A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue (road repair)

=========
The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your
location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.
==========

Ok, this is just plain stupid.

Instead of increasing various state and federal gas taxes on a regional
or local basis to keep pace with road-maintenance costs, lets add a
whole new layer of fees and the bureaucracy and technology needed to
collect it.

Why is making you pay more for gas a better way to fund road repair?
Because a better way to measure AND TAX your impact on roads and
highways is by the amount of energy (fuel) you consume because a good
chunk of that energy is ultimately what causes road damage.

If you drive a small car (2800 lbs) with a small engine (1.8L) then your
car's ability to cause wear and tear on roads and highways is not the
same as someone with a 4,000 lb pickup truck with 6L engine. That's why
measuring how far you drive is a bull**** way to measure and recover
your share of road repair costs.

The amount of fuel you buy on a daily, weekly, monthly or yearly basis
is a far better way to approximate how much road damage you yourself
cause, and hence setting the appropriate amount of tax on fuel is the
logical, low-cost, less technology-centric, less personally-invasive way
to fund road maintenance.

Full story:

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-...,6090226.story

Be selective in quoting the following (do not mindlessly full-quote it):

=================

WASHINGTON — As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to
mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in
a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car.

The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that
information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt
in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system
for funding America's major roads.

The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense
debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental
groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep
track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then
use the information to draw up a tax bill.

The tea party is aghast. The American Civil Liberties Union is deeply
concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.

And while Congress can't agree on whether to proceed, several states are
not waiting. They are exploring how, over the next decade, they can move
to a system in which drivers pay per mile of road they roll over.
Thousands of motorists have already taken the black boxes, some of which
have GPS monitoring, for a test drive.

"This really is a must for our nation. It is not a matter of something
we might choose to do," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the
Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is planning for the
state to start tracking miles driven by every California motorist by
2025. "There is going to be a change in how we pay these taxes. The
technology is there to do it."

The push comes as the country's Highway Trust Fund, financed with taxes
Americans pay at the gas pump, is broke. Americans don't buy as much gas
as they used to. Cars get many more miles to the gallon. The federal tax
itself, 18.4 cents per gallon, hasn't gone up in 20 years. Politicians
are loath to raise the tax even one penny when gas prices are high.

"The gas tax is just not sustainable," said Lee Munnich, a
transportation policy expert at the University of Minnesota. His state
recently put tracking devices on 500 cars to test out a pay-by-mile
system. "This works out as the most logical alternative over the long
term," he said.

Wonks call it a mileage-based user fee. It is no surprise that the idea
appeals to urban liberals, as the taxes could be rigged to change
driving patterns in ways that could help reduce congestion and
greenhouse gases, for example. California planners are looking to the
system as they devise strategies to meet the goals laid out in the
state's ambitious global warming laws. But Rep. Bill Shuster (R-Pa.),
chairman of the House Transportation Committee, has said he, too, sees
it as the most viable long-term alternative. The free marketeers at the
Reason Foundation are also fond of having drivers pay per mile.

"This is not just a tax going into a black hole," said Adrian Moore,
vice president of policy at Reason. "People are paying more directly
into what they are getting."

The movement is also bolstered by two former U.S. Transportation
secretaries, who in a 2011 report urged Congress to move in the
pay-per-mile direction.

The U.S. Senate approved a $90-million pilot project last year that
would have involved about 10,000 cars. But the House leadership killed
the proposal, acting on concerns of rural lawmakers representing
constituents whose daily lives often involve logging lots of miles to
get to work or into town.

Several states and cities are nonetheless moving ahead on their own. The
most eager is Oregon, which is enlisting 5,000 drivers in the country's
biggest experiment. Those drivers will soon pay the mileage fees instead
of gas taxes to the state. Nevada has already completed a pilot. New
York City is looking into one. Illinois is trying it on a limited basis
with trucks. And the I-95 Coalition, which includes 17 state
transportation departments along the Eastern Seaboard (including
Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Florida), is studying how they
could go about implementing the change.

