http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/ ... 4120.shtml


"States Mull Taxing Drivers By Mile

CORVALLIS, Ore., Feb. 14, 2005



Taxing By The Mile


(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 roads."




Any Oregonians aware of how and where this is going on in your state?

Always underestimate the intelligence of a bureaucrat.

This is why it's stupid to depend on excise taxes.

On the other hand, I'm all in favor of a pay as you go type system that would have the funding come from mainly the people who use the service, if it can be properly implemented.

So kinda like sales tax?

Yet another reason to use mass transportation.

oh, and to stop suburbia.

Or just don't let elected officials pass a bunch of b.s. laws...

I live in Oregon and this is the first I've heard of this. I don't think this is really plausible because it would require all vehicles to be implemented with a GPS device and a computer that communicates with gas pumps. That would be outrageously expensive, and I can't see anyone really volunteering to do that to their vehicle. I'd also like to see how the "by-mile" tax would compare with the already existing gas tax.

Oh you'd better believe Bush and the Saudi Royals have a plan, or "conspiracy" if you will, to implement GPS tracking systems to squeeze more money out of the li'l guy. It's what they live for. And I'm even willing to bet that they'll even skim a little off the top to fund their other diabolical schemes they'll be pulling off in conjuction with the right-wing fanatical Christians. Just you wait!

Yeah... screw pay-as-you-go taxes. If I want to go for a long drive to clear my head, I want to go for a long drive to clear my head. If they need more tax money maybe they should stop cutting taxes every year.

If this were logistically feasible, it would still be a stupid idea.
Let's punish people for driving fuel efficient cars.

--PunkDavid

GPS devices? I think there would be alot of people schooling themselves on how to disconnect the device or alter it in some way. It would make more sense to make the hwy system tolled.

I keep hearing people say this and I honestly don't understand, maybe I am missing something. How does this punish people who drive fuel efficient cars? Hybrids won't be any less cost-effective under this plan because, even if they didn't have a hybrid, they'd still have to pay this tax. It's a tax on everyone that should, in theory, reduce the total amount of driving done.

But since I appear to be the only person in the world that thinks like this, I must not be comprehending some fundamental part of this idea. Someone fill me in, it's frustrating me.

The hybrid car driver saves money by not having to pay as much fuel tax, and hitting them with this new tax brings them back up to the same level of tax as your typical SUV driver which in effect is punishing them for driving that car. That's what I got out of it anyway.
What they should be doing is providing incentives for people to choose more fuel efficient cars.

What they should be doing is building a cheap and efficient public tranport system.

For the consumer, cheap is easy. Efficient isn't as easy.

If you think $47 is alot for a barrel of crude oil, just wait.

This shit is about to hit the fan.

I see what you're saying. It seems from this article that the impetus for the mileage tax idea is the reduced revenue from fuel efficient cars, but the writer could well have an agenda to write the story from that perspective.

Either way, it's a dumb idea because mileage travelled is not a good indicator of damage done to roadways. Smaller cars do much less damage than larger cars, and tractor-trailers do terrible damage. Fuel efficiency is a much closer approximation (although still imperfect) for determining road damage, and therefore a gas tax is the most fair and implementable plan I've heard yet.

Also, don't you figure that roads could be made from a material that would last longer than what they use now? I've always theorized that the racketeers that have the hwy contracts use shitty materials so they can get the contract and rebuild the road in another five or ten years.

--PunkDavid

I'm betting it can't. And what the hell? Can we get a green car exemption?

I took a graduate class in roadway materials and unless you can protect the roads from the freeze/thaw cycle, you can't build a road that lasts. Water gets into a crack then freezes and expands which makes the cracks bigger which starts ravelling. Got it, good.