Around Seattle, the Puget Sound Regional Council is placing global positioning devices in 500 cars to monitor where they drive -- and then calculating a usage fee based on the roads they use and the times they drive. In Eugene, Ore., test cars are being outfitted with tracking devices that link up with special gas pumps around the area.
Currently, cars with high fuel efficiency and large trucks don't generate enough revenue from fuel taxes to pay for the burden they place on roads, said Randall Pozdena, managing director of ECONorthwest, an economic consulting firm. A large truck, he said, can do as much damage on a city street as 10,000 cars, but it still pays the same amount of per-gallon gasoline tax, assuming the gas was purchased in California in the first place.
Drivers "can start allocating how much time they spend on each type of street," said Andrew Poat, a former Caltrans official who works for the city of San Diego. It could get even more detailed: Large trucks could be charged higher fees for using residential streets rather than more fortified freeways.
"It's just like water. We're trying to get water and energy meters to tell you what time of day you use energy. You use energy at peak hours on a really hot day, you pay more for that.... We need to start sending those price signals to users."
Still, privacy advocates worry about "usage creep" -- like how the driver's license has evolved into official identification for nearly everyone. The information collected about mileage potentially could be subpoenaed in a court case or used to track someone without their knowledge, they fear.
But Pozdena and Deakin, the transportation experts, said most people don't care about this issue as much as privacy advocates, especially when presented with the possibility that as much as 25% of the road could be used by hybrids in the future. Drivers of non-hybrid cars have said it's unfair to pay the larger burden of gasoline taxes, they said.
"While some people are concerned about civil liberties, most people are not," Deakin said. "One of the things we found from focus groups and surveys is that most people said if the government wanted to track you, they have other ways to do it."
