The future is arriving …
For a decade, Oregon has been the undisputed leader in pursuing the idea of taxing drivers not on the amount of fuel they buy but on the number of miles they drive. Starting this summer, though, the Beaver State will get some company: California plans to launch a nine-month experiment in July to test out different ways of charging by the mile. …
Under California’s trial, drivers will get to choose how to keep track of the miles they drive, either by buying a decal for an allotment of miles or using GPS-enabled systems to tally them. That’s more options than Oregon offers its drivers under its mileage tax program, which launched last summer.
Oregon began looking at using a vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) tax 15 years ago. It conducted two pilot projects in the last decade before launching OReGO last summer. The new program allows drivers to pay 1.5 cents per mile driven, instead of the state’s 30-cent per gallon fuel tax. Participants still pay the fuel tax at the pump, but the amount is credited against their bill for mileage taxes.
Two outside vendors keep track of the mileage each vehicle travels, bill customers and send the fees to the state. The arrangement is designed to protect the privacy of the drivers by preventing the state from knowing where vehicles have traveled, their speed and other driving behavior. The companies also offer other features, such as fuel efficiency monitoring, to attract participants.
The United States is an interesting country, where private, for-profit companies only answerable to their shareholders are more trusted to maintain “private” data than the government answerable to the voters. I just can’t wrap my head around that one…
I think this VKT charge is fair and democratic. There is an argument for charging more per km for heavier vehicles, with commercial, public transit and emergency vehicles paying less or nothing at all. Electric vehicles would be exempt from any carbon-based charges, but should still pay more of the cost of using a highly subsidized and very, very expensive road system.
There was a discussion not that long ago about applying a per km rate to vehicle insurance through ICBC as well, adjusted for age. Whatever happened to that idea?
I was involved with a non-profit society promoting distance-based insurance as a fairer way to levy insurance costs, and a way to marginally reduce road use. ICBC was very resistant, citing internal IT conversion preoccupations, perceived political backlash from car-dependent communities, and (outdated) concerns about privacy protection (everyone’s whereabouts are known already through their phones, in-car links, OnStar programs etc.).
We wanted to test a program that would be voluntary, to see if the expected reduction in distance driven, combined with expected reduction in accident claims, would cover the expected reduced revenue. UBC researchers were standing by.
It’s done in lots of other jurisdictions.
It’s an obvious improvement on all-you-can-eat annual pre-payments with hardly any adjusting for distance driven, size of car, where the more you drive, the less you pay per kilometre.
Our initiative is in limbo.