Silly, it is not about the tax, it is about being able to track your every movement. The tax is the excuse.
We gotta keep hammering it home: IT'S NOT A REVENUE PROBLEM. IT'S A SPENDING PROBLEM!! There is plenty of money to build and maintain roads, except that they spend 2/3 of it instead on mass transit boondoggle projects that less than 2% of commuters use (I'm talking California here).
GPS, is already mandated for Cell Phones. Mine has the ability to turn that off, but I am not sure that it actually does. Turning off your phone does not help, you must remove the battery, else it broadcasts it's position at regular intervals.
"Now they not only get more tax revenue from the per-mile tax, but increased taxes on gasoline. Problem solved."
I hate to burst your bubble, but NJ gas prices are cheaper than Pennsylvania or NY. And yes, we cannot pump our gas.
http://www.gaspricewatch.com/usgas_index.asp
You can check it out here. My Zip Code is 07110. The Hess station down the street has regular selling at 1.769.
bill
That's what mystifies me about this miles driven mleage tax proposal. The present gas tax is really the fairest way to distribute the burden of road building and maintenance. People who have heavier vehicles, like my Navigator, and who drive more, pay their proportionate share of the cost of highway construction and maintenance through the gas tax, which is essentially based on a combination of vehicle mileage and distance driven.
People who choose to drive hybrids necessarily choose to drive light vehicles that do not cause the wear and tear on highways caused by heavier passenger vehicles. Thus, it's perfectly reasonable that they be rewarded by not paying as much gas tax.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
How would they handle someone from out of state? If this applied in California, what would happen to an Arizona driver passing through the State?
Really all that is required is a GPS unit installed in each car and could be refitted to older vehicles. Total mileage is just one data point available.
The attendant would probably have an override switch that would cause the pump to revert to a per gallon tax.
In fact, that might be how they would get people to go along with this: raise the gas tax exhorbitantly, like say $1.50 per gallon, with the milage based system as a "voluntary" alternative. That way they could get out of the state paying for retrofitting older vehicles and the privacy complaints, saying that the consumer voluntarily bought the electronics to save on the tax.
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