The new DMV director, not yet engaged with restoring the proud DMV tradition of obsequious customer service, has a plan to replace the gas tax with a mileage tax. Of course, we'd need to track every car from satellites to do this, but that's a mere technical difficulty, soon resolved. As far as intrusion, it's no more intrusive than, say, the federal income tax, so what's the problem?
As the above link suggests, congestion pricing makes more sense than mileage pricing, especially if it can be done with minimal intrusion and a much simpler technical infrastructure. One simple thing to do would be use the devices used for toll roads, but charge for each entry to a freeway, or each entry at peak periods, or some sliding-rate combination of such. The fee might only be a quarter, but even that would reduce causual short-distance freeway use and much of the congestion caused by entry/exit merging.
A MPG-based registration fee might serve the same purposes as the MPG-based gas tax if one really wanted to do away with that.
Admittedly these are half-baked notions, but I'm not a senior official, so I'm entitled. Ms. DMV needs to spend more time fixing her own agency before brainstorming everything else.
And the overriding "law of unintended consequences" of this tax will be to cause even more people to work from home, exploiting their broadband pipeline.
So.... is this going to be a car based "black box" that records reach time your car starts and stops and eventually records "cockpit conversations". I cant wait till the first time someone subpoenas someones car based GPS black Box for use in a murder case. Its gets worse, in Commercial aircraft there are legal restrictions on cockpiut conversations, to ensure the safety of the passengers. Since the doo-gooding community is up in arms over cell phones** in cars, will it not be too long until they also try to regulate conversations?
Think about this - rather than communities spending expensive man hours catching red light runners with actual "police men", data uploads from the car to the DMV could determine every time you speeded or ran a light or didnt stop and a 4 way stop sign. Talk about your revenue enhancement opportunities!
Every freeway overpass could have a data upload interface that triggers as the car passes underneath, giving the most recent recorded data for each car to the DMV. Where were you last night? Where were you 6 months ago? Where were you an hour ago? The DMV will know. And like all government agencies it will maintain this data for-ever. Your grandchildren will be able to find out where you went in your quaint 2010 Dodge V-12 Homermobile.
let's get really crazy, Lets tax people differently for work travel and recreation. Lets set Tax rates in national parks to help pay for restoration of nature. Lets set higher taxes in congested areas to discorage travel. The mind staggers.
Anyone at the DMV could track the movement of every car. Cars that dont report back to the DMV could also be tracked as they would stand out like a sore thumb in tracking systems as "not reporting data - treat as suspect".
Yikes....Freakin yikes.
** - I hate cell phones. Not just in cars, but everywhere. The nore I think about car based GPS Driven Black Boxes, the more I hate GPS.
I did see a similar idea come up about a year ago. It was a proposal by insurance compaines to make their rates based on actual miles traveled as well as routes taken and time of day.
By using a GPS device, with a cellphone interface, data could be gathered for every time the car was in motion. The insurance company could use the data to determine your compliance with the plan you signed up for.
At first I thought "well thats clever...". Then I thought about the "law of unintended consequences".
It starts out innocent enough, the pretty soon its manadatory, then it becomes a revenue gathering method for government agencies.
I wish Ms. DMV would put half as much effort into figuring out a way to eliminate the lines at the DMV as shes spending putting what is in effect a taxi meter on my car.
Posted by: Frank Martin at November 16, 2004 02:16 PM