Kansas City Star reporter Steve Everly penned to following 2020 projection in which we may be using GPS’s in our automobiles to calculate our miles driven for revenue generation to fix our decaying roads and bridges infrastructure.
First the government tracks us by monitoring us from our cell phones. They watch our homes by using Google Earth and tomorrow monitoring will be accomplished by the use of GPS. In truth they probably already have the ability to track the location of anyone who has a GPS in their cars or even hiking in the woods. There is no question that big brother is watching us under the guise that it’s for our own safety. Sure!
As the Obama administration forces the auto industry to ratchet up our MPG, the current system of taxing fuel consumption will decrease creating a revenue shortfall.
As Steve points out increased sale of electric vehicles will not add to the pot needed for maintenance and expansion of the network of roads.
Following is part of Steve’s 2020 projection that is closer to reality than you might expect. The story link is provided at the end of this post.
By-the-mile road tax could replace by-the-gallon federal fuel tax
Wed., July 1, 2009 By STEVE EVERLY The Kansas City Star
“The year is 2020 and the gasoline tax is history. In its place you get a monthly tax bill based on each mile you drove — tracked by a Global Positioning System device in your car and uploaded to a billing center.
What once was science fiction is being field-tested by the University of Iowa to iron out the wrinkles should a by-the-mile road tax ever be enacted.
Besides the technological advances making such a tax possible, the idea is getting a hard push from a growing number of transportation experts and officials. That is because the traditional by-the-gallon fuel tax, struggling to keep up with road building and maintenance demands, could fall even farther behind as vehicles’ gas mileage rises and more alternative-fuel vehicles come on line.
The idea of shifting to a by-the-mile tax has been discussed for years, but it now appears to be getting more serious attention.
A federal commission, after a two-year study, concluded earlier this year that the road tax was the “best path forward” to keep revenues flowing to highway and transportation projects, and could be an important new tool to help manage traffic and relieve congestion.
The decision by the 15-member National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission was unanimous, which surprised Robert Atkinson, the group’s chairman. But he said it became clear as the commission’s work progressed that a road tax on miles traveled was the best option.
“If you’re committed to the system being improved then it was a no-brainer,” he said.
The commission pegged 2020 as the year for the federal fuel tax, currently 18.5 cents a gallon, to be phased out and replaced by a road tax. One estimate of a road tax that would cover the current federal and state fuel taxes is 1 to 2 cents per mile for cars and light trucks.
The commission said work needed to start soon to prepare for a road tax. But more work has already been done than most people probably realize.
Oregon did a field test in 2007, concluding it was possible to collect a road tax. The University of Iowa’s Public Policy Center — with support from the Federal Highway Administration and 15 states, including Kansas and Missouri — began work a decade ago on how a road tax could be deployed.
Now the University of Iowa, with the help of a $16 million federal grant, is beginning the field test that will eventually include 2,700 vehicles in six states. The vehicles equipped with computers and GPS devices will keep track of the miles traveled and send the data through wireless technology to a billing center that will compute “simulated” tax bills.
“There is a lot of work nationally going on that is beneath the surface,” said Pete Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation.
Missouri, like the federal government and other states, has been watching revenues from the gas tax decline. Last year that revenue was down more than 3 percent, and so far this year it has declined a similar amount. The state’s highway budget was about to “hit the rocks,” he said, but federal stimulus funds gave it some breathing room.
Even when the economy recovers, the gas tax will remain under pressure.
“The Chevrolet Volt won’t pay a penny of fuel tax,” Rahn said of the electric car that will make its debut next year.
Rahn, past president of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said some states have considered implementing a road tax without waiting for the federal government to act, but a national system would probably work best.
Privacy concerns have been raised, and federal legislation also could set limits or otherwise provide safeguards on all the data that could be collected from GPS devices in vehicles. The Iowa study is looking at ways to protect privacy.U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood earlier this year said the road tax should be among the options considered for future financing, but he backtracked with a statement that such a tax was not Obama administration policy. The U.S. commission recommending a road tax believes a measured approach would work best. The federal Highway Trust Fund should be replenished with a higher gas tax as an interim move, the commission said, with work continuing on getting a road tax enacted and deployed. Congress would have to pass legislation phasing in the tax and settling such issues as whether there should be a higher tax for thirstier and higher-polluting vehicles. A low-tech approach in collecting the tax could amount to an annual reading of each vehicle’s odometer. A high-tech approach would involve equipping cars and trucks with GPS devices and computers. The commission favors the higher-tech approach, in part, because far more can be done with it. For example, it could be tailored to help reduce traffic congestion by charging different rates throughout the day. A Brookings Institution study estimated that peak travel could be reduced up to 20 percent if the tax made it cheaper to travel outside of rush hour.”
