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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.
It's funny because alot of people forget Oregon even exists, but they prove they can create just as many dumb law ideas like California.
The article fails to say why they would do this. Why not just increase the gas tax if you want more money? At least your citizens get relieved of some of the burden of the gas tax because visitors to the state pay as well. With this GPS thing, it will cost a lot to implement, and no visiting cars will pay the tax. Seems like a losing situation for the taxpayers of Oregon.
The more you drive, the more gas you buy and no need for big brother to put his hairy eyeball on oyu.
Good thing no one breaks laws. Good thing that people can't change laws once written. Good thing there is no privacy challenge related to non-real-time data collection.
Good thing I DON'T LIVE IN OREGON.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Can you imagine having a mandatory GPS in the Pioneering days? The Oregon Trail game sure would have been different:
Travelled: precisely 15.24 miles today.
Health: Pa died of snake bite.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
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...
It has come to the attention of many of the affluent SUV owners that low-income people and students and other undesirables drive economical cars and drive many miles on not much gasoline and are thus not paying their fair share of gasoline taxes and are thereby beating the system. Thus, the affluent want to change the system to tax miles instead of fuel. Nevermind that the fuel tax is easy and economical to collect. Never mind that road wear increases more than linearly with vehicle weight. Never mind that out-of-state vehicles will ride free. Never mind that dependence on foreign oil because of large vehicles is a huge problem for anyone trying to give the US a rational foreign policy. Let's just help the people with the money.
As an Oregon resident, I first got wind of this about six months ago... Privacy was my first thought as well. Thankfully, the system they're looking at can't track vehicles in realtime, as it's a GPS receiver unit only. There is no transmitter.
My guess is that, no matter how well designed, this system is doomed from the start- it's just too complex for John Q. Taxpayer to understand. People in Oregon, just like the rest of the country, don't like new taxes. That's why we've managed to be one of the last holdouts for no sales tax, and we just soundly defeated a Canadian-style universal healthcare bill that would have laid ruin to the state's economy.
-M
*Sigh* I have this problem with my students, too. The "GPS signal" is actually many radio signals, all of them out in the open and conveying no position data on you. That's right -- the GPS satellites don't tell you where you are. The GPS satellites tell you where the GPS satellites are, via the timing data they broadcast. Note that, too: they broadcast.
A tracking system needs something more than a GPS receiver (and note that, too: "receiver"). There must be some sort of transmitter as well; that's not part of GPS. It's probably be some cell-based thing, but could be just a radio.
So all your paranoids can go dig your shiny new GPS receiver out of the trash. A receiver can't betray your location to The Man.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
First off, I really doubt this will get anywhere beyond the testing stage and hopefully it won't even get that far as it would be a huge waste of money.
Besides being an idiotic idea technically - costs for the GPS boxen (of course they'll probably want to charge the drivers for the box - why not just have everybody cough up the cost of a GPS box when they register their car and actually apply that money to roads instead of the GPS box, but I digress), tracking all of those cars, trying to make sure people don't disconnect them - it's not politically viable. Remember this is a referendum state. For something this far-reaching the legislature will be afraid to just enact it without a vote of the people - that's pretty much how it works here.
Currently some of the beaurocrats are whining about how they're not getting their gas-tax money from all of those folks driving hybrids (must be about 10 of them in the state by now, so it's a major crisis). Problem is, those hybrids do run on gas, they just do it much more efficiently. One would think that using less gas would be something the state would try to encourage instead of wringing their hands trying to figure out how they can spend $millions in order to make not much more money than they are now.
Hopefully, the bozo beaurocrat that came up with this idiotic idea will be promptly fired.
Doesn't it seem like there should be an absolute limit on the amount of money that the Governments (State, Local and Federal) should be allowed to take from individuals?
Each Government should be able to set an amount of money that is required to provide the services for which they were formed. This is called a realistic budget.
It seems to me that the Government mission has become clouded. Maybe our officials need to sit down and define the scope of government in the context of our State and Federal constitutions. Just because the Constitution does not prohibit government from entering into a particular area does not mean that they are mandated to do so.
Why is it that every time a new technology surfaces that enables something to be measured, government feels the need to use it to extract more money from its citizens?
