WA State likely to approve pilot program to charge drivers per mile

originally posted by: American-philosopher
a reply to: schuyler

But yet a couple years ago I was watching this local news show called Upfront where they reported people going around or taking the long way. when faced with the choice of either paying a toll and moving quickly or taking the long way and being stuck in traffic.

Do you think they will start tolling those express lanes through downtown Seattle and going up north? with that stupid good to go pass.

People SAID they would use I-90 instead of the Evergreen Point Bridge when they put tolls back on, but the fact is it didn't last but a couple of weeks. People go where there is less traffic and where the radio stations tell them to go. People did the math and decided there time was valuable and that maybe the toll wasn't so bad after all.

I can just imagine what would happen if they tolled the express lanes. That would be fun to see the reaction. :-)

a reply to: Domo1

I live in Washington State as well. I don't like the sound of this because I don't want a GPS tracker installed in my car, and I don't think that how many miles someone drives should be taxed.

a reply to: Grumble

dont think that would work as not all states have the same type of registration, i have permanent registration on 4 of my 6 vehicles meaning that for the life of my vehicles i never have to register them again and my registration does not expire on said 4 vehicles no smog or any other requirements as well.it may even transfer to new owner if i sell the vehicle .so just doing it by weight may not be the best idea and from what i gather most of the excessive weight in hybrids is their very heavy and environmentally toxic to dispose of batteries.

and would it apply to semi trucks i mean they are honking huge and not the most fuel efficent do they have to pay by the pound too? would it apply to other people who literaly operate a vehicle to earn a living? taxi drivers? police and ambulance and fire trucks would they pay the weight tax as well?even what the op brings up(mileage tax) would cause huge problems for those that drive for a living

although if they only tax by the mile and not the gallon ships might be able to doge teh per gallon fuel tax and in theory fuel up cheaper so that may help the fishing industry and i have seen nothing along the lines of saying tax ships in the same way. if they do it by the mile unforseen circumstances will make their problem allready worse as currently anything that puts gas/diesel into it pays a fuel tax so your getting to tax ships(that dont use natural gas) ,planes(not sure about jp actualy) cars+trucks etc as well as anything with a small engine like a generator or a lawn mower etc and by changing that to a per mile they will loose millions in lost fees for other things they are not forseeing as not everything that uses fuel can be measured "by the mile" so to speak

all they seem to be focused on is loss of tax revenue due to more efficient vehicles and not seeing the side effects of changing things will cause with out a better plan at least .

not a fan of gps monitoring so i dont see that going over well either

I don't like the idea of the state knowing where i go.

I also wonder if the state will charge you for out of state miles on you next vacation across the US.

And can the state make these hack proof. i would hate to have someone that commuted 50+ hacking the gps unit so that it showed on my bill.

App or GPS is planned for 2018 if it goes through and of course the privacy concerns and the costs, article and video explaining that,

Finally, if you drive from Spokane's South Hill to the north side, it is about 22 miles a day or about 8,000 miles per year, which would cost the driver about $120 a year.

"Oh, I think absolutely, it's a big change of behavior and it requires a little bit of investment, of trust on the part of the public that the government, with partners can pull this off," Royer explained.

Right, I'll leave this for the reader.

Drivers would either need to download an app on their phone or have a tracking device installed in their car to calculate the total cost.

If drivers were to tell the state how much they drove based on miles on their odometer, they would have to include miles driven outside of Washington.

Basically charting every where you go.


Source

There is an additional factor in all of this: Global Warming.

Everyone should be troubled by this proposal to tax cars based on miles driven (rather than a fuel tax) -- regardless of whether you believe that Global Warming is real or not.


If you believe that Global Warming is real:
Taxing cars based on miles driven will be a financial disincentive for the purchase of hybrid and electric vehicles (it will discourage people from buying the expensive electric (non-polluting) and hybrid (reduced polluting) vehicles which people say are needed to significantly reduce Global Warming emissions).

Why are governments trying to champion a policy which would worsen Global Warming (which is supposed to be one of the greatest world threats of the present and future)?

