PORTLAND, Ore. -- Lee Younglove is motoring about town in a way that could
be the future of driving in America: A state-installed GPS unit in his
Subaru Outback is counting every mile he's logging, and a special
transmitter in the car will tell the pump at one of two Portland gas
stations how many miles he has traveled.

Soon, as part of a state experiment, he'll be paying 1.2 cents for every
mile but won't be charged the state's 24-cents-a-gallon gas tax.

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That's because Oregon sees little future in its gas tax, which has been at
the same level since 1993. Voters don't want to raise it, inflation has
eaten much of its value and fuel-efficient cars such as hybrids are reducing
collections.

As an alternative, the state is experimenting with a "virtual tollway"
system in which a road-user fee would replace the gas tax.

The user fee is already a reality in 280 volunteers' cars, in which systems
worth about $200 each were installed this spring. Volunteers are paid $300
each.

Later this year, the state will stop collecting the gas tax at the pump for
some of these volunteers and start charging the mileage fee. Another group
will pay 10 cents a mile during rush hour and fourth-tenths of a cent for
each mile at other times. The fees are for in-state travel only. A third set
of volunteers will be a control group, still paying the gas tax.

Results of the yearlong experiment, along with recommendations, will be
presented to the Legislature three years from now so lawmakers can decide
whether to impose the nation's first statewide user-fee system, aided by
satellites.

The trial already has raised questions about whether Big Brother has found a
new way to track motorists. But the state insists the GPS units are rigged
only to count miles.

"Some people chose not to participate because they didn't want the
government in any way to be tracking," Younglove, 62, a retired information
technology specialist, said about volunteers' initial meeting with state
officials.

James Whitty, the manager of the state's project, said tracking data aren't
being recorded in the state-installed units, "but some just don't believe
it."

"There's no tracking at all because we don't want to track. We don't care,"
he said.

But GPS technology is designed to identify whereabouts, and it's conceivable
that insurance companies could force motorists to enable tracking features,
unless a state bans it, said Lillie Coney, associate director of the
Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Other state and federal agencies, as well as law enforcement, also could be
interested in the tracking data, she said.

"Somebody could say, `I think my husband is cheating on me--can you tell me
if he's in this neighborhood?'" Coney added. "Insurance companies will want
to use it: If you want us to insure you, you'll have to give us your GPS
information. . . . Information is currency."

Whitty said when the Oregon Legislature officially considers replacing the
tax with a mileage fee, the state transportation agency would propose
measures addressing outsider access to GPS tracking information.

Oregon has a history of trailblazing with motoring revenues. In 1919 it
became the first state to impose a gas tax, and its trial with a road-user
fee system is being watched around the nation as other states struggle with
transportation budget shortfalls, officials said.

"It's a pretty novel approach," said Matt Sundeen of the National Conference
of State Legislatures.

Only a few states, such as Ohio and Washington, have been able to persuade
voters to raise the gasoline tax to cover the rising cost of maintaining
roads, experts said.

A recent Federal Highway Administration report put the country's shortfall
for highway maintenance at $30 billion a year as the nation's vehicle miles
traveled rise at 1.8 percent a year, said Jack Basso, director of management
and business development at the American Association of State Highway and
Transportation Officials.

Other states have remedied shortfalls by letting the private sector operate
their tollways, as is the case with the Indiana Toll Road, Basso said.

As the nation marks the 50th anniversary of the Interstate Highway system,
Oregon's experiment is viewed as possibly ushering in a new era because its
technology captures the imagination of motorists and the attention of
academics.

One of the latter is business professor Joseph Giglio of Northeastern
University in Boston.

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He said if motorists are to be charged by the mile, such distance pricing
should come with money-back guarantees for smooth driving at certain average
speeds at different hours of the day.

"I'm a customer" with certain expectations, Giglio said. "It's time that
transportation departments get held to the same kind of standards."

Whitty said Giglio's concept is too far ahead of reality.

"Academics love to dream up wonderful things, but they don't look at the
practical things," Whitty said. "Our whole thing is to produce something
practical, which means it's affordable, it works on an administrative
standpoint and it has to be technologically feasible."

Younglove, the volunteer, says the only thing he doesn't like about the
experiment is the index card-size monitor because its blue screen casts a
glare.

Other elements are barely noticeable: a matchbook-size pad on the exterior
next to a 5-inch radio antenna. The data collector is in the trunk.

State officials are anticipating that GPS units will be standard on all
vehicles in 10 years or so. General Motors plans to install such
navigational systems on 1 million 2007 models.

"It may not be the answer," another volunteer, William Patterson, 38, said
about the GPS-aided mileage system as he drove to the bank and grocery
store, "but we won't know until they experiment with it and find out."

- - -

Tapping other technologies

The infrastructure for virtual tollways is a decade or so into the future,
according to Joseph Giglio, a business professor at Northeastern University.

But besides GPS units, other technologies that Giglio said could be useful
for counting mileage include:

- Cell phones: Some providers already offer GPS tracking so 911 emergency
calls can be traced. If cell phones were used to count per-mile fees,
dropped calls could be an issue. The upside is cell towers are already
beside roads.

- Wi-Fi: The wireless networks many laptops use to access the Internet could
also be used to track an automobile's movement. But each car would need a
unique chip. One catch: A city would have to be fully wired. And there's the
problem that Wi-Fi occasionally fails.

- 5.9-gigahertz dedicated short-range communications: This wireless
technology would allow motorists to have real-time communication with
roadside towers and other vehicles. But it would require construction of
hundreds of costly curbside stations to collect data.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
trust the politicos to take a relatively simple problem and make the
solution so expensive and convoluted that you're even worse off than when
you started.    Maybe they'd like to GIVE us all GPS for our cars....but
then they'd raise the registration fees on the vehicle to cover the cost.
fie upon them all.

The whole point is that people are buying more fuel efficient vehicles, and
the state is losing tax dollars as a result. The state feel it has a right
to your money, and when you find ways to keep from giving it to them, they
find new ways to take it from you.

No