Everybody in transportation knows that we need to move from a gas tax to a road user fee in order to finance transportation infrastructure. Regular people – that is, everybody else – hate this idea and doesn’t get it. A colleague has come up with what I think is a genius political approach that I describe in the second half of this post. The first half describes the problem.
THE PROBLEM. This is what the public says:
I’m already paying for the roads through my taxes. [Actually, you are paying with 18 year old prices since the fuel tax hasn’t been changed in that long. In the meantime, the costs have increased enormously. And compared to the price and volatility of the gas itself, the taxes are not that significant a percentage. ]
It works great. Why touch it? If the amount of money raised is the problem, just raise the tax. [Well, 1) you can’t just raise the tax, which is why it hasn’t happened in 18 years even though we are experiencing a crisis in our transportation infrastructure which is crumbling and ancient. If you’re lucky enough to do any traveling to Europe, you’ll note that our airports, train stations, trains, roads, and sidewalks are so much worse than what you see there. We are looking like the poor, ragged cousin. And if the fuel tax is broken as a means of raising money, as we move to more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels, it will get increasingly broken.]
Paying by the mile is an unfair and regressive as a tax. What about the miles I drive out of state or on private roads? What about poor people? [Today’s gas tax has all those same problems. Some of the road user fee implementations could correct some of those problems.]
What about my privacy? I don’t want the government to know my every move. [Good point, read this that I wrote earlier]
THE SOLUTION. Here is a strategy that can get political buy-in and offer us a transitional path toward adopting road user fees. I’m thinking it is pretty clever and viable.
Put together a working group of legislators and outside stakeholders to discuss how we pro-actively address the impending transition to electric vehicles. Here is how the logic can proceed:
1. Everyone is willing to agree that EVs should pay their fair share, and that the gas tax system let's them off the hook.
2. It is far better to pro-actively come up with an appropriate solution before there are lots of them. With the tax expectation in place, people can buy EVs with full knowledge, rather than government trying to change the rules after this has become a significant market with a significant constituency.
3. The bill itself should be lightly worded. Owners of electric vehicles need to pay for miles driven within the state according to some referred-to rate plan (which definitely needs to adjust with inflation). The simplest means would be an odometer reading at time of inspection. Other mechanisms that result in the appropriate payment, as approved by the state, would also be allowed.
4. To be fair, any driver/vehicle can choose to opt in to this new method of road user fees, instead of paying gas taxes.
Implications: We have a platform for experimentation on this new payment method, and working it through the entire system with low volumes. We start with the lowest common denominator for payment (odometer reading) that side steps privacy and technology concerns. However, other technology solutions could come online and be approved by the state (payment with GPS using smart phones, or with other in-vehicle devices – those built in to the car or those retrofitted on existing vehicles). Having multiple payment options will ultimately provide consumers with an array of choices that many people will find more appealing. Some solutions will address the privacy issues. Some will be able to track out-of-state versus in-state miles. Just about every other option could be a preferred choice over the crude odometer reading because it will reduce the distance taxed. As time goes on, there would likely be all sorts of methods for payment and collecting of the data that use a wide range of devices, evolve over time, and take the burden of devices and refreshing them away from the state.
That is the gist. I think it is a brilliant strategy that should have few detractors now, gives a slow easy opportunity for working the new payment mechanism through the collections systems, and opens up the path for any kind of vehicle, to opt into the system.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Brilliant Strategy for Transition to Road User Fees
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Labels: congestion pricing, electronic tolling, financing, fuel efficient cars, road financing, technology, transportation
Friday, July 3, 2009
Open Platforms, Smart transportation & smart grid
Nice Treehugger podcast interview with me that explains my vision on the how and why of open platforms for cars, the connection to the smart grid, and how creating a mobile internet can become an engine for economic development. Phew, all that in 15 (?) minutes.
Read more!
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Labels: congestion pricing, cooperative capitalism, electronic tolling, EZ pass, road pricing, technology, transportation, wireless infrastructure
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Protecting location privacy of drivers
As background to this one. you might want to read the more general article we just wrote for the Huffington Post on why we call for a national dialogue about (and promise for) location privacy. Below are some specific ways we might technically provide location privacy in for cars.
We start with what we consider to be the gold standard:
A privacy-preserving taxing protocol should reveal the minimum possible amount of information needed to achieve the policy goal, in this case the amount of tax owed.
Most current systems (e.g., E-ZPass) operate on the "trust us" model:
the government promises to properly respect the security of the driver, but collects potentially invasive information. But we all know, there just aren’t any “trusted third parties” that can be trusted forever. And we don’t need to rely on them.
