Oregon Wants To Know Where You're Going

Oregon launches program to tax drivers by the mile

Oregon’s Department of Transportation has been working on it for 15 years as a way to eventually replace the gas tax, which has been flat due to an influx of high mileage vehicles and people driving less.
Right now the program is voluntary and being capped at 5,000 participants, but an ODOT official told Fox News the ultimate goal is to make it mandatory and change the way states pay for roads -- forever.

"We're trying to make up for a growing deficit, really, because inflation's eating away at our ability to buy asphalt and rebar and the things we need to maintain the roads," said Tom Fuller of the Oregon Department of Transportation.

According to a national usage fee alliance, 28 states are in various stages of following down the same road. However, there are also privacy concerns. Two of the three OReGO systems track and store a car’s every move.

But I'm sure the state government will promise not to use it; until they really, really want to. Like when they need to investigate some conservative conspiracy?

"To put a GPS monitor in everybody's car, the government already knows too much about us as it is," Jeff Kruse, a Republican lawmaker told Fox News.

Others are raising questions about the cost. Getting the gas tax is cheap, but OReGO vendors will eat up 40 cents of every dollar collected, and for those not used to paying any gas tax, it could be a whole new sticker shock – every month.

I'm curious about two other aspects of this tax. First, how will it capture money from out of state cars, and particularly trucks, which currently pay the tax at the gas pumps. Will the state issue GPSs at the border stations for out of staters to carry?

Second, a strict mileage tax doesn't reflect the amount of stress a vehicle puts on the infrastructure. An old VW bug (and yes, there probably still are some on the roads of Oregon)  doesn't wear the road like an 18 wheeler. While fuel usage wouldn't perfectly correlate with road wear, it would reflect it much better than a flat mileage tax. Shouldn't the weight of the vehicle be considered?