Lucas Wall penned a column for the Chronicle today discussing research by transportation officials from several states (including Texas) on alternative funding mechanisms for the gasoline tax.
The notion is that the gasoline tax might eventually be replaced by some sort of metering system, by which GPS or other equipment would record mileage traveled, which would then be billed. One benefit could potentially be a market-oriented approach to congestion, since mileage prices could be set higher during peak traffic times.
Charles Kuffner, who commented on Wall’s column much earlier today, has quite a discussion going on his site. His commenters voice many of the same privacy concerns raised by Chris Baker on his KPRC-950 talk show earlier today.
The folks who are agitated about the notion of GPS tracking systems and recorders in their cars might be surprised to learn that quite a number of cars already have such systems. What is being done or could be done with that data is anybody’s guess, but this isn’t just some theoretical question over privacy at this point.
In Houston specifically, a caller to the Baker program made the very good point that Houstonians driving around the city with EZ Tags may not realize that they are being monitored already when they use the freeways. If you click on that nice Transtar graphic on the right sidebar, you’ll see a map that shows traffic flow on freeways all over town. How is that flow calculated? Yes, you guessed it: From EZ Tags in cars travelling by the monitoring points.
That’s not to suggest that Transtar is doing anything untoward with personal data. But it IS to suggest that the idea we shouldn’t allow GPS or transponder technology into our cars because of privacy concerns is already moot. The technology’s already being used, to some extent, right here in Houston.
