Those idiots. The cost of this GPS program will far exceed the revenue.

If they want to tax miles driven, just raise the gasoline tax. Not only does it cut down the number of miles driven, it forces the consumer into smaller cars. Although their gas tax is amazingly high already.

A brilliant solution. Make the cities too expensive and dangerous to live in, then penalize the poor honest workers who now have to commute to the cities to work.

It is just a pilot scheme in certain areas that will be introduced within 2 years, so who can say if it will work. The rationale is to abolish the vechile tax, and replace with one geared towards those who a)use the roads the most and b) use the most congested roads. Raising petrol tax penalises those in rural areas.
The GPS is merely a use of new technology - to save on clogging up the networks with toll booths.
The expansion and maintainance of the road network, not to mention externalities like emergency services have to be paid for somehow.
I would be interested in any suggestions. Perhaps if all pray to Adam Smith, the free market fairy will provide us with a perfectly working network !

By the way, although the government is co-ordinating this scheme, the operation will be tendered out to the private sector.

a terrible idea. I agree with Jake on raising the gas tax to produce the same congestion busting results.
OR
How about a scheme to tax people based on the distance of their car driving work commute. No sattelite tracking involved.

Urbane, it's one thing for you to be against the free-market but I'd think you have a problem with the total encroachment on privacy. I would.

How about just making an odometer check part of yearly inspection? There could be different tax rates for different localities, and breaks for using more efficient cars. There is no way I would keep driving if a government GPS were watching the Sebring every time I pulled into a one-stop drugs-and-kiddie-porn emporium. Whoops, I mean... Taco Bell.

Good solution Jay, that would work. I guess the goal of ALL these schemes is too.
1. Make people drive less by getting them to live closer to their commutes.
2. Make people drive less by using public transportation or car pools.

As demonstrated by the comments in my humble opinion there are better solutions than Big Brother watching with sattelite tracking.

Against the free market ? Who said that ? I am just saying that it can't solve everything, and would like to hear suggestions for alternatives to this scheme. Why get so cagey about car journeys ? I can see the principle about privacy concerns, but in practise it will be a private company doing the tracking. It strikes me as no worse than stores and marketing companies tracking your purchasing habits.
I guess the only alternative would be physical tolls - raising the fuel tax not an option. It is about as high as it can go - hence the mass protests about fuel prices a few years back. Funny when many of the same people protested against the "war for oil" a couple of years later. Twats.

Having just completed a policy briefing on privacy in America for my Truman award, I can simply add that the scariest part of all this is how close to home it shall soon hit.

The REAL ID Act of 2005, tacked onto the Iraq Appropriations Bill which just passed both houses about a month ago, will require that every state drivers' license have remote-scannable technology.

In other words, your identity will be constantly broadcast to those with the tools and desire to pick up on it. Terrorists with the proper scanners will be able to pick Americans out of a crowd as if we were all wearing American idol t-shirts.

Smart move, government. Smart move.

Claudio

GPS is as cheap as chips. We're talking trackers for less than a cent, heck about ten for a cent. Supermarkets like Wal*Mart will soon be putting trackers in everything in their stores, so if you buy a jumper (sweater) in a Wal*Mart in Wisconsin and then wear it as you go shopping in Arkansas, they'll know where you bought the clothes you're wearing.

Heck one day we'll have them in crisp packets or soda cans, so if you litter they can track who bought the item (via cards or CCTV) and then go fine you.

Nonetheless the scheme isn't really workable and seems to exist because the Gvt is too lazy to enforce the Vehicle Tax/Road Tax - next they'll get too lazy to enforce MOTs. The simpler solution would be to just crush any car without valid licences or repossess and sell it at auction.

The gas tax does not solve the problem of congestion. If you can track where and when people drive, you can charge high prices when congestion is high and low prices when there is light traffic.

It may be creepy, but it is an efficient way to allocate scarce road space.

Having spent an hour and a half to get from LaGuardia to Manhattan this morning in a cab, I am all for road pricing.

Dan: Road pricing can be done using tolls. But before anyone says they'd be better than GPS...

Tolls cause congestion, as they take time to go through. As a rough idea onto how motorways work and can create natural jams, I was in a car going from Brighton towards London and a few miles out of Gatwick there was a Motorbike event, god knows what. So drivers slowed a little to see what was going on, causing cars behind to slow down and so on. Over the course of the day this finally resulted in traffic going at 10mph for about a mile or two, until you reached the original slowdown point whereupon the road ahead was clear and you could immediately hit 70mph again.
Just a pure natural dynamic. Tolls would be far worse, just consider the impact they have in the US. We have a few tolls in the UK and there's always traffic jams there too. Cars gridlocked waiting to get through to open road on the other side.

The GPS system allows for dynamic, fluid, measuring and billing. My slight problem atm is the lack of an alternative. Our railways just don't have spare capacity at 8am. e-working was meant to be the solution. But the Internet hasn't really changed much.