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Satellite-Assisted European Road Tolls Next?
Roland Piquepaille writes "In 'Pay-as-you-go motoring just around the corner,' the European Space Agency (ESA) says that "road tolls could be made fairer if satellite-assisted distance pricing is implemented." Experiments are currently underway in Ireland, Portugal and Germany, before a possible extension to other countries. Potential benefits of such a road tolling system would be fairer implementation of charging on a 'pay for use' basis. All these experiments are using the US-operated Global Positioning System (GPS). But in 2010, when the system is fully implemented, it will use the Galileo satellite system."
Could the black box track the satellites inside a Faraday cage?
http://yetanotherpoliticalrant.blogspot.com
One thing that scares me about these systems is the potential for spying on people.
As soon as it is mandatory for cars to have transmitting GPS recievers to track their movements on highways, then it will become standard issue in cities and other areas. Call me paranoid, but I don't WANT the government tracking me like that.
Second, along the same lines, there's the potential that the system could be used to issue things like speeding tickets and other traffic citations. I guess this is another case of the fact that people appreciate the right to BEND the law. There are some toll-systems in place now that give speeding citations if you cover the distance between two toll-booths in too short a time, but as far as I'm aware their deployment is limited.
Any comments?
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
Alright, let's ignore the spying/creepyness aspect for one second. It's just plain obnoxious to tax residents, not buisnesses, but residents, who go one more roadtrips and commute farther. One should know where the tolls are and how much they are instead of just a sattelite odometer tax.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
Of course we wouldn't want SUV owners pay more per mile than economy car owners do we? That wouldn't be fair!
..from current toll-road models?
For instance, when you get on the Mass Pike (the main line of the Pike, not the extension into Boston), you get a ticket. You turn in the ticket when you get off, and the toll is computed based on how far you travel (a rough formula is distance in miles times approximately 3.5 cents/mile with a minimum toll of 25 cents).
Barrier toll highways (a la the Garden State) substitute fairly regularly spaced toll booths charging a constant (and higher than the ticket type) rate.
In both cases, it's charging for the amount of road usage.
What is the big advantage of this system over a fuel tax?
Your favorite
The government hopes to raise 650 million euros a year through the new charges.
Even given privacy/personal liberties angle to be completely aside (which I am not ready to do just yet!), the only "fair" way to implement such a system would be if "they" would promise to take less tax on private citizen as a result of that. No, "they" just want to get more bucks to spend on bureocracy... (relating to the old argument "If not for the Govt., you would not have the modern highway system")
Paul B.
Fuel tax has the dual advantage of discouraging driving and discouraging vehicles that use large amounts of fuel.
Oh, wait, Europe already does that.... HOW many $/gallon?
But really, some of the proposals are to tax what were freeways -- yet it is clear better for the environment and safer if people use freeway-style roads instead of local roads.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
I don't see what this could possibly accomplish that a tax on gasoline couldn't
;-)
For the simple answer, a tax on fuel rather than miles "unfairly" nails those who chose to destroy our environment (quicker than the rest) by driving big gas-guzzlers.
Of course, one could counter with the idea that gas-guzzlers also tend to weigh more, causing more damage to the road, thus warranting a higher tax regardless of the environmental impact, but, don't say that too loud around the current US oligarchy...
Now me, I think we should tax based on total time spent on the road, to penalize grannies out to cause their regular Sunday afternoon traffic-jam.
You can track vehicle positions. It's much harder to track which roads have been used.
I've done a bunch of work with GPS-based vehicle tracking systems--and it is entirely feasible to track vehicle positions. However--it is something else entirely to track which roads a given vehicle has used. The problem isn't with GPS--the problem is with the accuracy of map data: sometimes there's a pretty substantial difference between where GPS reports are, and where the actual roadway is supposed to be. (A very common instance of this is service roads--the roads that typically parallel a limited-access highway in urban areas. Is the truck on I-78 or on the adjacent service road?
This is a ridiculously expensive way to charge tolls.
This problem has already been solved in the U.S.: you can travel from Massachusetts to Virginia using EZ-Pass. And the EZ-Pass system costs lots less to implement. For starters, the on-windshield transponders cost a few bucks; substantially less than even the lowest-cost GPS vehicle locators (which use cellular telephone control channels to report).
So why dream up such a boondoggle?
