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Oregon Considers GPS-based Road Taxes
Oregon is considering instituting a road tax - a tax based on the mileage driven within the state. The tax would be implemented with mandatory GPS boxes in each vehicle recording the mileage driven in Oregon. We've done a couple of previous stories on Great Britain's initiatives in this area.
I know there are a few differences in gas mileage etc. but.. don't state gasoline taxes pretty much do the same thing? (If you use gas for say a tractor, you can deduct it from your taxes in most states..)
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Will the satellite GPS system go out during rainy weather? Satellite TV does that from time to time. Isn't that region of the country known for rainy weather?
So a couple of issues come to mind immediately:
-- what stops the state or federal govt (or a malicious third-party, like a stalker) from tracking where you go?
-- how does Oregon collect from out-of-state travellers?
If the purpose of the law is to collect revenue for road usage, what about this can't be done via conventional toll roads, with the use of "EZPass"-style transponders to collect payment?
This is probably cheaper and certainly a more robust way to handle road usage costs than going to an untested and privacy-violating GPS system.
Is Oregon a test-bed for how the government can track the movements of its largely car-bound citizens?
-Alex
Thankfully, this is a law "being considered" by legislators who haven't yet been hit with the reality that this tax is unenforcable, and therefore won't work.
The problem is, the "Good Faith and Credit Clause" of the U.S. Constitution means that licenses issed by any state are valid in all fifty. What's more, a car with California plates can legally drive on Oregon roads.
The thing is, Oregon cannot require California-registered cars (or cars registered to any of the 49 other states) to have their tracking devices.
Another cause of death: Suddenly every road in the state effectively becomes a toll road. That'll cost them in federal highway funds, as toll roads in theory are supposed to be spending those tolls on their own repairs. And, you can surely bet the neighboring states' representives will see to it that Oregon loses all their highway funds for implamenting this kind of tax.
So, it's a nice chance to beat up a clueless state legislator or two for getting a little too 1984-ish on us... but there's really nothing to fear here. This law is D.O.A.
This GPS thing assumes that every mile driven inside Oregon is somehow a public road. I imagine some Oregonians have large ranches, and they can rack up some miles "riding fences." For that matter, would horses have to wear the silly thing?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Maybe the rich snobs in their Lincoln Navigators and Ford Excursions don't like paying more than the poor guy in the Geo Metro?
Installing a jammer (or just disabling the GPS otherwise) should be extremely easy, what will happen then? The car can't very well stop (would be an ugly Denial-Of-Driving attack) and you can't really take them to court and require that you must only drive in places where you can get a signal (e.g. no tunnels) either. Oh well...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I am all for use based taxes, but before they implement such a system they need to get rid of all the other taxes, as use based means you only pay for what you use. If you don't drive, you don't pay, if you don't send your kids to public school you don't pay, etc etc etc. But odds are the systems like these won't be implemented in that fashion. I am sure this new "Road Tax" will simply be implemneted on top of all the existing taxes. Oh well, prepare to be taxed into oblivion.
Ok, I originally come from Pennsylvania which tends to have rather crappy interstate roads, and there's a simple reason for it - large tractor-trailers.
Pennsylvania a while back passed a law to eliminate studded tires from the road. Sad reality is that roads go worse, as there was more heavy truck traffic. Studded tires didn't really do anything.
If you want to cut costs on maintaining roads and raise money to do so, here's my suggestion:
Again, most of the wear and tear on roads in Pennsylvania is caused by out-of-state heavy-load trucks. Taxing your own citizens based on the mileage they drive their passenger cars taxes the wrong end of people and simply creates more excuses to vacate your state.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
I was there once and the lady who insisted on pumping my gas for me then drops the gas cap on the ground, getting it all dirty.
God knows how much gunk got in the engine because of that.
Good thing it was a lease.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
What's really sad about this, is that rich people are still less affected (as a percentage of their income) than poor people are. And before you say that poor people can just use Tri-Met or some other public transport, remember how much of Oregon is rural.
By the way, if I still lived there, my first challenge to that law would be to have them prove that my car wasn't on a flatbed truck when it was moving around, with the flatbed truck presumably reporting its own movements for taxation purposes, already. And I'd like to see them try to charge me for building an encasing box for the unit to block GPS reception when I'm not at the inspection site, if they win that battle.
Get off my launchpad!
Actually only two in seven people now in Oregon can read English.
As a long time Oregon resident, let me fill in the slashdotters with some background.
One: Oregonians are poor. We have the highest unemployment rate in the country. When you run out of unemployment benefits, you automatically get taken off the unemployment rolls and become 'employed'. Real unemployment is 15-20 percent. Our forest product, tourist, fishing, and electronic industries are decimated.
Two: Oregonians are dumb. We have the shortest school year in the country and are about to shorten it another twenty or so days. We have one of the highest dropout rates in the USA. Most of the jobs requiring advanced skills and education to people moving here from other places.
Three: Oregonians are cheap. We voted down all major tax increases in the past ten years. We defeated the sales tax proposals put forth by our betters five times in the past twenty years. Being cheap is a direct result of being poor and dumb.
Four: Oregon is big. Bigger than New England. A third of the people live in the Portland metro area; one third live in other 'cities'; and the rest live far out in the country and drive lots of miles.
Five: Our state legislators are either over-educated Jane Jacobs followers from Portland or Eugene (the Dems) or dumb-as-dirt bible-thumping morons from the woods (the Repubs). Each side hates each other and would gladly shut down the state rather than cooperate or give an inch on anything. Both sides pride themselves on coming up with truly dumb laws to show that they are meaner than the other side. For example, get caught with any amount of voter-approved medical mar1juana, lose your driver's license for a year.
