Oregon road tests GPS mileage tax

GPS World, May, 2006

Oregon is investigating a GPS-based system of assessing highway taxes on miles driven. This month, Portland-area volunteers had GPS units installed in their cars in a one-year pilot program.

The GPS system keeps tabs on how many miles vehicles rack up both within and outside Oregon's borders, time-tags them for during rush hours or slack periods, and levies taxes on the totals accrued. Currently, a 24-cent-per-gallon gas tax provides 80 percent of Oregon's highway funding, but prognosticators say the move towards more fuel-efficient vehicles will adversely affect state revenues.

Dubbed the Mobile Minion, the in-vehicle unit uses a u-blox TIM-LH SuperSense GPS module for weak signal tracking.

Not everyone loves the idea. "The existence of such a database, which would, for the first time in history, allow for the creation of detailed daily itineraries of every driver, raises obvious privacy concerns," said David L. Sobel of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group in Washington. For more information, see the March 31 LBS Insider e-newsletter and the August 2004 GPS World (or search for "gas tax" at www.gpsworld.com; e-newsletter available at our LBS microsite via the homepage).