http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/09/22/0922mil...

One of the things that I have often wondered was what was going to happen when people shift to alternative fuels to power their vehicles. How is the government going to pay to maintain the roads? At the moment, most of the Federal funding that is devoted to maintaining our road systems comes from revenue from a tax levied on how many gallons of gas you pump into your car. Though this article from the Austin American Statesman only discusses reduced tax revenue due to increased fuel efficiency, those of us who drive electric cars have been getting a hefty break because, well... we don't pump fuel into our cars.

The article discusses an upcoming federal pilot test of a GPS based system to track how many miles one drives and what areas that driving occurs in. The concept is that instead of being collected at the pump, the taxes would be charged directly to the vehicle owner on a regular basis based on the number of miles they drive.

While I like the attempt to tie the "tax" to how many miles are being driven, I think it has some pretty scary privacy implications. Once the GPS system is installed in vehicles, how long will it be before we start hearing about how the police were able to determine the location of somebody based on information provided by the system. It would be nice in emergencies, but... how much data on our daily lives is too much data? It is obvious that they are thinking about these concerns because they emphasize the constraints that the system will operate within, limiting data to large geographical areas, but not specific roadways/location... However...

While the study is concentrating on just the miles driven, it seems that it could easily be adapted to charge variable fees based on routes used and time of day so as to provide "congestion" charging. Hell, we could remove all the toll plazas out there because the charges for driving on those roadways could be routed through this system...

How do we balance privacy concerns with the rich possibilities that such a system could provide?

Eh, my guess is that level of cooperation would never happen. But the possibilities are intriguing.