The concept is not a universal hit.

In Nevada, where about 50 volunteers' cars were equipped with the
devices not long ago, drivers were uneasy about the government being
able to monitor their every move.

"Concerns about Big Brother and those sorts of things were a major
problem," said Alauddin Khan, who directs strategic and performance
management at the Nevada Department of Transportation. "It was not
something people wanted."

As the trial got underway, the ACLU of Nevada warned on its website: "It
would be fairly easy to turn these devices into full-fledged tracking
devices.... There is no need to build an enormous, unwieldy
technological infrastructure that will inevitably be expanded to keep
records of individuals' everyday comings and goings."

Nevada is among several states now scrambling to find affordable
technology that would allow the state to keep track of how many miles a
car is being driven, but not exactly where and at what time. If you can
do that, Khan said, the public gets more comfortable.

The hunt for that technology has led some state agencies to a small
California startup called True Mileage. The firm was not originally in
the business of helping states tax drivers. It was seeking to break into
an emerging market in auto insurance, in which drivers would pay based
on their mileage. But the devices it is testing appeal to highway
planners because they don't use GPS and deliver a limited amount of
information, uploaded periodically by modem.

"People will be more willing to do this if you do not track their speed
and you do not track their location," said Ryan Morrison, chief
executive of True Mileage. "There have been some big mistakes in some of
these state pilot programs. There are a lot less expensive and less
intrusive ways to do this."

In Oregon, planners are experimenting with giving drivers different
choices. They can choose a device with or without GPS. Or they can
choose not to have a device at all, opting instead to pay a flat fee
based on the average number of miles driven by all state residents.

Other places are hoping to sell the concept to a wary public by having
the devices do more, not less. In New York City, transportation
officials are seeking to develop a taxing device that would also be
equipped to pay parking meter fees, provide "pay-as-you-drive"
insurance, and create a pool of real-time speed data from other drivers
that motorists could use to avoid traffic.

"Motorists would be attracted to participate … because of the value of
the benefits it offers to them," says a city planning document.

Some transportation planners, though, wonder if all the talk about
paying by the mile is just a giant distraction. At the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission in the San Francisco Bay Area, officials say
Congress could very simply deal with the bankrupt Highway Trust Fund by
raising gas taxes. An extra one-time or annual levy could be imposed on
drivers of hybrids and others whose vehicles don't use much gas, so they
pay their fair share.

"There is no need for radical surgery when all you need to do is take an
aspirin," said Randy Rentschler, the commission's director of
legislation and public affairs. "If we do this, hundreds of millions of
drivers will be concerned about their privacy and a host of other
things."

MoPar Man wrote:
> =========
> The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your
> location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.
> ==========

"Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been, is over.
From this time forward, you will service us." ~Locutus

Ashton Crusher, while using improper usenet message-composition style by
unnecessarily full-quoting, wrote:

> While I basically agree with you, the flaw in the current system is
> that electric cars don't buy gas so they don't pay any gas tax.

As you say, there are so few of them that for the moment it is
impractical to extract road-repair taxation from them. But unless
battery technology improves, electric passenger cars may very well turn
out to be a curiosity and never amount to much.

If some major breakthroughs in battery technology happen such that
electric cars really do replace internal combustion - and do so without
gov't subsidies or rebates - then you could simply add a tax on the
battery system. If the lifespan of the battery is proportional to the
amount of charge/discharge cycles then you have a way to tax electric
cars based on the energy they apply to the road system - and a basis for
collecting road-repair taxation.

> - The sinister part
> - surveillance/gps industry
> - $40 worth of electronics added to every car
> - gvt / record of every mile you drive / spy on you

The basis for small-scale trials right now are the electronics being
made available by insurance companies and WILLINGLY used by drivers in
their cars as part of various schemes to fine-tune insurance rates based
on the amount you drive. I've read about some schemes that just keep
track of the speeds you drive at (without knowing where you drive and
therefore not knowing if you are breaking any speed limits - to a
point). Just knowing what percentage of your driving is done at 30 vs
60 mph might be a valid way to determine your insurance risk.