Taxing the use of our roads seems like a good idea except that whenever you tax an action that is a right you change that action from being a right to a privilege. For example: we have a right to free speech. If your local government made a law that required a permit to speak it would in effect be saying that you do not have a right to speech that speech is a privilege. Rights cannot be taken away without due process.
It has been successfully argued that driving a car is a privilege not a right even though one of our rights allows freedom to travel. The constitution obviously does not specify the method of travel so I guess that's deemed to mean that walking cannot be taxed. Personally I feel that it's very close to the constitutional line. But then what do I know.
Anyway to end this rant I would ask Oregon's Government to consider the question; Just because you may have the technology to use GPS to extract more money from your people, is it really the right thing to do?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
If you look at the OR DOT preliminary report the basic reason is that fuel tax revenue are declining. Why? Increased fuel efficiency of all things! They are particularly concerned about hybrids which you know get double mileage -- and so pay half the tax. You can imagine what horror electric vehicles would bring.
So I guess they are trying not to discriminate against older and larger cars, who would pay much more fuel tax than hybrid, esp. as they raised the tax rate to compensate. An alternative might be a direct ad valorum tax on each automobile, paid with registration -- that would cut against expensive and new cars, unfortunately discouraging trading up.
I am sympathetic with their need to maintain constant income, it's how they maintain the roads. As for their methods?
A bizarre side effect of a good thing, I'll say.
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
Gas taxes work better, and promotes lower weight better milage veichels; this law would do the opposite.
The privacy issues (which I believe to be the real reason the proposal is being made) are huge.
But consider also:
Cars already have a way to measure miles on the road that would not involve a large extra cost to the consumer - an odometer. It could be read when the car's license is renewed, of if Oregon has inspections at that time, and people could be taxed accordingly. For those who do a lot of out of state travel (as if that's a real issue), they could supply documentation of such (such as out of state gas receipts) with their taxes and get a rebate. If you don't like that approach, even remote reading odometers for recording mileage at the boarders (for checking people in and out based on mileage) would be less expensive and less obtrusive than trying to track everyone in the state by GPS.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
From the Article...
To protect drivers' privacy, using the system to track cars in real time would be illegal.
Right. Just like social security numbers weren't supposed to be used for identification purposes.
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.
Damn. I read through all these comments, and yearn for the days when /. readers used to be SMART.
/.
I am an Oregon resident, and this has been analyzed and discussed locally and all that LONG before it made any national news streams - or
Oregon's laws are no better or worse than anywhere else in the country. Every state has sucky laws. Every state has screwed up government. Every state has bad taxing schemes. Every state has areas with bad roads, crummy schools, or high crime. Every state also has some good stuffs, nice places, good policies - what have you. Portland has some strange laws (It is illegal to ride a bycicle on the streets downtown) and some good ones (they were the first major city to oficially legalize skateboarding and give skateboarders rights and responsibilities).
1. Oregon is looking at this system for the LONG TERM future, not immediate gain. The simple truth is that Petrolium based fuels are going to be replaced with other mechanisms. They are just THINKING of how they will be able to still provide roads when no one is buy buying gasoline any more. (Flashes of "Mr Fusion" powerd cars come to mind). "OUR ROADS SUCK - WE WANT MORE, BETTER ROADS!!! What do you MEAN you want us to PAY for them? Why should we have to PAY for them?"
2. These things you have been reading about are all trial programs to test the viability. They are planning on passing legislation to allow them to TEST these types of systems with voluntary participants. The results of these tests will be used to design the real system. (with the speed of state govt, it'll be a while.)
3. Part of the needs of these tests is to design a system that charges appropriately. Some of the discussed options is having the mileage rate also be based on vehicle weight, size, number of axels, etc... So that a smaller lighter vehicle won't pay as much as a large heavy one.
4. Outsiders will just pay the regular gas tax for now. Just like they do currently. If you buy gas in a state - any state - and you pay their gas taxes, you are helping to pay for their roads. If you pass through the state without buying gas - you are using the roads at a discount. (Some of all roads is paid for with federal dollars and federal gas taxes - so no one gets a completely free ride).
5. GPS is important so that they don't bill people for miles they drive outside of Oregon, or not on Oregon roads. The ultimate goal is for the GPS to only count miles driven on ROADS. We all know that GPS is not perfect, but we have to start figuring out something - and it is a place to start.
