What gives/. community? Here we have an interesting subject that is ripe for some serious discussion and the majority of posts are simply rants on how stupid the whole idea of road user fees is. I would think that the/. community would take this as a challenge given that there are some mighty bright people out there that could offer some useful suggestions.
This is a very interesting technological problem with political, administrative, temporal, spatial, and social (equity) dimensions. Fact is roads, aren't free. As it stands, gasoline taxes are insufficient to cover present, and even more importantly, future costs. At least the State of Oregon is looking ahead to the future. What is your state doing? Raising vehicle resistration fees? Heavily taxing new car purchases? We have a public transportation system that is the envy of most other metropolitan areas. The OR weight mile tax on trucking is innovative and quite different from what most other states are doing. If you are pissing off the trucking industry you know you are doing something right.:-) Looks over shouder!
We have a high quality natural environment here in OR that is worth preserving, even at the expense of certain conveniences. What most people don't understand is that many in OR see no problem with cetralized buraucracy or higher fees/taxes as long as it helps protect our quality of life. We keep raising out minimum wage. The citizens from 2 metropolitan counties recenty passed a temporary multi-year tax increase even though our economy is in the gutter and our unemployment rate is high. If we wanted to be like all of the other states, we could, but the citizens here choose to be different.
Back to the issue at hand. While the gas tax is easy to implement as there are few suppliers to tax, it is largely an invisible tax to the user. The idea behind user fees is to make drivers more aware of the daily (or weekly or monthly) costs of transportation. People will change their behavior (routes, modes, and times of travel) in response to real or preceived changes in transportatioin costs. For those living in urban areas, less congestion is a very good thing.
How best to design a fee-based system that protects privacy, while at the same time being fair to persons of lower incomes and persons who buy environmentally friendly cars? For example, with a GPS-based tracking system, is is possible to develop some kind of technology or design a system that strips out the ability to uniquely identify individuals? Can a "double blind" automated billing system be implemented such that the state has no idea who is who (via encryption or something)? What is the best way to implement road user fees whereby fee payments are quite "visible" to the user but simple to administer from the standpoint of the state? How would you address the spatial problem of charing user fees for driving on OR roads given that we want to also collect fees from out-of-state drivers using our roads. A GPS-based codon system fixed on the state boundary is not a perfect solution as it does not address the the non-resident problem. These are complex issues demanding innovative solutions.
Note: I worked on one of the earlier documents for the task force several sumers ago. I haven't been keeping up with it lately. I do know that some very bright people are involved with the project.
For those who wish to find out more about subject, see the ODOT Road User Fee Task Force webpage @ http://www.odot.state.or.us/ruftf/
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What gives /. community? Here we have an interesting subject that is ripe for some serious discussion and the majority of posts are simply rants on how stupid the whole idea of road user fees is. I would think that the /. community would take this as a challenge given that there are some mighty bright people out there that could offer some useful suggestions.
:-) Looks over shouder!
This is a very interesting technological problem with political, administrative, temporal, spatial, and social (equity) dimensions. Fact is roads, aren't free. As it stands, gasoline taxes are insufficient to cover present, and even more importantly, future costs. At least the State of Oregon is looking ahead to the future. What is your state doing? Raising vehicle resistration fees? Heavily taxing new car purchases? We have a public transportation system that is the envy of most other metropolitan areas. The OR weight mile tax on trucking is innovative and quite different from what most other states are doing. If you are pissing off the trucking industry you know you are doing something right.
We have a high quality natural environment here in OR that is worth preserving, even at the expense of certain conveniences. What most people don't understand is that many in OR see no problem with cetralized buraucracy or higher fees/taxes as long as it helps protect our quality of life. We keep raising out minimum wage. The citizens from 2 metropolitan counties recenty passed a temporary multi-year tax increase even though our economy is in the gutter and our unemployment rate is high. If we wanted to be like all of the other states, we could, but the citizens here choose to be different.
Back to the issue at hand. While the gas tax is easy to implement as there are few suppliers to tax, it is largely an invisible tax to the user. The idea behind user fees is to make drivers more aware of the daily (or weekly or monthly) costs of transportation. People will change their behavior (routes, modes, and times of travel) in response to real or preceived changes in transportatioin costs. For those living in urban areas, less congestion is a very good thing.
How best to design a fee-based system that protects privacy, while at the same time being fair to persons of lower incomes and persons who buy environmentally friendly cars? For example, with a GPS-based tracking system, is is possible to develop some kind of technology or design a system that strips out the ability to uniquely identify individuals? Can a "double blind" automated billing system be implemented such that the state has no idea who is who (via encryption or something)? What is the best way to implement road user fees whereby fee payments are quite "visible" to the user but simple to administer from the standpoint of the state? How would you address the spatial problem of charing user fees for driving on OR roads given that we want to also collect fees from out-of-state drivers using our roads. A GPS-based codon system fixed on the state boundary is not a perfect solution as it does not address the the non-resident problem. These are complex issues demanding innovative solutions.
Note: I worked on one of the earlier documents for the task force several sumers ago. I haven't been keeping up with it lately. I do know that some very bright people are involved with the project.
For those who wish to find out more about subject, see the ODOT Road User Fee Task Force webpage @ http://www.odot.state.or.us/ruftf/
Thomas Kimpel
p.s. My first post ever!