In terms of collecting any sort of road-use tax based on electronic
tracking and GPS is that people will start to use GPS-jammers - which
are technically illegal but are used by some commercial drivers who want
to disrupt any sort of tracking being done by fleet owners for various
reasons.

There is an answer that can be implimented right now:

When you get your vehicle's emission's test, they simply look at the
odometer reading and include that in the report that goes to the DMV.
The DMV calculates what your "road-use" fee is based on the miles driven
since your last emissions test and tacks that fee on to your license
plate renewal. If you don't pay that fee, you don't get to renew the
license plate. If the car is going to be sold, then the buyer/seller
works out who pays the accumulated road-use fee at the time the vehicle
changes hands.

Tell me why that wouldn't work - for any vehicle (gasoline or electric)
?

On 2013-10-27, MoPar Man > wrote:
>=========
> The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your
> location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.
>==========
>
> Ok, this is just plain stupid.
>
> Instead of increasing various state and federal gas taxes on a regional
> or local basis to keep pace with road-maintenance costs, lets add a
> whole new layer of fees and the bureaucracy and technology needed to
> collect it.

Never waste an opertunity to gain more power over people.
Furthermore, road funds are what is solvent in government even despite
the countless diversons. End the diversions and there wouldn't be a
problem.

> Why is making you pay more for gas a better way to fund road repair?
> Because a better way to measure AND TAX your impact on roads and
> highways is by the amount of energy (fuel) you consume because a good
> chunk of that energy is ultimately what causes road damage.

> If you drive a small car (2800 lbs) with a small engine (1.8L) then your
> car's ability to cause wear and tear on roads and highways is not the
> same as someone with a 4,000 lb pickup truck with 6L engine. That's why
> measuring how far you drive is a bull**** way to measure and recover
> your share of road repair costs.

Actually anything under about 4-5000 lbs is pretty much irrelevant for
road wear. Heavy trucks, etc do practically all the vehicle based wear
and tear. Everyone else subisidizes them. But yes, fuel taxes are a
decent easy measure for user fees. The government doesn't like that they
are anonymous.

On Sun, 27 Oct 2013 23:21:56 -0400, MoPar Man > wrote:

>Ashton Crusher, while using improper usenet message-composition style by
>unnecessarily full-quoting, wrote:
>
>> While I basically agree with you, the flaw in the current system is
>> that electric cars don't buy gas so they don't pay any gas tax.
>
>As you say, there are so few of them that for the moment it is
>impractical to extract road-repair taxation from them. But unless
>battery technology improves, electric passenger cars may very well turn
>out to be a curiosity and never amount to much.
>
>If some major breakthroughs in battery technology happen such that
>electric cars really do replace internal combustion - and do so without
>gov't subsidies or rebates - then you could simply add a tax on the
>battery system. If the lifespan of the battery is proportional to the
>amount of charge/discharge cycles then you have a way to tax electric
>cars based on the energy they apply to the road system - and a basis for
>collecting road-repair taxation.
>
>> - The sinister part
>> - surveillance/gps industry
>> - $40 worth of electronics added to every car
>> - gvt / record of every mile you drive / spy on you
>
>The basis for small-scale trials right now are the electronics being
>made available by insurance companies and WILLINGLY used by drivers in
>their cars as part of various schemes to fine-tune insurance rates based
>on the amount you drive. I've read about some schemes that just keep
>track of the speeds you drive at (without knowing where you drive and
>therefore not knowing if you are breaking any speed limits - to a
>point). Just knowing what percentage of your driving is done at 30 vs
>60 mph might be a valid way to determine your insurance risk.
>
>In terms of collecting any sort of road-use tax based on electronic
>tracking and GPS is that people will start to use GPS-jammers - which
>are technically illegal but are used by some commercial drivers who want
>to disrupt any sort of tracking being done by fleet owners for various
>reasons.
>
>There is an answer that can be implimented right now:
>
>When you get your vehicle's emission's test, they simply look at the
>odometer reading and include that in the report that goes to the DMV.
>The DMV calculates what your "road-use" fee is based on the miles driven
>since your last emissions test and tacks that fee on to your license
>plate renewal. If you don't pay that fee, you don't get to renew the
>license plate. If the car is going to be sold, then the buyer/seller
>works out who pays the accumulated road-use fee at the time the vehicle
>changes hands.
>
>Tell me why that wouldn't work - for any vehicle (gasoline or electric)
>?

