Posted on 01/16/2010 2:47:27 PM PST by Dubya
A tax on the miles you drive could be a way to pay for Texas roads in the future.
Texas transportation planners are studying the idea of a “mileage meter” to help raise money.
Cars built after 1999 have a computer port that can access many types of data about the vehicle.
Progressive Insurance already offers a device that connects to that port for pay as you go rates.
“Mileage does have a lot to do with it,” said Mike Leonard, a Progressive insurance agent in Carrollton. “The less the miles, the less exposure Progressive has. So therefore, they’re willing to give you a discount on your rates.”
The Texas Department of Transportation is investigating whether such a device might also be used to tax drivers for how much they use roads.
“I’m not ready to embrace that technology, but it is a technology we may have to look at,” said State Sen. John Carona, of Dallas, a Republican.
Carona said Texas has an estimated $100 billion worth of unfunded transportation needs. “The money simply does not exist, and if people are being honest with constituents, they come out and just tell them that," he said. "We don’t have the money in Austin, and there isn’t the ability locally to raise this money to be able to solve these problems.”
Carona said a 20-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax approved 19 years ago no longer covers Texas transportation requirements.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcdfw.com ...
I’m skeptic, this is anti Gov. Good Hair, probably leaked (again) by KBH herself.
One way or another, all of the options require citizens to pay more to solve Texas transportation needs.
>>The less the miles, the less exposure Progressive has<<
What the heck ever happened to basic grammar???
The word “fewer” is apparently banished from English.
We might as all just speak engrish
Rino Perry is all for it.
You didn't read the article.
You didn't read the article.
If every road is to be a toll road, why do we need the government to run/own them?
Full privitization is the only context in which I’d go for this. Otherwise, it’s too much private information in the hands of government.
But what about miles driven off road, on toll roads, or out of state?
Progressive Insurance is run by a Progressive Marxist @$$h0le.
way to go Tejas.
They probably hit the guy up for a quote & he didn’t realize how it would be used.
cut spending
It would go into the general fund and be spent on something else.
“miles driven off road, on toll roads, or out of state”
And non-residents?
The issue here is the government tracking your every movement. There are cheaper ways to tax people.
Youre right I didn’t read it. I read it 2 months ago when it FIRST came out. Last I checked KBH also thinks shes a Repub (though I don’t think either are). But I humbly stand corrected for the sake of my sanity.
If the money collected for transportation already actually went for transportation there wouldn’t be a need for more.
When I lived in Ohio their HQ was only minutes away from me, almost literally in my backyard.
There’s no way a tax like this would pass constitutional muster. Imagine this: A Texan buys a new car and drives to the West coast to visit with family, then takes a tour of the U.S. to see the rest of the country before returning home. He puts 7000 miles on his new vehicle (and gets his oil changed twice while he’s out), then returns to Texas. His use of the Texas roads may only be a few hundred miles, yet they want to ding him for tax on the full 7000? It will be fought and it will be defeated. The legislature would have to prove that the miles on each vehicle were actually travelled within the state of Texas. That’ll never happen.
If they're capable of taxing by the mile, they're capable of rationing how many miles you can drive.
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