The article ends stating that “a national commission estimates that in the next quarter-century the U.S. will have only about one-third of the $200 billion needed each year to keep up and improve the highways.”
http://www.kansascity.com/business/story/1299981-p2.html
Email from jr. college prof:
Larry
The statement I often make to students about why they should study algebra and do well in it is so that they will better understand how the GPS unit in their cell phone works and why it still is able to track their cell phones position, and by extension their position, even though they have turned the cell phone off.
Is Google Earth a real time system or is it just a set of earth bound photos given geodetic coordinates?
It all starts with the Homeowners Associations (HOA). That is a model how our country will be run. No one pays attention to it.
If you want constitutional government you must ban the HOA first.
“In truth they probably already have the ability to track the location of anyone who has a GPS in their cars or even hiking in the woods.”
Larry, you obviously have no clue about technology. A GPS device is a receiver, not a sender. So it is impossible to track anybody with it.
Cut down on the paranoia already.
Also, Google Earth is a bunch of pictures, often taken years back. Good luck tracking anybody with that…
Now, there are certainly spy satellites that have a pretty good resolution (< 1m). But reading license plates with it, forget about it, unless your license plate points skyward…
Get some education about technology. It seems old age and technology don’t mix…
Larry, as far as #1 is concerned, GPS in cellphones is generally not even real GPS. They just use triangulation with cell-phone towers. From what I read, the “GPS” in the iPhone doesn’t even work at car speeds. Contrast that with the GPS device I have, used for aviation. These triangulate with data from the GPS satellites, and work at pretty much any speed you can achieve on Earth.
email response:
“Larry,
The implementation could be as easy as installing OnStar® type systems in every vehicle. They contain all the required ingredients to not only track the information but to send it in for centralized collection, as they do now for maintenance and emergency help.
They can also use it, legally, by the way, for wiretaps of conversations, telemetry data and movement. There have already been cases in the courts, both with and without court orders that have upheld their use. The most surprising to me was the evidence was upheld as admissible without a court order as would be expected from a wiretap of phone lines. The information gathered was much more detailed, placing the defendants at locations, with times and conversations being recorded.
It’s one of the reasons I would never own a vehicle equipped with OnStar®.
Not that I’m paranoid or engaged in criminal activities, I just have privacy issues with such an intrusive system used by a private enterprise, that could be hijacked for use by either law enforcement or company insiders for their own criminal gain.”
Joe.
Are you for real?
Did you see the picture of Obama’s swearing in where around one million people were in the photo. I was able to zoom in to see people picking their noses. Don’t tell me that the technolgy does not exist to monitor our movements.
As to Google Earth. Don’t think for a minute that they do not have “real time” access beyond the free software download that we watch.
In your high tech experience is the above contributor incorrect with regard to OnStar?
Joe.
In addressing our privacy and big brother I failed to include RFID chips. Radio frequency ID. I wonder how many know that Wal-Mart may in fact be actively using these devices, the size of a grain of rice, in some of their products.
Larry, are YOU for real???
What BS are you writing???
Again, GPS is receiver-ONLY. Period. End of story.
Anything that can send out locations, like OnStar, or cellphone tracking, is NOT GPS.
Geez, there are NO black helicopters.
And for Google Earth, first off, what Google is using are commercially available images.
Sure, the government has spy satellites, but that has absolutely nothing to do with Google Earth.
You can probably buy such spy satellite pictures from the Russians. They need money.
And satellites are above us. It is at the distances we are talking about, 38000 kilometers or so for geo-stationary satellites, NOT possible, physically not possible, to take pictures of things like license plates, unless the plates point skywards. No government in the world can change physics.
So, go back to highschool and take a physics class. You obviously missed out on that.
Geez.
And Larry, what does RFID have to do with GPS???
I don’t like RFID, either, but again, it has absolutely nothing to do with GPS. Write an article about RFID…
And I have known about RFID and have opposed it way before you ever heard of it. Techies like me know a lot about these things.
And RFID chips are certainly not “the size of a grain of rice”. These are chips that receive their energy through an antenna from a receiver. The antenna has to have a certain size, again by the laws of physics, so these things are quite visible.
And finally, since you are oh soo much about tracking, why are you even using a computer and the Internet??? Don’t you know that you leave trails everywhere??? Ask Art to show you the web server logs… I run my own web server, so I know very well from where people visit my website.
Every website can track, even where you came from (although that can be disabled in some browsers, but of course not in IE.)
Joe.
RFID has the same threat to our privacy.
Care to share a box of “cookies.” I fell off a turnip truck but that was many years ago.