Don't liberals see the policy contradiction here? -- their desire to raise taxes to support big government spending is making it more difficult to combat Global Warming -- (a cause that is so important to liberals).


If you don't believe that Global Warming is real:
The comments made by the previous commenters provide plenty of reasons to oppose taxing cars based on miles driven: privacy issues, increased costs for commuting workers, increased food prices, making the USA more dependent on oil imports, etc

I don't see how this is in any way viable, they would have better luck with RFID's in tires. These GPS devices cannot always be on, they need electricity from the alternator which means they can only run when the car is running (plus maybe a little bit afterwards with a battery). If you were to disconnect your battery for a day the GPS device would be without power, you could then safely disable it and it would look like you just don't drive anywhere.

For that matter, GPS requires a radio signal, surrounding your GPS device in a faraday cage will leave it unable to transmit or receive signals.

a reply to: Aazadan

it's simple....they require you to put a device in your car, similar to the EZ-Pass, some states use for their major roadways....

then they put readers all over the place, so they can track where you're going...no need for GPS.

they'll end up spending more money for the goddamn transceivers, and readers, than they'll be able to get back in tax revenue, and after a couple of years of them robbing the citizenry blind, it'll be declared a failure, and a waste of money, and it'll be scrapped, and everything will go back to normal...sounds like a pretty standard government plan..

a reply to: Domo1

It's my car... The state can lease/rent a space for the GPS at the cost of $100.00 a day.

A cold day in hell when any pos device is afixed to my car. When is enough enough.

I do hope no one is willing to pay. This is one of those, don't groan and stand for it, but flat out and continually refuse to pay.

It's up to the people, in each state, that attempts this kind of taxation to vote out of office everyone who backs it or just STFU.

originally posted by: Daedalus
a reply to: Aazadan

it's simple....they require you to put a device in your car, similar to the EZ-Pass, some states use for their major roadways....

Which means they aren't using a GPS device which was the point of the thread. There's way they can do it, but the GPS route isn't one of them.

a reply to: Aazadan

right, and i was going for a somewhat satirical description, highlighting the wasteful futility of plans like this..

originally posted by: schuyler

originally posted by: bigx001

originally posted by: Domo1
a reply to: bigx001

Yeah, the toll booths went away. You still get charged every time you drive over the bridge though. You either get one of the Good 2 Go passes or they send you a bill.

get the facts straight, the current tolls are to pay for the new bridge. up until a few years ago there was no toll since there was no replacement.

Washington State law requires that tolls be collected to pay for the bridge, and stop when the bridge is paid for, but it's very weird in application. The old Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the green metal one used for East to West traffic, has no tolls, but the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge, used only for West to East traffic, does. Tolls have been put back on the Seattle floating bridge, the north one starting in Montlake, because they're about to "upgrade" it, yet no tolls have ever been on the Edward Murrow (Mercer Island) floating bridge. To further complicate the issue, State Route 167, from Renton to Auburn, now has a toll lane with variable costs, that is paid by the same Good-to-Go pass that gets you across the bridges at a cheaper rate, but there are no bridges involved. It's there to sock the commuter if he wants to move faster through rush hour.

Point is that the legislators and State DOT have been very loose in their definition of what they can and cannot charge tolls for. We can expect more in the future and we can expect the law to further erode.

actually both narrows bridges are tolled, with the same cost no matter which one you use. the hov lanes you're talking about do not have tolls late at night and that was passed as a measure to reduce traffic.

I-90 original bridge did have tolls on it but were removed when it was paid off in 1949

a reply to: dreamingawake

I would laugh at the people that even attempted to pass this as law, they would lose their houses, cars, valuables, and jobs just for signing it. Seriously, when people woke up one morning in Seattle, and learned they had x days to report for installment of tracking device in car, you would see flames and smoke in their air as that city turned into a funeral pyre., Or any other city with ass hats for leaders in the state, but, er.. we did pass that milestone a long while ago..

This would be the last straw, and I wouldn't want to even joke further about what what people will do in retaliation against perhaps the most epic insult to citizens since HRC said what do a few dead Americans matter to anyone".