Looks like it's time to boycott the entire state of Oregon.

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Agreed....

bugmenot.com can be your friend. But the article is pretty old news about Oregon's continuing trial program to replace the gas tax with a per-mile user fee based on miles driven as recorded by a GPS device attached to each car. Doesn't strike me as too feasible given concerns about privacy and the ease with which GPS satellite signals can be blocked and jammed. Also seems counterproductive since it removes part of the incentive for people to get more fuel-efficient vehicles. No mention on how it would apply to visitors who wouldn't have the necessary devices installed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ trust the politicos to take a relatively simple problem and make the solution so expensive and convoluted that you're even worse off than when you started. Maybe they'd like to GIVE us all GPS for our cars....but then they'd raise the registration fees on the vehicle to cover the cost. fie upon them all.

Just wait- Even now the thieves are considering how to tax your electric bill with a road use tax "In case you charge your hybrid off your main power". This will be like the "RIAA fees" on recordable media- "We are certain you will copy our property". The Alabama grifters are trying to collect a "Use Tax" if you go to Georgia and buy no sales tax groceries. Vote out Incumbents- Time to start over.

Ah, a kindred spirit. Another thing about pols that enrages me is the way automobiles (and other merchandise that is resold when used) are taxed at the same rate over and over and over again. Let's say that a car is sold and resold over its life an average of three times. Sales tax on the new car's sale is

7-8 %. Then a couple of years later, it's resold, and once again, 7-8% tax is realized by the state. another few years and it's again resold, and once again the 7-8% tax applies. People tend to play down the sale price of a used car they've bought (in a private sale between two individuals), but if you try to tell the state you bought a four year old car for $1000, they'll laugh and say "No, how much was it REALLY?" and probably try to nick you for the Kelley Blue Book retail value, regardless of what the sale price had been. If life were equitable, the law would state that once the applicable sales tax has been paid on an item of value, any sale of the article thereafter would be tax-free.

Agreed....

In Virginia we have Personal Property Tax. We pay tax on vehicles and other items every year based upon their value. The Republican Governor we had eight years ago forced the Legislature to accept a phase-out of the tax over a period of years, but the last two Democrat governors we've had are keeping it in the budget.

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Lee Younglove is motoring about town in a way that could be the future of driving in America: A state-installed GPS unit in his Subaru Outback is counting every mile he's logging, and a special transmitter in the car will tell the pump at one of two Portland gas stations how many miles he has traveled.

Soon, as part of a state experiment, he'll be paying 1.2 cents for every mile but won't be charged the state's 24-cents-a-gallon gas tax.

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That's because Oregon sees little future in its gas tax, which has been at the same level since 1993. Voters don't want to raise it, inflation has eaten much of its value and fuel-efficient cars such as hybrids are reducing collections.

As an alternative, the state is experimenting with a "virtual tollway" system in which a road-user fee would replace the gas tax.

The user fee is already a reality in 280 volunteers' cars, in which systems worth about $200 each were installed this spring. Volunteers are paid $300 each.

Later this year, the state will stop collecting the gas tax at the pump for some of these volunteers and start charging the mileage fee. Another group will pay 10 cents a mile during rush hour and fourth-tenths of a cent for each mile at other times. The fees are for in-state travel only. A third set of volunteers will be a control group, still paying the gas tax.

Results of the yearlong experiment, along with recommendations, will be presented to the Legislature three years from now so lawmakers can decide whether to impose the nation's first statewide user-fee system, aided by satellites.

The trial already has raised questions about whether Big Brother has found a new way to track motorists. But the state insists the GPS units are rigged only to count miles.

"Some people chose not to participate because they didn't want the government in any way to be tracking," Younglove, 62, a retired information technology specialist, said about volunteers' initial meeting with state officials.

James Whitty, the manager of the state's project, said tracking data aren't being recorded in the state-installed units, "but some just don't believe it."

"There's no tracking at all because we don't want to track. We don't care," he said.

But GPS technology is designed to identify whereabouts, and it's conceivable that insurance companies could force motorists to enable tracking features, unless a state bans it, said Lillie Coney, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Other state and federal agencies, as well as law enforcement, also could be interested in the tracking data, she said.

"Somebody could say, `I think my husband is cheating on me--can you tell me if he's in this neighborhood?'" Coney added. "Insurance companies will want to use it: If you want us to insure you, you'll have to give us your GPS information. . . . Information is currency."

Whitty said when the Oregon Legislature officially considers replacing the tax with a mileage fee, the state transportation agency would propose measures addressing outsider access to GPS tracking information.

Oregon has a history of trailblazing with motoring revenues. In 1919 it became the first state to impose a gas tax, and its trial with a road-user fee system is being watched around the nation as other states struggle with transportation budget shortfalls, officials said.

"It's a pretty novel approach," said Matt Sundeen of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Only a few states, such as Ohio and Washington, have been able to persuade voters to raise the gasoline tax to cover the rising cost of maintaining roads, experts said.

A recent Federal Highway Administration report put the country's shortfall for highway maintenance at $30 billion a year as the nation's vehicle miles traveled rise at 1.8 percent a year, said Jack Basso, director of management and business development at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.

Other states have remedied shortfalls by letting the private sector operate their tollways, as is the case with the Indiana Toll Road, Basso said.

As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway system, Oregon's experiment is viewed as possibly ushering in a new era because its technology captures the imagination of motorists and the attention of academics.

One of the latter is business professor Joseph Giglio of Northeastern University in Boston.