Sounds like an excellent idea.

On Mon, 28 Oct 2013 06:18:21 +0000 (UTC), Brent
> wrote:

>On 2013-10-27, MoPar Man > wrote:
>>=========
>> The devices would track every mile you drive —possibly including your
>> location — and the government would use the data to draw up a tax bill.
>>==========
>>
>> Ok, this is just plain stupid.
>>
>> Instead of increasing various state and federal gas taxes on a regional
>> or local basis to keep pace with road-maintenance costs, lets add a
>> whole new layer of fees and the bureaucracy and technology needed to
>> collect it.
>
>Never waste an opertunity to gain more power over people.
>Furthermore, road funds are what is solvent in government even despite
>the countless diversons. End the diversions and there wouldn't be a
>problem.
>
>> Why is making you pay more for gas a better way to fund road repair?
>> Because a better way to measure AND TAX your impact on roads and
>> highways is by the amount of energy (fuel) you consume because a good
>> chunk of that energy is ultimately what causes road damage.
>
>> If you drive a small car (2800 lbs) with a small engine (1.8L) then your
>> car's ability to cause wear and tear on roads and highways is not the
>> same as someone with a 4,000 lb pickup truck with 6L engine. That's why
>> measuring how far you drive is a bull**** way to measure and recover
>> your share of road repair costs.
>
>Actually anything under about 4-5000 lbs is pretty much irrelevant for
>road wear. Heavy trucks, etc do practically all the vehicle based wear
>and tear. Everyone else subisidizes them. But yes, fuel taxes are a
>decent easy measure for user fees. The government doesn't like that they
>are anonymous.
>


That's true for wear, esp on highways where truck traffic will be
anywhere from 20 to 80 % of the traffic but there is still quite a bit
of expense in the "non-wearing" parts of the system that needs to be
assigned to the users.

On 10/27/2013 10:21 PM, MoPar Man wrote:
> In terms of collecting any sort of road-use tax based on electronic
> tracking and GPS is that people will start to use GPS-jammers - which
> are technically illegal but are used by some commercial drivers who want
> to disrupt any sort of tracking being done by fleet owners for various
> reasons.

But if that happens regularly with only one or two vehicles in the
fleet, the tampering is obvious, and the person doing it gets fired.

--
T0m $herm@n

On 10/28/2013 1:18 AM, Brent wrote:
> Actually anything under about 4-5000 lbs is pretty much irrelevant for
> road wear. Heavy trucks, etc do practically all the vehicle based wear
> and tear. Everyone else subisidizes them. But yes, fuel taxes are a
> decent easy measure for user fees. The government doesn't like that they
> are anonymous.

I ran the numbers under AASHTO PAS 1993, and one 72,000 pound garbage or
dump truck is equal to 7,000 to 8,000 2-ton passenger vehicles (depends
on how one distributes the axle loads) in pavement fatigue damage. For
pretty much any roadway pavement design, one can ignore vehicles under 8
tons, as their effect disappears when rounding (generally pavements are
rounded to the nearest half-inch, and base courses to the nearest inch).

Heavy vehicles also do significantly more damage from loads parallel to
the pavement (driving/acceleration and braking forces), although
powerful cars can do the same - I had to take odd lines through Turns 1
and 7 at Blackhawk Farms due to the damage done by cars.

