WSDOT Secretary Needs Obligatory GPS Monitoring For A Street Utilization Price Publications Washington Coverage Heart

When the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) secretary finds his way, the state will mandate GPS tracking not only to charge drivers for every mile traveled, but to adjust the charge based on when, where, and why You take the trip.

During the virtual Washington State Transportation Commission (WSTC) meeting on July 15, WSDOT Secretary Roger Millar described how he would introduce a Road Usage Charge (RUC). It turns out that Millar’s vision for an RUC is fundamentally contrary to and undermining the Commission’s recommendations.

The WSTC has endeavored to investigate, test and report to lawmakers the feasibility of a road toll in Washington state. According to the agency, the RUC will serve as a substitute for gas tax and will charge motorists for every mile they drive, rather than for every gallon of gasoline they buy at the pump.

However, some officials and transit activists want the RUC to serve as a general mile tax that can be diverted from roads to subsidize transit, cycling, and pedestrian projects. To make the matter more complicated and political, some officials like Secretary Millar advocate that the RUC should be endowed with various functions – not just charging people per mile driven, but also making it more expensive during rush hour or charging different tariffs different streets.

These proposals purposely make the RUC more burdensome on drivers and allow politicians to use the money for what they think is best.

Additionally, this approach dilutes the principle of user payments / benefits that an ideal RUC should embody. The user pays / user benefits principle recognizes that people should pay directly for the use of motorways and should receive a direct benefit in return. In fact, Washington state’s current gas tax works this way (although many other states don’t) because it’s constitutionally protected by the state’s 18th amendment on highway spending alone. While gas tax revenues are not immune to politics (what is funded and when), they can only be legally spent on highway use.

If an RUC is to replace the gas tax, it should emulate the characteristics of a gas tax: the money should only be spent on roads and not act as an expensive social engineering tool. With advances in technology and vehicles using different propulsion methods, a conversation is needed about ways to finance and maintain the roads we depend on regardless of the type of vehicle we drive. Charging per mile is an important part of this discussion.

However, we recognize that government officials can distort and abuse good ideas to pursue their own ideological goals. Millar’s vision for an RUC is a perfect example of this bias and shows why it is so difficult for the public to trust policy makers with this idea.

At the WSTC meeting, he said that an RUC should be overlaid with congestion prices rather than just being a charge per mile. He added, “When I spoke to leadership in DC – the House Transport and Infrastructure Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the chairs and senior members of those committees – everyone wanted road tolls to be collected earlier than later in the US – and everyone wants the construct of road tolls to include pricing for congestion – you can vary pricing based on geographic location, time of day, and purpose of travel. “

In contrast to Millar, the Commission has stated that a RUC should not include pricing for traffic congestion (see last point in slide below).

The Commission notes that while a RUC “could include pricing for congested corridors” “it would require the compulsory use of GPS”, which is at odds with key priorities. Those priorities are choice (being able to choose a non-GPS method of conveying mileage information) and privacy (not sharing your location while traveling if you don’t want to).

The Commission’s final report on RUC lists one of the most important recommendations for legislators to “enact laws to protect privacy” (p. 70). These include, for example, ensuring that drivers cannot use a GPS-enabled device, software requirements that keep driving data inaccessible to others, and policies that exclude RUC mileage data from disclosure (current law does not provide for this exception). This recommendation excludes congestion pricing that would require location data.

The commission also recommends protecting an RUC under the 18th amendment to the state constitution so that the money can only be spent on motorway purposes. The Washington Policy Center has been highlighting the importance of the 18th Amendment for over two years to ensure that any new tax is a usage fee like the state gas tax is.

We know the road toll is probably the last thing you think about in these unprecedented times. It is probably frustrating to read that some public authorities are focused on finding ways to track our travel choices and behavior while people focus on turning on the lights in their homes and businesses. It is for this reason that the Washington Policy Center will continue to monitor this issue closely – especially as we move into what is likely to be a highly controversial legislature in 2021, with every possible tax on the table in the transportation budget debate.

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