By no means am I any sort of an expert on this, but I have been
following some of the efforts by Oregon to replace/augment/make more
equitable the road fuel tax structure, both for EV's and ICE's.
One pilot program was based on annual mileage. The shake-down at the
end of the program was that it was unfeasible due to several problems.
1) Reporting of mileage would be an honorary task for owners of older
cars that didn't have integrated GPS systems. Add-on GPS devices
could be purchased and installed, but the up-front costs didn't
appeal to potential participants. I believe that smart phones were
proposed as a solution, but... (see #2, below)
2) There was a lot of push-back from drivers who feared that the GPS
devices, either integrated in the car's navigation system, or the
add-on/phone app, would be used for tracking and potential privacy invasion.
3) There was no reliable way that any GPS could accurately determine
if the car was being operated on a public highway or private
property. Obviously, if you are racking up miles on Interstate 5,
that's beyond question, but what about those fractions of miles that
add up off the public streets? My driveway is 1/3 mile long, am I
going to have to apply for an exemption for the .6 miles that I drive
on my own property each time I go to town?
4) The state doesn't necessarily get 100% of road fuel tax dollars.
Some of it goes to the counties where the fuel was purchased, and
there are city municipalities that add a local fuel tax on top of the
fed and state taxes. The GPS can give a rough picture of where you
did your driving, but when it comes down to fractions of a cent times
multi-millions of miles, accuracy is demanded. Cities that enjoy a
tax base generated by gas purchase would be losing some of that
revenue to out-of-town use of the same fuel purchase.
5) The program did nothing to tax itinerant users of roads, tourists,
truckers, etc. who don't report mileage to OR. At least the current
system catches some of them at a fuel pump before they cross out of
the borders.
The only halfway effective way to get road maintenance money out of
drivers, is to convert all major thoroughfares to toll roads. Imagine
how popular that would be. Still, if there was a drive-on scale at
the toll booth, weight could be factored into the toll for a more
accurate compensation of road wear. Add detectors for studded tires,
and they might be able to make enough easy money to leave us poor
EV'sters alone.
Overall, anything much beyond an at-the-pump, per-gallon-fee will be
creating a storm of additional accounting and record keeping. My
electric bicycle looks better al the time.
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