Oregon Ping
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Posted on 03/26/2006 5:10:28 AM PST by runvus
Gas tax on miles, not gallons, tested PORTLAND, Ore., March 25 (UPI) -- Oregon is testing the idea of collecting highway funds through a tax on miles driven, rather than gasoline consumed.
Eighty percent of Oregon's highway money comes from its 24-cents-per-gallon gas tax. If the state promotes reducing gasoline consumption and consumers tend to buy the fuel-efficient vehicles, including hybrids, highway revenues would take a hit, The New York Times reported.
The test program uses a global positioning system to track miles driven, using a black box to calculate how many miles are clocked in-state, out of state and during rush hour.
The experiment is designed to increase state revenue for road maintenance without raising gasoline taxes, but critics say collecting GPS records poses new privacy issues.
"The existence of such a database, which would, for the first time in history, allow for the creation of detailed daily itineraries of every driver, raises obvious privacy concerns," said David L. Sobel, general counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington.
Most brakes on exec jets are very bitey when taxiing. In citations I rarely steer with the nose wheel. An occasional nudge on the brake on one side or the other steers just fine.
Oregon Ping
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I seem to recall from somewhere that the damage is proportional to the fourth power of the weight.
What about vehicles with no GPS? I have 16 and none of them has it.
"No, there is no sales tax on goods. Oregon does not have a real estate transfer tax either. Oregon only has a 9% income tax. Also, we have gas station attendents pump our gas!!"
But we have a pretty hefty property tax. I would much rather trade the property tax for a sales tax. If we could just get rid of the stinking liberals in the cities we'd be okay. Unfortunately liberals congregate in cesspools.
What are you talking about? This scheme was the brainchild of a Republican senator (Bruce Starr from Hillsboro) and the task force that is putting it into place was created by a Republican led legislature.
You seem to be forgetting studded tires that little cars use to tear up the roads - at least here in Eugene.
I like it the way it is - no tracking devices on any of my vehicle, ever!
Insurance companies want to have GPS units in every car..and sensors that track your speed.
And there will be people that say..."I feel like that's a good thing!!"
So, they didn't eliminate the gas tax, but added a mileage tax on top of it? Terrific. What progress.
Sure, but not by Joe Six-pack.
Different kinds of damage. That's surface abrasion.
Yet.............
Until they make it part of buying car insurance or registering your property.
It still has to be repaired.
Only after a beeper is shoved up your @$$ so far only the car is tracked. But doesn't miles driven track gasoline consumed anyway?
Wanna bet?
But you know, taxing by the mile instead of by the gallon would be more fair. Roads are designed and built according to the demand that is expected to be placed on them, and any vehicle occupying a lane, regardless of the amount of fuel it uses, contributes equally to that expense with any other. Most maintenance is needed because of time and weather regardless of use, though any idiot can see the wear and tear that is obviously caused by heavy trucks, and they should and do pay proportionally more because of that.
So for the average schmuck going to get the groceries, to work, going fishing, or to the Saturday market, in his or her Hummer, Geo, Prius, Gizmo, motorcycle or bicycle, paying exactly the same rate for each and every mile traveled upon a public thoroughfare, sounds perfectly reasonable to me, as long as it completely replaces the gas tax and is as nearly revenue neutral as possible.
Now on the other issue of government tracking with the GPS, here is how the Oregon system, as proposed, is set up: The GPS device is programmed to record distance traveled within the state, and to discount distance traveled outside of the state. The data is to be be collected at each fill-up at participating fueling stations in the test markets. The promise has been made that these GPS devices are not capable of tracking a vehicle's movement other than to record miles traveled outside the state so those miles can be discounted. But a reality check is in order. First, a GPS receiver is just that, a receiver. By itself, it does not and can not ever transmit real time data about an individual unit's whereabouts. But, it can be programmed to record a precise itinerary and communicate with other devices which can, within their own specific capability, exchange that data with other devices. Whether or not that could be done in real time would depend on whether such capability exists within those other connected devices. The main point here is that the government's statement that it would not be possible to use it's data collection system for tracking specific whereabouts at particular times is demonstrably false. By necessity, the capability is designed into the hardware. The software will control what it will actually do, so whether or not you like this has to boil down to who you trust.
As for me, I like the idea of paying by the mile under the conditions I stated above, but I am not in favor of the technology that is being used to collect the data. Why are we expected to trust the state? Should the state not be expected to trust us? Right now the state doesn't mandate that I buy all my gas in Oregon, and my city has it's own tax and doesn't require it either, but for practical reasons, that's where I get most of it. For other practical reasons, I maintain a working odometer, and I would be perfectly capable of truthfully reporting it's reading on a quarterly return. Thousands of folks already do it for weight mile taxes on heavy trucks, and if it's good enough for them it's good enough for me.
The only extra expense then would be for the majority of bicycles that don't have odometers. But they can be had for ten or fifteen bucks and that seems reasonable to me, since they have gotten a free ride for so long. I say let's do it.
No it isn't. The intent behind road placement is to provide transportation connections. The gas tax is placed to provide for that connection. It also serves as an economic incentive for folks to choose the most economical way to to use that fuel. Gas guzzlers are not economical and they wear the road more.
This is just so wrong on so many levels...
One of the sad things is that they want to punish drivers of less efficient vehicles by charging them more in taxes. But what they hide is the fact that the driver of a less efficient vehicle already pays more in gasoline taxes by the mile they drive, since their vehicle gets fewer miles to the gallon. Hence they use more gas per mile traveled, and therefore pay more in taxes.
But just like the fact that there's always room for jello, there's always more room for more taxes, especially if you're trying to punish certain behaviors.
This is going to require putting GPS tranceivers in your car, which will be able to track everywhere you go. Leftists really hate privacy.
Mark
Uh, we already have that. City sewer rate here is based on winter average water consumption (so at least we don't have to pay extra for water used for irrigation). We also have a separate fee based loosely on square footage, for "storm water treatment" (i.e. a rain tax), though the storm water flows through a series of open ditches into a lake with no treatment other than filtering through natural vegetation. But it is quality runoff. Otters, not seen around here in ages, have actually taken up residence in the system as of last year. The ditched stolen bikes and shopping carts don't seem to bother them. Our company's heavy equipment dealership is right next to one of the main canals. We keep booms around all the storm drains to catch small amounts of oil that could get in there, so it goes in reasonably clean (and as you can imagine it is watched very closely and any sheen detected downstream from us gets us a visit from the city). But the biggest water polluter in this area is the government. The county fairgrounds has repeatedly washed heaps of nitrate laden manure into the system. Causes a big stink (so to speak) each time it happens. So now their drainage goes to the sewer system, and you know who gets to pay for that.
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