Posted on 04/13/2016 2:49:19 PM PDT by Repealthe17thAmendment
A new proposal to pay for fixing Illinois' roads could use devices to track how far Illinois drivers have traveled and tax them by the mile.
The plan from Senate President John Cullerton, a Chicago Democrat, is aimed at gasoline tax revenues that have fallen as drivers have bought more fuel-efficient cars.
Cullerton says cars that get better mileage still create the same wear on roads, so the state needs to find a better way to collect taxes and pay for those repairs.
"If all the cars were electric, there would be no money for the roads," Cullerton said.
Drivers, under the plan, could pick whether a device in their cars monitors their miles one of two different ways. Or they could choose to pay the 1.5-cent-per-mile tax on a base 30,000 miles traveled per year, if they have privacy concerns.
One device would track where specifically drivers go and not charge them when they travel out of state or on Illinois toll roads. The other would simply monitor the odometer reading, not tracking the rest of the information.
. . .
"The Prius owners are the reason we need the bill," he said.
. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyherald.com ...
So much for supporting green energy!
And about those monitoring devices . . . what could possibly go wrong?
Stupid. What prevents someone from hijacking the device and prevent it from recording or sending the data.
I object to the idea that newer,lighter cars cause the same damage as older heavier ones.The fact is that heavy commercial trucks are the real destroyers of pavement.
Demoncrats have never met a tax they didn’t like.
Stupid idea but at least hey’s know how many miles each driver covers to drive out of the state for ever. Illinois is already one of the fastest evacuating states now.
Cause we already used your gas tax dollars on everything else we wanted to.
And besides, you folks have too much money.
So slap a $10,000 use tax on electric cars and be done with it.
I hate Illinois Dems just slightly more than I hate Illinois Repubs.
L
They already have toll booths every five feet along the freeway.
Yet it is impossible to deport 12 million illegals....
There should be an “Idiot Tax” for those dumb enough to live there.
And they PROMISE not to use the data to track where you have been. I can save them a lot of money and headaches. Just have the odometer read once a year when you have the emissions testing done.
Exactly what I was going to say. Maybe people should be charged for using roads, although this should be done in a way that avoids having the government track where everyone drives. But the bulk of road damage comes from trucks.
Cullerton says cars that get better mileage still create the same wear on roads.”
This pantload doesn’t understand physics! Cars that get better gas milage do so because they are LIGHTER! Hence they are less wearing on the roadways. The real issue of roadway longevity (at least in places where the weather isn’t a factor) is the huge increase in truck traffic. We’ve been told here in California, that the specs on our highways are such today that without heavy trucks, they would last almost indefinitely (the mountain roadways excepted where ice and snow contribute to the damage). The truth of the matter is that trucks DO NOT PAY for their contribution to the damage they cause. Try driving I 5 from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That roadway is essentially one lane for a steady stream of trucks and the other to facilitate “truck drag races” wherein one truck takes 5 minutes to pass a slightly slower one. It’s a 70mph highway, but try to maintain that speed, you can’t due to the truck traffic.
The legislators are correct that electric vehicles should help pay for "wear and tear" on roads, and it is certainly possible to pro-rate the "wear and tear per mile" wrt to the vehicle weight, which is all fair.
I would be concerned that they will keep the existing gas tax, and then on top of that, charge this mileage tax.
And that while the rate of the new tax may seem low now, it will always be subject to increases as Illinois continues deficit spending.
Coming in states pretty soon. WA is talking about it as well as OR.
Does not matter how much you tax big trucks.
The consumer will be paying the tax as higher priced goods after the trucking firms raise rates to cover the tax.
The middle class eventually pays ALL taxes.... just follow the money trail on any tax and it leads right to you.
“Drivers, under the plan, could pick whether a device in their cars monitors their miles one of two different ways. Or they could choose to pay the 1.5-cent-per-mile tax on a base 30,000 miles traveled per year, if they have privacy concerns. “
Only 30,000?? Why not 100,000? In other words...forced.
I’d drive one way - the heck out of that craphole, and go to someplace reasonably free of corruption and decent.
And, you can bet your a$$ that “state technicians” will be installing them, just like they started up another patronage job when they instituted pollution testing.
“I would be concerned that they will keep the existing gas tax, and then on top of that, charge this mileage tax.”
I would say that is approximately as likely as gravity is likely to continue to be operate on matter tomorrow.
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