Turn 1:
<https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.490477,-89.117179&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>
Turn 7:
<https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.484565,-89.117424&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>

--
T0m $herm@n

On 2013-11-03, T0m $herman > wrote:
> On 10/28/2013 1:18 AM, Brent wrote:
>> Actually anything under about 4-5000 lbs is pretty much irrelevant for
>> road wear. Heavy trucks, etc do practically all the vehicle based wear
>> and tear. Everyone else subisidizes them. But yes, fuel taxes are a
>> decent easy measure for user fees. The government doesn't like that they
>> are anonymous.

> I ran the numbers under AASHTO PAS 1993, and one 72,000 pound garbage or
> dump truck is equal to 7,000 to 8,000 2-ton passenger vehicles (depends
> on how one distributes the axle loads) in pavement fatigue damage. For
> pretty much any roadway pavement design, one can ignore vehicles under 8
> tons, as their effect disappears when rounding (generally pavements are
> rounded to the nearest half-inch, and base courses to the nearest inch).

> Heavy vehicles also do significantly more damage from loads parallel to
> the pavement (driving/acceleration and braking forces), although
> powerful cars can do the same - I had to take odd lines through Turns 1
> and 7 at Blackhawk Farms due to the damage done by cars.
>
> Turn 1:
><https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.490477,-89.117179&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>
> Turn 7:
><https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.484565,-89.117424&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>

Is it so much the power or excessive number of cycles on the exact same
portion of pavement at high speeds? That is drivers at the track being
more precise than drivers on the roads and the forces largely resulting
from changing direction at speed.

Another factor to consider, is the track's pavement may not be designed
for heavy trucks the way a road's pavement is, thus, not being over
designed for light weight cars, the cars are capable of wearing it out
after some defined cycle life.

On 11/4/2013 12:07 PM, Brent wrote:
> On 2013-11-03, T0m $herman > wrote:
>> On 10/28/2013 1:18 AM, Brent wrote:
>>> Actually anything under about 4-5000 lbs is pretty much irrelevant for
>>> road wear. Heavy trucks, etc do practically all the vehicle based wear
>>> and tear. Everyone else subisidizes them. But yes, fuel taxes are a
>>> decent easy measure for user fees. The government doesn't like that they
>>> are anonymous.
>
>> I ran the numbers under AASHTO PAS 1993, and one 72,000 pound garbage or
>> dump truck is equal to 7,000 to 8,000 2-ton passenger vehicles (depends
>> on how one distributes the axle loads) in pavement fatigue damage. For
>> pretty much any roadway pavement design, one can ignore vehicles under 8
>> tons, as their effect disappears when rounding (generally pavements are
>> rounded to the nearest half-inch, and base courses to the nearest inch).
>
>> Heavy vehicles also do significantly more damage from loads parallel to
>> the pavement (driving/acceleration and braking forces), although
>> powerful cars can do the same - I had to take odd lines through Turns 1
>> and 7 at Blackhawk Farms due to the damage done by cars.
>>
>> Turn 1:
>> <https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.490477,-89.117179&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>
>> Turn 7:
>> <https://maps.google.com/?ll=42.484565,-89.117424&spn=0.000534,0.001321&t=k&z=20>
>
> Is it so much the power or excessive number of cycles on the exact same
> portion of pavement at high speeds? That is drivers at the track being
> more precise than drivers on the roads and the forces largely resulting
> from changing direction at speed.
>
The cars of a similar class will end up close to the same line in the
corners which does not help. But a near 3000 pound car with 600+ HP,
high quality brakes, and sticky racing slicks will put enough force to
deform asphaltic cement concrete if the mix design is not just right.
Certainly more lateral stress than me on my 600 pound gross weight, 30
HP motorcycle.

> Another factor to consider, is the track's pavement may not be designed
> for heavy trucks the way a road's pavement is, thus, not being over
> designed for light weight cars, the cars are capable of wearing it out
> after some defined cycle life.
>
Two different things entirely - most roads suffer more from fatigue
cracking (from tensile stresses at the bottom of the pavement) than
horizontal stresses, except for the braking zone right before an
intersection.

--
T0m $herm@n