Or, drop out of high school at age sixteen? Can't get a driver's license until you're twenty-one.
To point of all this? Don't take anything that the Oregonians say or do seriously.
There are just too many problems with this for it to be feasible...
Warning: Poster of this comment is a nerd. Just like everybody else here.
Funny thing though, in NJ full service is the law, and yet gas is like 20 cents cheaper than in NY which has self-serve.
:/). I save even after tolls!
I tend to go grocery shopping in Jersey, which has better prices than NYC, and better selection (International Food Warehouse, Trader Joe's with a liquor license). I do this when my 25-gal diesel tank is in reserve, then fill up at US$1.37/gal (up from $1.27
Keep On Truckin!
ps: In a full-serve state I bet the pumps aren't smart (credit/debit card accepting with PIN keypad), so the costs and the delays of going self-serve would probably be a burden..
I actually first heard of this the other night from some friends of mine who are Oregon residents. They're pissed to all hell about this idea.
Still, if they *must* tax drivers for driving, I'm wondering why in gods name the legislators are bothering with GPS? Why not take the route the East went and implement toll roads to increase revenue for the department of transportation? Hell, they could even get creative about it and charge more for road-damaging SUV's, which some other posters have mentioned.
Yeah, this new law seems on the outside that it would raise all kinds of crazy cash, but it would seem to me to be far more expensive to set up and maintain. And then there will no doubt be legal challenges against it. All in all, far more trouble than its worth.
If they really need to levy funds for transportation costs, it would make more sense to me (at least in the near future) to go the Jersey Turnpike route. Make drivers pay tolls every so many miles. The eastern states have been doing this for years, and it seems to work pretty well--i.e. it helps support their highway system, and people there don't mind it too much.
Just a thought!
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
A city councilman in Portland, the largest city, tried to promote a law that would require giving people tickets for going through a yellow (not red) light. Of course, the purpose of a yellow light is to warn drivers that the light will soon be red, not to make them stop.
Nothing unusual about that, it's what cops do around here. Makes sense; if you can logically stop, you should do so. If you're not in the intersection, and are going slow enough to stop, but you speed up to make the light then you should get a ticket.
EXACTLY! Here in Sweden (I'm an American ex-pat), gas costs, like, ~$3.50-$4/gal., about 75% of which is taxes. You know why? Because they're charging you for the real cost of a gallon of gas, i.e. not just for the material costs, but for road upkeep, emergency response, environmental cleanup, etc. I'm so fscking sick of explaining to my American friends & family why I don't really mind paying a lot for gas here...
I concur. And frankly, people in Oregon should be angry and concerned about this, because it's a very weasly way of getting mandatory tracking equipment installed in all vehicles.
Why should being an Oregonian determine if we are taken seriously or not. I'd like to point out that we have many good things that come out of Oregon.
Have you ever had Tillamook Cheese? or Oregon Nog?
In terms of intelligence, we have excellent engineering schools (Oregon State University) and liberal arts universities (University of Oregon). Personally, I graduated from Chemeketa Community College (in Salem) with an AS degree in Computer Electronics. The electronics department at Chemeketa is one of the best I've seen from visiting various community colleges.
of course, the job market here sucks right now, so I'm stuck working for the state. =)
Another thing about Oregon is the livability. There's the big city living in Portland, if that floats your boat, but then there's the ROOM to live out on a couple of acres if a rural setting suites you more. I spent part of my years growing up on about an acre and a half with lotsa trees. My work in downtown salem was a 15-20 min drive, even at the height of rush hour.
What else is there to cover? We have the big beautiful outdoors! Little known waterfalls, hiking trails, and wilderness areas abound. Personally, I enjoy Abiqua Falls outside of Silverton, as well as the Opal Creek Wilderness area, up at the end of the Little North Fork road. =)
Oh, and Seaside! The beach there is one of the widest on the west coast! They've had beach volleyball championships there. Lincoln City hosts kite flying festivals a little further south. The dunes near Florence and south are a blast to go running around in (on foot or on your favorite atv veh).
And that's just in the northwest area of Oregon -- there's sooooo much to explore here!
Driving is not taxed, but vehicles are (sales tax) and so is fuel (duty, sales tax, whatever it is called in your neck of the woods). In the same way, walking is not taxed, but shoes and food usually are.
If you can figure out a (legal!) way of driving a car without buying it (maybe building your own?) and you can obtain fuel without buying it OTC (maybe looking at alcohol powered vehicles?) then you can drive without paying tax.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
There are ways around this.
Ask a truck driver. In the state I live in, there is a significantly higher gasoline tax than a lot of other states, especially those around us.
A lot of trucking companies have taken great pains to plot exactly how far out of their way they can go to still be profitable. In other words paying a truck driver extra milage for almost an extra half a day can be cost effective.
This works the same way when the destination is in my state. They plot the gas fill ups so that they have to get as little gas, definitely not proportional to their road use, in the state.
A better idea. Make this road tax, a tax on Gasoline.
Agreed. Gas tax is much much fairer than GPS or car property tax. I'm really sick of property taxes that make people want to drive old dirty cars, and putting a GPS reciever into cars is unconstitutional. I say unconstitutional, because the government could track the activities of protected groups of people and strategically interfere in favor of the government's agenda. GPS data would really be ripe for abuse of all types. It could be a new era of witch hunting (e.g., why was political-enemy XYZ's car at motel ABC on Tuesday morning...)
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin