19 replies to this topic

[Canuck]

Buried in the much-touted trillion-dollar Infrastructure bill, is the legislation outlining a 50-state, District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico volunteer pilot project for a national per-mile (road) user fee system. The project is introduced on page 508 (https://www.epw.sena...CD.edw21a09.pdf)
 

IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, in coordination with the Secretary of the Treasury, and consistent with the recommendations of the advisory board, shall establish a pilot program to demonstrate a national  motor vehicle per-mile user fee

(A) to restore and maintain the long-term solvency of the Highway Trust Fund; and
(B) to improve and maintain the surface transportation system.

 

(2) OBJECTIVES.—The objectives of the pilot program are—
(A) to test the design, acceptance, implementation, and financial sustainability of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee;
(B) to address the need for additional revenue for surface transportation infrastructure and a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee;
and
© to provide recommendations relating to the adoption and implementation of a national motor vehicle per-mile user fee.

 

 

Now, if you've read any of my ranting and raving in the various Tesla / Electric car threads, you know I lean towards the double-layer tinfoil hat interpretation of most things - it is my nature. Objectively speaking, having road users support the infrastructure they're using does not strike me as particularly outlandish. One could make the argument that successive governments across the western world have enacted policies that allow and encourage corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying what we might otherwise call "their share" of the tax burden, and that such policies have resulted in this lack of (tax) resources required to build and maintain national infrastructure. However that's a different political argument. We're talking here of this pilot program and what we might be able to infer about the program that results from it.

 

If you are not of the tinfoil variety, you might look at it and respond that there is a field to record your odometer reading when you renew your registration each year (there isn't up here, at least in Alberta) so there's no privacy issues involved. However I would need to point to the following section.

 

(d) METHODS.—
(1) TOOLS.—

In selecting the methods described in subsection ©(1), the Secretary shall coordinate with entities that voluntarily provide to the Secretary for use under the pilot program any of the following vehicle-miles-traveled collection tools:
(A) Third-party on-board diagnostic (OBD-II) devices.
(B) Smart phone applications.
© Telemetric data collected by auto-makers.
(D) Motor vehicle data obtained by car insurance companies.
(E) Data from the States that received a grant under section 6020 of the FAST Act (23 2 U.S.C. 503 note; Public Law 114–94) (as in effect on the day before the date of enactment of this Act).
(F) Motor vehicle data obtained from fueling stations. 7
(G) Any other method that the Secretary considers appropriate.

A, B, C and D (in so far as insurance companies bribe customers to use A for discounts) all include your GPS location along with date and time. Again, arguments can be made that:

• I don't have anything to hide
• My phone already collects this information
• The government will only use this data for targeted revenue spending (IE high-usage locations get more attention).

To which I might respond:

• If you use a bathroom in a public setting, do you close the door? It's not like you're doing anything wrong, or anything everyone else doesn't also do. Privacy ought be the default, not the exception.
• You are not required (yet) by law to keep your phone turned on or with you, or legally prevented from interfering with it's attempts to track your location.
• Immediately after the Patriot act went into effect, for the purposes of thwarting terrorism, it was used to pursue drug dealers. It is a shuffle, not a jump or leap to go from tracking your driving to mailing you speeding tickets based on the collected data. We already have photo-radar and average-speed camera traffic ticketing systems.

While perhaps laudable in it's claimed ambitions, this thing strikes me as an absolutely horrifying invasion and the 2nd leg (the first being our smart-phone obsession) to a 24/7 surveillance society.

 

How do you, as driving enthusiasts and "car folk" see this?

 

 

[Izzyeviel]

They want to charge you a tax based on how many miles you drive? 

 

I have no idea what you yanks do, but in the UK our council tax goes towards maintaining local roads, surely that'd be better?

[gruntguru]

Unimaginative. I strongly support a "user pays" approach but this sounds overly complex, potentially inequitable and potentially rortable. One of the great things about fossil fuels is that road wear and tear and environmental damage both correlate to fuel consumed so fuel taxes provide relevant revenue collection and appropriate disincentives. The lack of a fuel tax on EVs is appropriate during the introductory phase on several grounds. Zero local air pollution, minimal local noise pollution, reduced CO2 emission and a pathway to zero CO2 emission to name a few.

 

Taxing EV mileage makes sense at first glance but . . . . . . should the small, lightweight, efficient commuter car pay the same per-mile tax as a 2,000 hp Rimac driven like stolen? The latter could use 10 or 20 times the energy for the same trip.

 

How wrong would it be to simply tax the energy? Apart from incentivising more efficient vehicles and driving styles, it would reward micro generation (rooftop solar etc).

[Canuck]

The cost to build and maintain the road network is, I would think, entirely independent of the energy source of the traffic using it, and directly related to the weight, environment (heat/rain/etc) and perhaps traffic volume. Taxing a 2 ton electric car at the same rate as a 2-ton gasoline car makes sense. Strictly speaking the mandate for this project is not environmental but infrastructure maintenance.

 

I don't know about the US, but our road fuel prices include a substantial amount of taxes, including a carbon tax new this year.

Edited by Canuck, 09 August 2021 - 22:14.

[GreenMachine]

Time for a cold shower. 

 

My mind boggles that ANYONE could worry that Big Brother knows how many klicks they drive each month/year if they own a car, a smartphone, if they put addresses in G**gle Maps, use credit cards, etc etc.

 

RUCs are coming, as EVs gradually take over the vehicle fleet, taxes raised from petrol consumption will fall.  That revenue will be replaced, and the obvious candidate is a RUC, because 'user pays'.  Maybe also because there has been some hypothecation of petrol taxes to road funding (as is technically the case here).   Car owners, get used to the idea, and start thinking about the plusses and minuses of a user charge for you - they are the grounds that will shape your local RUCs.

 

I would think that having to submit the distance travelled for the RUC assessment is a privacy threat non-event, compared to what Big Brother already has or can access.  That doesn't mean no-one will feel threatened, and I can only imagine that they already are living a life of isolation and self-sufficiency, eschewing mobile phones, banks, credit cards and postal services, and their income never sees the inside of a bank.  They won't own a car, or if they do it will not be registered or insured.  They certainly won't be driving under a toll gantry, or past a speed camera.  Therefore the privacy issues for RUCs will be irrelevant to them.  Those that use these modern day technologies, but protest about RUC privacy issues, are either stupid, hypocritical, or just suffer from a bad case of selective outrage.  Not you Canuck of course!  Though I do wonder about you equating this to having a bog with the door open ...

 

In short, if something as relatively inoffensive as klicks travelled are a 'line in the sand' moment for privacy, the battle is irretrievably lost, and more importantly so is the war.

 

I presume that Canuck knows that the Murican law will not prevail in the Republic of Canuckstan, but rightly fears that such will find their way north to his fair land.  But I think that battle (the US legislation) is not for this board, and if he wants to mobilise those who will be directly affected there must be better and more relevant sites for them. 

 

My view, if it is not already clear, is that RUC privacy issues rank about 608th on the list of priority privacy issues, and not worth me wasting breath or pixels on.  As a matter of public policy, RUCs are an improvement over budget allocations for road infrastructure (conditions apply), but line ball for hypothecated petrol taxes or other revenues derived directly or indirectly from road usage.

 

And FWIW, those are the views of a typical petrolhead, who spends far too much time and money on his cars, and hopes to continue doing so until they come to plant him!

[Greg Locock]

Double the axle weight does ten or more times the damage, so fuel taxes alone do not penalise heavy vehicles as much as they should, if we are arguing for user pays which seems to apply to everything else these days.

https://www.gao.gov/products/109954 suggests roughly axle weight^4

[GreenMachine]

There is a registration fee applicable to heavy vehicles that goes some way to reflecting their undeniably great impact on road maintenance costs.  At least, there used to be, dunno what the current situation is.

 

Pretty obviously, an RUC would impose greater fees on users who impose greater costs on the asset, there is nothing in the concept of a RUC (AIUI) that suggests the fee should be uniform across all users..  And there is no doubt that heavy vehicles are primarily responsible for road deterioration, as well as being self-evident, the research by the road agencies (and ARRB - still exists?) confirms it - and the HML movement will have compounded it.  I may be a bit out of touch with things these days, but last time I looked basic physics had not been repealed.

[HP]

The idea is old and partially in use at least in  France and Taiwan on the national highways. And at least in Taiwan IMO it's a better and simple system than the one under discussion. And then there is my preferred way from Switzerland

 

In Taiwan if we want to use the highway, we need to get an electronic sticker. That will be controlled every now and then (at least in every county once) by an electronic toll booth. Of course there are electronic sensors when going onto the highway and leaving collecting the info needed for the system to work. Trucks pay a higher fee than cars. However the sticker is tied to the car (license plate number), and off the national highway there is no registration. We can topple up that special account any time we want, if we use up the funds we'll get an invoice.

 

Not much complaint about this system, except for an electronic glitch at the beginning. We had however before to pay at toll houses, so the sticker system was accepted as being much more convenient. So that is similar to France. They still did track one vehicles. The most famous cases however were from Frances toll system, where drivers got fined, based on the time elapsed between 2 toll stations.

 

The alternative that I prefer comes from Switzerland, because it is more anonymous. It was specifically introduced after complaints of the government not using money (petrol taxes) for the road maintenance. The system is simple, buy a sticker, that has to be put somewhere on the front window for cars. Bikes are obviously another matter where to put the sticker onto. The fee is not too high and allows you to use the highways unrestricted and anonymous for an entire year. Neighbor countries were not too happy, especially those from Germany going to Italy for holiday. But that died down quickly once they realized that the only viable alternative is a road through Austria, where there are toll stations you have to pay a fee every time you pass that was at the begin priced similar to the one in Switzerland. Also in Switzerland, if you don't want to use the national highways, you don't need the "Vignette" as the sticker is called.

 

Something tied into this: With surveillance cameras or electronic stickers, a car can be tracked anyway. However in some countries, legislation is so one can decline to pay a fine, unless the police can 100% prove who was driving behind the wheel. Of course that led to speeding tickets pictures taken from the front of the vehicle to identify its driver, but it's not that easy. These kind of laws exist, precisely because of a) assume innocence of the car holder until proven otherwise, and b) it maintains a certain amount of privacy protection.

 

A possible solution that eliminates those concerns might be a mix from the systems in use in Switzerland and Taiwan. One has buy a prepaid card that an electronic toll station subtracts every time from that account where appropriate. And the card has to be displayed visibly on any vehicle (but it doesn't have to be tied to one vehicle only). When a national highway user isn't using such a car and stopped by the police, and the card found without credit left (and that also since a few days), well then there is a fine to be payed. This needs no new technology, and seems to be fair..  Of course some companies will make this system unfair through their worker contracts. Think all those services where the worker uses their own vehicle to deliver services for a company. Those companies will try and have the workers having to pay for those cards themselves. But it's the same with system that infringe more on privacy..

 

Anyhow for me there are systems that work and seem to follow the principle of fair use. I am also aware that there are in many countries people that decided to go with public transportation or bicycles, or similar things, it seems fair to me that I pay for my rights to use a car as long as the money is used for what it is intended for. And from what I've seen in that matter I am not sure how governments can be reliably held accountable for the proper use of that money. Any system will work only fine if people can trust their government.. And that is probably the single most biggest hurdle any government has to face.

Edited by HP, 10 August 2021 - 00:07.

[gruntguru]

RUC is messy no matter which way you look at it. It requires a govt imposed function be added to the vehicle (probably different for each jurisdiction), data collection, tax collection (annual, monthly??). I can see a new black industry arising - akin to the existing one that rewinds odometers.

 

Tax the energy.

Edited by gruntguru, 10 August 2021 - 03:03.

[404KF2]

Per km tax is a flat fee - which is idiotic policy; it must be based upon a proxy for the wear and tear each vehicle exerts upon the road surface and bed.  Fuel taxes work well as such a proxy; but for EVs not so much.  That is the big question....

[GreenMachine]

Weight is not an issue at the low end, it gets real when you have 60t GVMs,   Commercial vehicles here have classifications based on axles and GCM/GVM, which provides a mechanism to tax them for impact, and/or fuel tax replacement.  However I suggest that this is a red herring, as electrification of the heavy vehicle fleet will lag considerably compared to personal (light vehicles).

 

GG, nobody has asked me to design a RUC, so I don't know how messy it has to be.  The basic RUC could be very simple, but then you have to have ways of checking, and I think that is where a lot of the mechanisms identified in the OP will come in.  I guess there will be some tradeoffs involved, or maybe we just set up a robodebt model, with direct access to your bank account - job done.

 

I suspect taxing the energy will have some hairs on it, especially given the homogeneity of energy.  That energy entering your house could be doing lots of things, and bypassing your charger with the tax meter on it may be one of those.  Or using your EV battery to power your house/the grid after paying tax - I think not.  It is an interesting idea though, if it can be made to work without unintended consequences.

[Canuck]

If we define the spectrum of interpretations of the world as Fabricating Events that Aren't Real on the far end, the mirror end of that is Denial of Reality on the other. Both of those are dangerous in and of themselves for pretty obvious reasons, but that's a pretty broad spectrum with a lot of rational ground to be found between those two poles.  It seems clear that GreenMachine and I are a long way apart on this spectrum.

 

My view, if it is not already clear, is that RUC privacy issues rank about 608th on the list of priority privacy issues, and not worth me wasting breath or pixels on.

It is mildly amusing that, excluding the specific excerpts I posted, your answer to an issue "not worth me wasting breath or pixels on" was actually longer than the opening post.

 

However, it's almost as though you didn't read it. It's not handing over my total distance traveled or paying a RUC that is the issue (though I would expect to see a concurrent reduction in taxes removed from the price of fuel at the pump). Rather, it's the outcome of pursuing this with their proposed technology that gives the holders of the data (and of course, all data is always secure from all abuses, loss or nefarious actors) a GPS-precise accounting of the location of your vehicle at any given time. Further, this constant surveillance would be mandated by law, unlike choosing a particular search engine if you used one at all, or using a credit card vs. cash. The constant creep of surveillance is very real and ought to be opposed.

 

Green is correct that there are already an enormous host of companies hoovering up every detail of your life that they can but, at least thus far, participating in that game is voluntary. I suppose you could argue that choosing to forego private transportation is the equivalent of choosing to go without a smart phone. I would suppose for the oft-maligned Millennials and Gen -Y who have shown markedly less interest in driving than their predecessors, that statement is perhaps absurd. They'd surely die before giving up technology but can't be bothered to learn to drive.

 

If you think for one second that this data won't be used in a manner beyond a RUC, you haven't been paying attention to current practice, particularly in the US.

[Canuck]

HP - the difference between any and all currently established road tax systems that I'm aware of, and the one under pilot in the US, is the granularity of data it proposes to collect. I don't believe anyone should be required by law to supply their location data to the government, without a legal just cause, simply for driving a car. Going beyond that, as it stands today, an individual cannot be compelled to provide evidence that incriminates themselves (though it would seem there is a proclivity among some to put it up on the internet for the world to see).

It is also of course a toll that extends beyond the use of specific roads. The proposed toll would include the marginal mileage driven in parking lots, all neighborhood streets etc. etc.

 

In order to get around the "who don't know who was actually driving the car at the time of the camera-recorded infraction", they wrote a new law: being the owner of a motor vehicle that did contravene the traffic act by (insert camera-recorded action here - speeding and running a red light being the only two I'm aware of). The tickets come in the mail, with a fine but they are zero-demerit tickets (IE you could receive 200 tickets with zero impact on your insurance costs or legal right to drive). It's just revenue ($38 million for my city, in 2016).

[mariner]

Pricing per km is pretty much of a non-issue in Uk as the mileage is captured in the annual inspection (MOT) for all vehicles  over 3 yrs old . So Easy to bill it to electric cars ONLY as the MOT knows the co2 numbers too. Making electric registrations go to a the mot station  for a two minute vehicle mileage check would cover newer cars too

 

That is important in real world as the tricky bit is migrating from a fuel tax to a usage tax without double taxing IC cars.

[GreenMachine]

Pricing per km is pretty much of a non-issue in Uk as the mileage is captured in the annual inspection (MOT) for all vehicles  over 3 yrs old . So Easy to bill it to electric cars ONLY as the MOT knows the co2 numbers too. Making electric registrations go to a the mot station  for a two minute vehicle mileage check would cover newer cars too
 
That is important in real world as the tricky bit is migrating from a fuel tax to a usage tax without double taxing IC cars.

 

It is tricky, but easily done.  Generally, if this is a concern (and don't assume your concern is their concern), you can provide a short-term holiday to existing payers transitioning to the new arrangements, knowing that the new arrangements will recoup that and more.  Or even just wear the shortfall in the interests of keeping opposition/resistance within limits..

