Posted on 01/02/2003 3:43:33 PM PST by EBUCK
State GPS Tracking Your Mileage and Your Movements
Marc Morano, CNSNews.com Thursday, Jan. 2, 2003
CNSNews.com – If a proposal by an Oregon State task force becomes law, the government would be able to use satellite equipment to keep track of each driver's mileage and tax that driver accordingly in order to pay for road repairs. Even the state administrator who proposed the plan thinks citizens "should be concerned" about the possibility of civil liberties violations. And Chris Edwards, director of fiscal policy at the free market Cato Institute told CNSNews.com , "I think it's nutty and I don't think it's ever going to happen."
"I don't think Americans are ready to be subjected to that type of civil liberties intrusion," Edwards explained, "where government tracks them around wherever they drive."
Edwards believes the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) mileage-tracking proposal is the result of overzealous government bureaucrats.
"This is an example of economists gone wild," Edwards said. "Economists often think of these schemes that seem efficient on paper, but they don't think about the real world and the civil liberties aspect of things."
Jim Whitty, administrator of Oregon's Road User Fee Task Force, in an exclusive interview with CNSNews.com , called the GPS mileage tracking tax proposal necessary because "it costs a certain amount to drive on the road per vehicle and people ought to pay their fair share of their usage."
Democratic Gov. John Kitzhaber and the state legislature set up the Road User Fee Task Force in November 2001 to explore methods of financing transportation costs.
Noting that gas taxes are unfair because of the large differences in the fuel economy of automobiles, Whitty and the task force explored alternative taxing methods to ensure equity among drivers. Seventy-percent of Oregon's road maintenance revenues currently come from federal and state gas taxes.
Commission members rejected the idea of using automobile odometer readings to track mileage because they figured some people would accumulate out-of-state mileage. The idea of raising the existing gasoline tax was also turned down because with automobiles becoming so fuel efficient, gas tax revenues are projected to dry up.
"If everybody had high mileage cars, our road system would fall apart" from lack of revenue, Whitty said.
'Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee'
The solution seemed clear to Whitty.
"You go to technology and you look and say we can calculate mileage electronically, so it can be paid electronically ... That is where the GPS device came in," Whitty said.
Whitty envisions a system that would either send auto owners a monthly bill for their miles or set up gas stations so they could read the GPS transponders and collect the tax during fueling stops. The new tax per mile would be called a VMT fee or Vehicle Miles Traveled fee.
Whitty would also like to see other technologies besides GPS considered.
"There is an odometer sensor which can calculate mileage and then data can be transferred by radio frequencies to a fuel pump. We are going to be looking at both," Whitty explained.
Whitty believes that despite the fears of potential civil liberties violations, the new method of calculating road taxes is needed to make transportation taxes fairer.
"[The task force] wanted it to look like the gas tax used to look like back around 1960 when all cars virtually got the same miles per gallon," Whitty said. "What has happened though is that in the 70s, 80s and 90s, some cars became more fuel efficient and others didn't.
"There was no longer a correlation between miles driven and revenues raised," Whitty explained.
When asked about possible civil liberties violations, Whitty admitted that people should be cautious about the state's use of the mileage tracking technology.
"They should be concerned and they should watch this and make sure that is doesn't turn into such a thing," Whitty said.
However, "that is not the purpose of this fee," he added. "The state transportation department has no interest in knowing where people are going either currently or after the fact."
Whitty believes police may ultimately end up using the GPS data for criminal investigations.
"If there was a police necessity perhaps, but we are not looking at that. That is not our concern," he said.
Edwards remains unconvinced.
"You can say it's not the purpose, but later on it will be abused and expanded," Edwards said.
"We don't need the government to have Big Brother precise tracking systems to make sure the highways are precisely paid by precisely the right people who use them," Edwards continued. "The gas tax now is roughly efficient."
Edwards also dismissed Whitty's concerns about dwindling revenues from gas taxes.
"The private sector is doing more with less. I don't see why the government sector also cannot continue to improve its productivity," he said.
Edwards also believes the cost of the GPS proposal would be too high considering "all the bureaucracy costs of setting up and installing the system, hiring satellite time, running the computers and having all the analysts looking at data."
"Do we really need all that? Edwards asked.
Copyright CNSNews.com
its not spelled 'state' its spelled 'satrapy'.
Don't forget the radio controlled switch that allows the authorities to disable the engine.
For the children...
The correct solution is to build roads capable of handling the loads. I think that most roads are designed as such, but all of the finished roads that I see are later sampled and found to be built in a substandard manner. There are thousands of DOT vs Contractor lawsuits all over America over just such problems. I know of at least two major projects here in central FL (Interstates) where contractors are being sued by DOT after completion of the project with areas of these roads requiring significant remediation efforts within weeks of them opening the road.
Although the authorities don't have it, yet, such a device exists on newer Class 8 trucks in the form of engine and drivetrain telemetry that can be accessed and adjusted in real time by the engine manufacturers or service centers. In some trucks, the on board computer is able to detect or recieve via satellite, evidence of a severe engine (and I assume a drivetrain) problem and with a short notification period to the driver through an audible and visual warning, shut the engine down.
Beware, the "eye of the king" is watching. Genuflect when you mention his name.
When I lived in Florida, the Florida Turnpike (a toll road) used a card system instead of today's pay booths every few miles. The cards had different rates based on the number of axles on the car. A big-rig has 6 axles as opposed to a passenger car which has 2. A double big-rig has up to 9 (I'm thinking the cab has 1 front 2 rear, the load has 1 front 2 rear).
Certainly, a vehicle with 6 axles causes more damage than one with only 2.
-PJ
Hypothetical situation..
You post to FR regularly, you are on the list no doubt about it.
Your GPS ID is called up 400,000 times a day to "check on your activities"
You stop in at a buddies house to BS and watch the game, he's on the list too!! (of course without the 4th, USA Patriot act, you don't have the right to know)
You guys get raided for subversive activities. Never to be heard from again, off to Siberia you go for re-education.
I actually thought about posting a similar hypothetical, but the recollection of that rental car company turned my attention towards the obvious revenue-generating possibilities. What you describe is not outside the realm of possibility, though.
As I said, this has the potential to go *way* beyond mere road-use tax calculations. In fact, the system would likely be prohibitively expensive if it was used only for that purpose. I'm sure that "RoboCop" will eventually be tasked with monitoring our activities, in addition to citing speeders, gross pollutors, you name it.
There are no vehicle inspections in Oregon except in Portland for emissions.
If they banned snow tires, road damage would go down dramatically!
Wrong, it's $15/year for cars/suv's/pickups and $9/year for motorcycles.
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