Oh...that's right. Because the Galileo system is just an out-of-this-world waste of money. So the European Space Agency needs to dream up problems for their solution to solve. And the Europeans wonder why their economies are stagnant.
Might be this - EVERYTHING you do is monitored and metered. Your speed will be checked in real time. A fine is assessed based perhaps on how much you're exceeded the speed limit, and for how long. Your insurance bill may vary month to month in proportion to our speeding. Your driving habits will be monitored. If you take an excursion to somewhere you usually don't go, you'll be flagged for extra scrutiny. And you'll have to pay a special registration tax if you want to keep driving an older vehicle that doesn't have any monitoring black boxes.
They could charge more when they know you travel more miles than average.
How about we look at it this way: I pay TAXES to fund the roads I don't use because I don't own a car and have chosen to use public transport. You COMMUNISTS are trying to make me pay for a service which I don't even use, meanwhile you foul the air I breathe with your toxic fumes.
I think it is fair and reasonable you should have to pay very high petrol taxes, not that you should give up your privacy. You consume natural resources, tons of funds are spent on building roads and maintaining them and you pollute the environment.
I fail to see how "roads" are a right, they are a privelage - you should expect to pay for them from your own pocket. Don't talk to me about "freedom".
Specifically, the Oregon legislature, in its infinite lack of wisdom, proposed replacing the current gas tax with a GPS based system that would track the total number of miles you drive regardless of road type (Previous Slashdot Article). The GPS receiver/controller would be mounted on the car and would report the number of miles driven to a receiver built into the gas station so the road tax could be added to your total. They thought this would be better received than an increase in the gas tax.
And they were wrong. Even those not concerned about obvious privacy issues objected to the costs of the GPS unit, costs of upgrading gas stations, getting billed for travel on private roads and the fact that it penalizes onwers of fuel efficient vehicles by charging a flat rate. That and refitting older vehicles. And billing out-of-state drivers. The list of problems was endless, the benefits were few to none. The backlash was noteworthy and I have not see much more about it since it was first proposed; with luck the legislative will realize just how bad of an idea it was and drop it forever.
Oh, in case some think I am an anti-tax nutcase, I support reasonable increases in gas taxes and vehicle registration fees to pay for the massive road network I enjoy so much. Tollways, however, annoy me to no end.
Why would one want to charge people for travelling on roads? To pay for upkeep and maintenance.
Well, why don't you charge more to those who destroy the road the most?
And what does make one destroy the road more than the next guy? WEIGHT.
Weight. The heavier you are, the more you destroy the road.
So you have to get heavier vehicles to pay more for the road.
Now, what correlates nicely with vehicle weight?
PETROL CONSUMPTION. That's right. The heavier you are, the more petrol you need just to move about.
And, guess what? Petrol is taxed. Yes! There is actually a (gasp!) tax on petrol!!!
So, the more petrol you take, the more tax you pay.
And, better yet, you pay the tax wherever you travel. No need for toll booths, no need for fancy schmanzy technology.
Plain simple good old-fashioned accounting will do it.
Want more money for the roads? Want it to be collected fairly?
Just increase the petrol tax.
Opt out of what?? Out of getting monitored for your speed? Isn't that kind of a no brainer?
or.. do you mean "opt out" as in, just NOT sign up for the service? Thankfully it's optional...
Stewey
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
actually, WAAS is already implemented, so 1metre accuracy is available in WAAS zones. LAAS is also implemented near most of the US coastline, and will be implemented at US and worldwide airports over the next 5-10 years, making a mockery of galileo. Also, due to the nature of WAAS/LAAS, they inherently defeat the American's selective availability
Nothing irks me more then automated ticketing machines, wether it be red light traps or speed traps they are bad, bad, bad, bad and bad.
But if the governement has enough information to say that I did $32 worth of traveling last month then they also have the information they need to mail me speeding tickets.
Evil.
It isn't speeding tickets I am against.
On the contrary, a smart and well run police department does an enormous public safety service by running traps.
You post a cop car on a busy and fast stretch of road and you make a point.
People like me slow down and do a reality check.
Others get written tickets.
It slows traffic to a reasonable level.
But automated speed traps, what public safety mechanism do they serve?
I have never gotten one of those tickets. But I can only imagine what it is like. How long does it take for them to issue it to you?
Do you even remember the stretch of road where it occured?
Does the automated speed trap actually affect the speed of the traffic?
While I am for using police and governemnt to enforce laws I am against using the police as a pure revenue mechanism.