 

HP - the difference between any and all currently established road tax systems that I'm aware of, and the one under pilot in the US, is the granularity of data it proposes to collect. I don't believe anyone should be required by law to supply their location data to the government, without a legal just cause, simply for driving a car. Going beyond that, as it stands today, an individual cannot be compelled to provide evidence that incriminates themselves (though it would seem there is a proclivity among some to put it up on the internet for the world to see).
It is also of course a toll that extends beyond the use of specific roads. The proposed toll would include the marginal mileage driven in parking lots, all neighborhood streets etc. etc.
 
In order to get around the "who don't know who was actually driving the car at the time of the camera-recorded infraction", they wrote a new law: being the owner of a motor vehicle that did contravene the traffic act by (insert camera-recorded action here - speeding and running a red light being the only two I'm aware of). The tickets come in the mail, with a fine but they are zero-demerit tickets (IE you could receive 200 tickets with zero impact on your insurance costs or legal right to drive). It's just revenue ($38 million for my city, in 2016).

 

I would have thought that collecting revenue IS a 'just cause', always providing the collection is authorised by the legislature.  Driving a car is not a crime, so self-incrimination is not an issue.  We have the same thing here regarding speed cameras etc, with the added bonus of losing points, the onus is on the driver to pay the fine/do the time, unless they can identify the actual driver*.  The obvious flaw being cars owned by businesses, where fines are astronomic by comparison to cars registered to persons.  Regarding driving on parking lots(?!), neighborhood streets, you may not have noticed you are paying petrol tax on those now...  If there is a reason these should not be included, you set the rate x% high, where x is the % of non-taxed usage, and then give a discount/untaxed allowance of x%, and bingo target revenue achieved.
 
* My then-GF got a speed camera ticket, taken at night, from the rear - no possibility of identifying the driver.  She has three children of driving age, and due to the passage of time since the offence, she could not state who was driving that night.  The ticket was withdrawn..

[kikiturbo2]

we have had this for ages... it is called petrol tax..

 

now, with electric cars, that might become an issue...

[Magoo]

I admit this idea is totally lacking in imagination, but I suggest scotching all these complicated proposals and paying for roads from the general fund. 

 

To me, all the various buy-in/pay-in schemes are essentially attempts to mimic the operation of a capitalist free market enterprise, which is not what this is. 

[Canuck]

I would have thought that collecting revenue IS a 'just cause', always providing the collection is authorised by the legislature.  Driving a car is not a crime, so self-incrimination is not an issue.
 

Respectfully - you have clearly never been on the wrong side of a constable that is absolutely certain your presence in a particular vicinity meant you were guilty of something. The history of incarceration and prosecution is littered with innocent people.

 

I am not particularly opposed to the tax end of this equation, just the proposed manner of data-collection to enact it, and the substantial - what I see as abuses - that it opens the door to. However if multi-nationals  and the hyper rich were not permitted to hold billions of un-taxed profits offshore, perhaps we wouldn't need to resort to such schemes.

[GreenMachine]

Respectfully - you have clearly never been on the wrong side of a constable that is absolutely certain your presence in a particular vicinity meant you were guilty of something. The history of incarceration and prosecution is littered with innocent people.

 

I am not particularly opposed to the tax end of this equation, just the proposed manner of data-collection to enact it, and the substantial - what I see as abuses - that it opens the door to. However if multi-nationals  and the hyper rich were not permitted to hold billions of un-taxed profits offshore, perhaps we wouldn't need to resort to such schemes.

 

No, I haven't.  And I don't disagree with your statement.  But abuses need to be dealt with as such,   If we only put in place what cannot be abused, we would put in place nothing.

 

I admit this idea is totally lacking in imagination, but I suggest scotching all these complicated proposals and paying for roads from the general fund. 

 

To me, all the various buy-in/pay-in schemes are essentially attempts to mimic the operation of a capitalist free market enterprise, which is not what this is. 

 

There is a degree of equity in user charges/taxes that general revenue lacks.  But the main driver is the replacement of lost revenue, and incremental change is the preferred mode compared to more revolutionary change - we are talking bureaucracies/governments here after all!

[Chubby_Deuce]

The good news is that this is a chance to make it a less regressive tax than was ever possible with a gasoline tax.