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He said if motorists are to be charged by the mile, such distance pricing should come with money-back guarantees for smooth driving at certain average speeds at different hours of the day.

"I'm a customer" with certain expectations, Giglio said. "It's time that transportation departments get held to the same kind of standards."

Whitty said Giglio's concept is too far ahead of reality.

"Academics love to dream up wonderful things, but they don't look at the practical things," Whitty said. "Our whole thing is to produce something practical, which means it's affordable, it works on an administrative standpoint and it has to be technologically feasible."

Younglove, the volunteer, says the only thing he doesn't like about the experiment is the index card-size monitor because its blue screen casts a glare.

Other elements are barely noticeable: a matchbook-size pad on the exterior next to a 5-inch radio antenna. The data collector is in the trunk.

State officials are anticipating that GPS units will be standard on all vehicles in 10 years or so. General Motors plans to install such navigational systems on 1 million 2007 models.

"It may not be the answer," another volunteer, William Patterson, 38, said about the GPS-aided mileage system as he drove to the bank and grocery store, "but we won't know until they experiment with it and find out."

- - -

Tapping other technologies

The infrastructure for virtual tollways is a decade or so into the future, according to Joseph Giglio, a business professor at Northeastern University.

But besides GPS units, other technologies that Giglio said could be useful for counting mileage include:

- Cell phones: Some providers already offer GPS tracking so 911 emergency calls can be traced. If cell phones were used to count per-mile fees, dropped calls could be an issue. The upside is cell towers are already beside roads.

- Wi-Fi: The wireless networks many laptops use to access the Internet could also be used to track an automobile's movement. But each car would need a unique chip. One catch: A city would have to be fully wired. And there's the problem that Wi-Fi occasionally fails.

- 5.9-gigahertz dedicated short-range communications: This wireless technology would allow motorists to have real-time communication with roadside towers and other vehicles. But it would require construction of hundreds of costly curbside stations to collect data.

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The whole point is that people are buying more fuel efficient vehicles, and the state is losing tax dollars as a result. The state feel it has a right to your money, and when you find ways to keep from giving it to them, they find new ways to take it from you.

No

:-)

Are you talking about gutless politicians like Bill Clinton who was the man in charge then?

The congress was Republican-controlled, rightard. They all share the blame, including the typical stupid, ignorant, selfish, short-sighted American.

"Duuhhh.... Cheap and plentiful gas goes on forever. Duuhhh... Gonna buy me a barge!"

Don't worry, they'll have a working crack out for the Oregon per mile gas-tax metering equipment in no time at all. If nothing else, cut the power and wrap the unit in aluminum foil (RF Block) for three out of four weeks in the month, and disconnect the speedometer so the odometer agrees with the black box.

Or all the Oregon residents who can will be registering their cars out of state to evade the tax - which would be a big turnaround, considering that most of the motorhomes registered in Oregon at $12 a year are in reality based permanently out of state - California's Motorhome tags can be over $2000 a year for a brand new Bus-style rig.

I rank this plan as "Doomed To Failure".

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He couldn't because the Bubba-licans were so strong in the Senate and House. :-)

Oh, and Gingrich and those other WASPs were fixated on Clinton's sex life for some odd reason, so an awful lot of worthwhile things got sidetracked.

I thought that was Libertarians and all those Militia guys that thought this?

I don't think they said that gas guzzlers and hybrids would be taxed at the same rate, did they?

There's actually a certain amount of sense behind this whole plan.

Let's say I drive to work in a large city. I might drive 10 miles each way, but actually use twice the gas of someone who drives 10 miles each way on the Interstate in Idaho. Currently I would be paying twice the highway tax of the person in Idaho - even though I'm using the road the same amount.

But maybe the state wants to encourage people to use public transportation? They might then slap a really high tax rate per mile on people who drive into and out of the city during rush hour.

And what about offroad vehicles and other things with gas engines? It's not really fair for them to have to pay highway taxes.

I'm not sure that what Oregon is trying is the best way to do it, but it's an intriguing solution to a real problem.

First of all, it's apples and oranges to compare fuel taxes in Oregon and Idaho. Surely Oregon isn't doing that. What Oregon is noticing is that fuel consumption is on a down trend within the state. They are losing tax dollars as a result. They want to institute a Mile Tax to collect the same taxes from gas sippers as from gas guzzlers.

That certainly is a possibility, but is not a stated goal of the program. At least it was not a stated goal in the report I saw.

Well, if they wanted to collect highway taxes AND those taxes were based on consumption AND the taxes collected were decreasing, they would want to find another way to base and collect the taxes. They want to install a GPS receiver/cellphone transmitter (or radio transmitter, it doesn't really matter how the data is transmitted) in every car and truck registerd in the state, then collect a tax based on the distance travelled not the fuel consumed. This is their plan, collect taxes based on travel not on consumption. If the tax was based on consumption -- as it is today -- then those that consume more pay more, but when the tax is based on distance, then those that drive economical vehicles will pay the same as those who drive the land yachts. The reason for the shift in the taxation method is that fuel economy standards are driving consumption down, and the state is losing money.

I wasn't comparing fuel taxes, I was comparing amount of traffic on the road.

Now, I'm lost. The State of Oregon is looking at a funding pool drying up as its citizens move to more fuel efficient cars and trucks -- mostly cars I'd suppose. Yourj post that I replied to seems to be looking at consumption as well, I see no indication that you're looking at traffic. Traffic is moot though, that is not what the state is looking at.

Whether or not the state ought to be looking at traffic is a valid discussion though.