by James A. Bacon
Not long ago there was a fair amount of buzz over the idea of a Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT) tax as a way to finance the maintenance and construction of roads and highways in the United States. That buzz, it seems, has largely died down. Technologically speaking, it would be a no-brainer to attach a GPS device to a car and track how many miles it drove over the course of a year. But any time someone broaches the idea, foes say it would never work — Americans would never tolerate the government monitoring their movements in order to calculate how many miles they drive. End of conversation.
A new poll calls that conventional wisdom into question. Life360, a company that sells an inexpensive service enabling subscribers to track the whereabouts of friends and family, recently surveyed 1,169 teens and adults who own smart phones. Sixty percent reported that they use at least one location-sharing app on their phone, and 36% say they use two or more.
Life360 concluded that location-sharing is driven by safety. Parents like to know where their children are. Sometimes, children even want to know where their parents are. Admittedly, that’s a far cry from sharing your location with the government for the purpose of taxing you. But it shows that people are willing to trade a modicum of privacy for something else of value.
Many other apps offer inducements for people to share their GPS data. Subscribers logging into Waze yield their location in exchange for access to maps showing real-time traffic flow based on the movement of all other subscribers. Subscribers to FourSquare share comments about restaurants, nightclubs, parks and other urban amenities — and can detect the whereabouts of friends who are nearby. Glympse, an Android app, locates the location of friends and shows their movement on a map. Marco Polo provides another twist on the same concept.
One might respond that those are small start-up companies, and they’re only sharing GPS location with friends. But General Motors’ OnStar unit tracks subscribers’ car locations to provide turn-by-turn navigation, quick crash-response service and stolen car assistance. Three years ago the company forecast the number of subscribers to reach 7.9 million by 2017. Meanwhile, the service has inspired numerous competitors, including Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, State Farm and WatchDog.
The fact is that millions of Americans share their GPS-derived locational data already, and no one gets bent out of shape about it. There is one important difference, I’ll concede, between these private services and a VMT tax. People voluntarily share their GPS data with Life360, Waze, OnStar and the rest. A tax is compulsory.
While civil libertarians may grumble, Americans are getting acclimated to the idea of sharing GPS data. If they are willing to make their location public to their network of friends and acquaintances, and if they relinquish the data to giant auto manufacturers, it’s a relatively small step to allow the Department of Motor Vehicles to access the same information for the purpose of determining how many miles they drive in a year.
A VMT tax is an elegant solution to funding the maintenance of roads and highways. Motorists pay in direct proportion to which they use the roads, add to wear and tear on asphalt and incur public expense. A VMT does not shift the fiscal burden to pedestrians, cyclists, bus riders and little old ladies who drive 1,000 miles a year going back and forth to the beauty parlor. It puts responsibility squarely where it belongs, on people who drive the most. To my mind, that is a compelling public purpose that justifies the minimal loss of privacy associated with GPS sharing.
Virginia, it’s time to think seriously about instituting a VMT tax and moving toward a true user-pays system for funding Virginia’s roads, bridges and highways.
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