Oregon Considers GPS-based Road Taxes 696
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.
Yeah, this'll work (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.phrack-dont-give-a-shit-about-dmca.o
Re:Yeah, this'll work (Score:5, Informative)
*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.
Why not just get a turnpike? (Score:3, Informative)
Read more -- Oregon DOT (Score:3, Informative)
Poor Oregon. But imagine what people said about them when they came up with a gas tax??
Re:Only pay during sunny weather... (Score:2, Informative)
Because fuel efficiency == bad (!) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
FULL faith and credit (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, it's Full Faith. Nothing requires states to act in good faith.
Someone else mentions the right to travel, which refers not to travel so much as discrimination against out-of-state immigrants with respect to things like welfare benefits and voter registration. Irrelevant here; there is nothing discriminatory about requiring everyone to pay for the road they drive on.
Save yourself a fortune... (Score:2, Informative)
GPS Blocker [phrack-don...t-dmca.org]
Not exactly... (Score:1, Informative)
Regardless of the above comment, I still think Oregon lawmakers don't know what they are doing.
That is not the only foolish law in Oregon... (Score:3, Informative)
Oregon has a lot of foolishness surrounding laws. For example, see this: Airplanes are safe, but laws often crash. [hevanet.com].
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.
For a while, there was a law in Portland that said you could be fined $400 for jaywalking. This was especially foolish because there are many times when the streets of Portland are empty.
Recently I talked with a programmer friend who said that he had spent a week finding a subtle bug that mildly affected the user interface of one of his company's products.
However, when I talk with people in Oregon government about the major defects in Oregon law, they just dismiss the issue with very little thought. One recently told me something to the effect of, "It would be too difficult to make a more perfect law." Another said, "This is the legislature's responsibility," which I understood to mean, "I don't have to think about it."
Oregon yearly motor vehicle license fees (Score:3, Informative)
While some states have a yearly vehicle property tax (like Colorado, Taxachusetts, Rhode Island) that assesses a significant fee per year, most of that goes to local government for schools and stuff.
Most states have a fee of $30-$80
Some states, like Michigan, have an ad valorem, which is based on the value of the vehicle, and so people with more expensive cars pay more (this isn't a property tax because it is a flat percentage, it isn't based on property tax millage, and the money goes to the state for funding roads, not the local government.) It is gently rising, and my friend with a 2002 Corvette pays about $120, which isn't severe for an expensive vehilcle (and it caps off at some value.) That is clearly a progressive system for road financing irrelevant to how much ya drive or how much wear and tear you put on the roads.
New York has a system which has some type of base amount (like $40, but I can't remember what it is) and then adds some surcharge if the vehicle is heavy. That's essentially the same as the fuel tax, but once again, it offers a stable revenue base that fuel taxes can build off of.
Another suggestion is to change the fuel tax system to a hybrid style. Most states that I know of assess a fuel tax on each gallon of gasoline sold (like in Ohio, it's 22 cents...I think.) Instead, Ohio could consider making it 18 cents per gallon sold, then add another 5 cents for every dollar's of gasoline sold. That way, if gas prices go up and sales go down, the revenue stream is a bit more stable (and it still works well if prices go down, and people end up buying more gasoline.
At any rate, Michigan style ad valorem, New York vehicle weight surcharge, hybrid style gasoline taxes or simply raising yearly fees are significantly better ways of road financing than the complexity of a GPS system.)
Re:No reason given? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Would you quit blaming California? (Score:3, Informative)
"Last year in Oregon, 963 people fell off their bicycles -- and drowned"
Re:Oregon California (Score:1, Informative)
In oregon not much ever happens to sucessfully increase taxes, the people here do not like having to pay what they already do and are not willing to increase taxes.
In oregon taxes must be approved buy ballote/vote. Historicly almost all tax increases are turned down. We are still operating on tax laws from the '30s. And it is HURTING the state.
-start rant--
I wish my fellow Oregonians would open there eyes and vote in some new taxes as our state NEEDS them. (and if your from oregon and still think we need lower taxes well I was born and raised here and I think we do... the school systems here SUCK both k~12 and higher edu.)
-end rant--
Re:Don't gasoline taxes do about the same thing? (Score:3, Informative)
For the most part, I travel by bicycle, actually--but I'll bite.
The most-cited work on road wear as a function of vehicle type and weight was conducted by the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) in the 1950s and early 1960s. Their Road Test found an approximate fourth-power relation between rate of road wear and axle weight. Much modern highway policy around the world is based on these tests.
In 1989 Irick et al. (working for ARE Inc.) prepared a report Impact of Truck Characteristics on Pavements: Truck Load Equivalency Factors for the U.S. Federal Highway Administration; it cited a second to third-power dependence affected by road type and number of axles. Also in 1989 Small, Winston, and Evans published a book, Road Work: A New Highway Pricing and Investment Policy. It cites a third-power relationship between axle weight and road wear.
Depending on the experimental conditions, doubling vehicle weight will result in anywhere from four to sixteen times as much road wear. An SUV is not going to cause immediate catastrophic failure of roadways, but it does cause significantly more wear than a smaller automobile.
That said, the amount of wear caused by any passenger vehicle--Geo Metro or Ford Explorer--is virtually nil compared to the damage done by a semi. The difference is three to four orders of magnitude. Strictly speaking, it is logical to charge an SUV owner more per driving mile than a subcompact driver--but it would be much more effective to get as many large trucks off the road as possible. How to do so is left as an exercise for the Oregon state legislature.
Good solution in Phrack #60 (Score:2, Informative)
Hoch