Anyone that allows a GPS tolled road is not very far away from automated GPS ticketing.
There is a design lesson in here.
In Germany, the toll collect system was supposed to begin September 1st. The implementing consortium (bigshots like DaimlerChrysler and Deutsche Telekom) missed that deadline, so it was pushed back to November 1st, and this new deadline is in doubt, too. The On-Board-Units that every truck has to carry are
- not enough: the consortium initially figured they'd need about 50000 units for the entire country
- defective: as many as half of the delivered units show defects. Some even self-destruct on starting the truck's engine
- expensive: they cost several hundred Euros apiece, and logistics companies who have to buy them are complaining
PR-wise it's a disaster.Last week, manager-magazin.de ran an interview with Peter Newole, executive at Austria's equivalent, Europpass system, which does the same things TollCollect is supposed to do, only that it's cheaper and actually works. (The interview is in German, sorry.) Basically, what Mr. Newole says is that the two systems are doing similar things in vastly different ways. In both countries, trucks have to carry boxes that can communicate with base stations to register their location. Based on these location profiles, the toll is calculated. But the design of these boxes is completely different:
The design lesson is obvious: The more of something you are going to deploy, the simpler it has to be. Put the logic into the servers and make the clients as dumb as you can.
"The current US-operated GPS system only allows this type of accuracy for military purposes. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to such accurate targeting systems."
A pair of blunt scissors is all you need to open most things. I feel it is a little irresponsible to give civilians (including criminals and terrorists) access to box cutters (as was used by the terrorists two years ago). Sheesh.
A fuel tax is a very unfair way to tax cars, especially in Europe
No, it's perfectly fair, what you pay is based on your consumption of fuel which tends to be proportional to how much you drive.
Our present system tends to car users in rural areas more than car owners in urban areas because the distances they have to drive tend to be larger.
This is what i'm not fully understanding. A person in a rural area has to drive more then a person in a urban area. They use more road daily, create more wear and tear on the road daily, they pay more money to use the road cause they use it more.
More over, less users on a particular road doesn't mean less cost, far from it. If you want to be realistic it costs more money per person on a lightly traveled road to put it in then it does on a with more people each paying their fair share.
Charging people a tax based on how many miles they use the road seems to be exactly the target goal. A tax on the fuel it uses is perfectly fair because it not only takes distance traveled into account, but also the vehicels weight.
Now... if you still think it's unfair for rural users to pay more money because they are required to use a car, there are two easy solutions.
1. Lower the tax for the rural users, either at the pump, with a card based tax discount, or some sorta refund from the tax department.
2. Move to a place with public transport so you don't have to use a car at all.
You can start nickpicking about rural users feeling like they are getting the short end of the stick, just as major metropolitan areas might feel it's not nessicary for their hard earned dollars to go into rural roads they don't even use, but let's face it... we all benifit from roads. Without roads you wouldn't have such swift access to goods and services, esp if you are a rural user. It's only common sence that a group effort to fund roads benifits all people. Rural users pay more to get anywhere... that's just a fact of living in a rural area.
If you still feel it is unfair... then I know at least in england there is a major major tax break for switching to propane fuel, as well as the benifit of lower cost per gallon due to less taxes. Propane is one of the lowest cost conversions i'm aware for automobiles. Even rural cars polute, you don't don't notice it as much.
Sorry, taxing users based on how much road they use makes perfect sence to me, and fuel is a fairly accurate means of metering useage. Drive a motorcycle, you use less fuel and pay less tax.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Call me cynical, but is this just a way to effectively increase fuel tax and to keep the truckers off the governments back.
A couple of years ago in the UK there was a fuel crisis for a few days caused by truckers and farmers blocking the distribution depts and refineries. In little more than a day panicing motorists emptied every single filling station in the UK.
Since then we have seen the London congestion charge and the new motorway north of Birmingham will be a toll road (approx 6 pounds for approx 40 miles). Petrol prices have remained lower than the 86p/litre (approx 4 pounds per gallon) that caused the protests.
I somehow doubt the tax will hit the truckers anywhere near as hard as they will hit car drivers.
Philip
Signatures are broken
Driver's manuals for both US states where I lived (NY and CA)got to great length to explain that "driving is a priviledge, not a right", this is why cops can stop and search a car, but not a pedestrian (without probable cause), AFAIK.
Paul B.