Joe. Where did I say anything about reading our license plates?
Oh, and Larry, where is your outcry against US passports with RFID???
I guess since it was GWBush’s administration that introduced that, it’s ok, eh?
As far as license plates is concerned, that’s about “tracking” what you seem to be oh soo concerned about.
Have you put your new passport in the microwave yet to kill the RFID chip?
You are, as usual, all hat and no cattle.
Larry, let me ask you one thing:
Do you know what an Onion Router is? Do you use one? If not, why not?
Anybody with knowledge about RFID and stuff like that would know about this, unless he is a poser.
And have you shredded your credit cards already? They can also be used for tracking.
Are you using MS Windows, or Mac OS? Do you know what they are tracking??? I use Open Source, the Linux OS, for a reason…
And just FYI, I have a Masters degree in Computer Science, and I know very well how easy tracking of people online and offline is. It is all software programs, nothing more. People like me know how to get all around this kind of tracking. Open Source is the answer, of course… Source code in the open, for everybody to see and analyze. It is no surprise that the Open Source movement got labeled “communism” by nobody else but Bill Gates once…
Joe.
I do not support the inclusion of tracking devices in our passports regardless of which administration was in power. You will discover that I take W to task as much as any other president when I disagree with W’s action to expand the size and scope of our government as well as the loss of some freedoms under the guise of Homeland Security.
As the US added “Smartrac” RFID capability to US passports in 2006-07 I probably have one in ours which we renewed in Jan of 07.
I was not happy in renewing my drivers license a few months ago with the “retina scan” being part of the renewal process.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am a city boy and, while I do own a cowboy hat, I did not grow up on a ranch.
Joe. As you know all things perhaps I can provide some Wikipedia to the other readers so that we can all be part of your “inside baseball” terminology on “onion routing.”
“Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. Messages are repeatedly encrypted and then sent through several network nodes called onion routers. Each onion router removes a layer of encryption to uncover routing instructions, and sends the message to the next router where this is repeated. This prevents these intermediary nodes from knowing the origin, destination, and contents of the message.
Onion routing was developed by Michael G. Reed, Paul F. Syverson, and David M. Goldschlag, and patented by the United States Navy in US Patent No. 6266704 (1998). As of 2009[update], Tor is the predominant technology that employs onion routing.”
Back to my falling off a turnip truck and your prior comment that I go back to high school let my share one of my many volunteer activities.
As part of a Microprocessor Standards Committee for the IEEE I was appointed Chairman of a Futurebus+ Working Group eventually representing the USA in the world community on Standards.
Some of the tasks performed by our groups included bus allocations, bus repeaters, cache coherence, message passing, as well as logical, systems and physical layers, etc.
Yes. Perhaps I need to go back to school.
One last point. As to the size of RFID chips.
They are 0.3 to 0.4 MM square
Joe. One last comment.
Everyone who has a transponder in CA has an RFID tag in their dashboard mounted unit.
Larry,
Transponders predate RFID. The technology is similar, but transponders actually have a battery inside. RFID operates by drawing power from the reader. And that requires a comparatively large antenna. The chip itself can be small, but the antenna is not. Maybe you missed out on the IEEE committee meetings when they decided on these things…
And as far as onion routing is concerned, I am impressed that you can find a Wikipedia article about it. As usual, you dodged my question, though, if you use it, since you are oh so vocal against tracking…
I have the Tor onion router mentioned in the Wikipedia article actually installed, and Firefox has a nice plugin to activate it with one click on any website I want.
Oh, Larry, and you still haven’t explained how a tiny little GPS device is supposed to send tracking information to a GPS satellite, and how it is would get from there to Earth again. With millions of GPS devices, that’s a lot of bandwidth, and energy needed…
I am sure the IEEE has found a way to defy physics, but it of course is classified
So, I’d appreciate if you stopped touting your IEEE credentials until you actually know what you are talking about with respect to GPS technology. Right now, that only makes you look silly: an old man who was active in the IEEE during the time of the 6502 microprocessor (used in the Apple II), and who has no clue about newer technology…
Joe. For those who have read my hundreds of Juice stories I rarely discuss my involvement in the IEEE. I only mention it in this post after you boasted about your Masters Degree in computer science to show each of us your superior credentials.
Final comment on the electronics industry. A Vice President of Sun Micro appointed me to chair that function on behalf of the IEEE Computer Society.
Larry, since you mention Sun Microsystems…
Scott McNealy, co-founder and at that time CEO of Sun, said in 1999: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
Joe. “I know it and I have” especially when we take high level elected officials to task.
My concern is an intrusive government on everyone living in the “land of the free”