6. I do have very real privacy concerns. The system is NOT real-time - but who is to say what info they actually record? Even if it is after the fact, it could be abused. "Lets see, this indicates you were in the vincinity of this crack house - we should search your home for drug paraphanalia." "Hmmm, looks like you broke the speed limit 38 times this month. Here is ticket."
7. Any system would have to have the ability to detect tampering - much like cars computers do now (the dealership can tell if you have a chip or modified system) - and they would have to account for irregularities or weather problems. Our GPS devices we have now work pretty good here - except in forests. And since 2/3 of oregon residents live in the Willamette valley - full of dense forests - this could pose a problem.
8. People REMEMBER: Gas taxes are usage fees THE SAME WAY but just collected differently. Currently, a large heavy vehicle will typically get much less mileage, and thus pay more per mile for usage. A motorcycle that gets 70mpg will pay much less gas tax, but also damages the road much less. If you drive a million miles a year - you pay gas taxes - thus mileage fees - evey gallon of gas you consume.
9. Oregon already taxes trucks heavily. Deisel taxes are higher than gasoline taxes - which sucks for those who drive the 50mpg Volkswagen TDIs. In addition, Oregon taxes trucks on a weight / miles driven scale IN ADDITION to the fuel taxes. Pretty steeply as I understand it. Thats why we have so many weigh stations on our highways.
10. There could be better ways. Toll roads. I always have thought they were a good choice - because then the people who use that specific road pay for it. Transponders. Could work just like toll roads - with less manpower requirements. Maybe a combination of all the solutions. Nothing is perfect.
11. I *like* not having to pump my gas. Last night it was damn cold and raining sideways. I got to sit in a warm car while someone else froze. I always watch them and make sure they don't F up. And AFAIK Oregon is not the only state that it is illegal to pump your own gas, New Jersey the other maybe? One on the east coast anyway.
12. The one most important thing they could do is either get rid of studded tires - or tax them heavily. They freaking destroy the roads! We get nice ruts - so deep you can take your hands off the steering wheel and let the car just steer itself in the "tracks". And they are ABSOLUTELY un needed. I ski regularly, and on a two wheel drive rear drive van - I make it just fine without studs. Have for 5 years now. Only need chains occasionally. People use studs forgetting that studded tires REDUCE your traction in wet or dry conditions. NW Oregon has mostly wet conditions. So by using studs you REDUCE your traction 99% of the time, so that the ONE day a year we MIGHT get Ice, or the once a week you ski, or the one time you need to go through the mountains - you will have traction. Dumbasses. This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I love when it is a sunny warm spring day, and I am walking around in a short sleeved shirt downtown Portland, and cars are driving by clacking with studs. Good thing they had them, those bone dry roads can be treachorus.
HELLO PEOPLE. STUFF IS NOT FREE. There is ALWAYS a cost somewhere. (I have heard people complaining that they had to pay a $3 use fee at a state park when before THAT policy they complained that trails that were washed out were not being fixed fast enough.)
Both roads and schools are equally useful to those who don't "use" them directly. Every time you buy a product in a store, you are making use of the roads that got that product to you. Every time you send a piece of mail, you are making use of the roads. And every time you fail to get mugged by gangs of punks roaming the streets with no education and no prospects for respectable work, you are using the public school system.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
In Ohio, if you ignore an orator on Decoration day to such an extent as to publicly play croquet or pitch horseshoes within one mile of the speaker's stand, you can be fined $25.00.
Women are prohibited from wearing patent leather shoes in public.
It is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday.
It is illegal to get a fish drunk.
The Ohio driver's education manual states that you must honk the horn whenever you pass another car.
Participating or conducting a duel is prohibited.
Breast feeding is not allowed in public.
It is illegal for more than five women to live in a house.
It is illegal to mistreat anything of great importance.
No one may be arrested on Sunday or on the Fourth of July.
I don't think Oregon has any patent on foolish laws. In fact, they tend to have extremely good ones.
Furthermore, there is a difference between "considering a law" and passing one.
But I guess it's too much to expect the typical slashdot poster or moderator to understand that.
Two positives: It taxes road use, and makes SUV's pay more per mile.
So simple. and better.
This goes to show that the real use of this GPS TAX is identification and location of vehicles.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.