For some kinds of applications, simply having a tamper-resistant device in the car that calculates the tolls and reports only the amount owed would suffice. Such a device could be auditable (so that drivers could know that the device is not secretly delivering information about their position) and equipped with a self-destruct feature (to erase location information) so that the driver could hide her information if necessary (perhaps at a cost of paying an excessive "default toll").
But wouldn't it be great if the tolling and traffic software could run on any smartphone? For this kind of setup, there are more sophisticated solutions available. One of the truly amazing aspects of modern cryptography is that it makes it possible to design protocols for mutually untrusting parties to act as if there is a trusted third-party mediating, without actually requiring such a third-party. For instance, electronic cash allows people to pay bills anonymously and untraceably, but in a way that assures merchants that they are actually getting paid (it's hard to forge). Anonymous credential systems allow individuals to prove that they are authorized to access certain data or enter particular areas without revealing their identity. We need to demand that these sorts of protections are required and part of any future road pricing systems.
Cryptographic protocols can be designed to allow the government to collect taxes, detect infractions, and record aggregate traffic statistics without violating the privacy of drivers. For a more comprehensive discussion of such solutions, see here. The big contractors likely to be involved in designing and implementing the road pricing systems (e.g., IBM and Siemens) have on staff some of the finest cryptographers in the world. Requiring such protections would pose no substantial obstacle to the technical adoption of a mileage-based system.
This post was co-authored by Andrew Blumberg.
Photo by Gerlos.
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Labels: electronic tolling, financing, privacy, road pricing, taxes
Monday, October 27, 2008
Openness is Environmental; who’d a thunk it?
So here is the gist of the argument:
Open architecture, open standards, open protocols, and open networks enable the multi-purposing of devices, and encourage and facilitate organic improvement in device and application functionality requires. E-waste is reduced when devices serve multiple purposes, and when useful life can be extended through on-going adaptation and upgrades with software or addition of hardware components.
Closed proprietary systems, on the other hand, do the exact opposite. They are made for discrete purposes, with planned obsolescence, and innovation is limited to insider willingness and insider imagination.
To see some exquisite artistic renderings of consumption, including electronic consumption, check out Chris Jordan's work, from which the photo above is an unworthy clip. There is an important tool -- an Executive Order -- the US government can use, that would have an enormous impact on reducing electronic waste.
According to an EPA study of solid waste: "The production of electric and electronic devices is a very resource-intensive activity. The environmental burden due to the production of electrical and electronic products ("ecological baggage") exceeds by far the one due to the production of other household materials. When these devices become obsolete and are discarded without recycling they leave behind lead, cadmium, mercury and other hazardous wastes.
In USA In 2005, we generated 2.6 million tons of e-waste in the US, or 1.4% of total discards. Of this amount, only 12.5% of the consumer electronic products in the municipal waste stream were "recovered," This compares to the overall recovery rate of all categories of municipal waste was 32.1% in 2005.” (1)
Even while "68 percent of consumers stockpile used or unwanted computer equipment in their homes." E-waste shows a higher growth rate than any other category of municipal waste in the EPA's report.
Of course, I have to tie this in to my favorite subject: transportation! Long-term policy goals for the US department of transportation include IT for safety, mobility, and convenience applications. These applications will rely on electronic hardware for wireless communications connecting the 240 million vehicles on the road today with network access points across America.
Given the scale and scope of the US transportation system, pervasive throughout America, touching every American family, electronic devices that leverage open architectures, open standards, open protocols, and open networks -- enabling the multipurposing of electronic and wireless investments – can dramatically reduce the amount of e-waste and would be the environmentally preferred solution for safety, mobility, and convenience applications that are intended for large fleets (over five thousand units).
The Presidential Executive Order -- “Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management,” signed by President Bush on January 24, 2007, instructs Federal agencies to “conduct their environmental, transportation, and energy-related activities under the law in support of their respective missions in an environmentally, economically and fiscally sound, integrated, continuously improving, efficient, and sustainable manner.”
Encouraging open architecture, open standards, open protocols, and open networks is important for this country’s future, one that includes limited resources – elemental as well as monetary ones. We need to get the most out of every device, every investment, and every dollar. Openness helps us accomplish that.
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Labels: advice, cooperative capitalism, electronic tolling, electronic waste, sharing
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
How to make EZ-pass preserve locational privacy
In many ways, the EZ-pass system of automated toll collection devices on highways, tunnels, and bridges throughout the Northeast has been a huge success. Penetration is impressive: A majority of drivers now have the devices. But the system has the potential to substantially compromise its users' privacy.
The signal sent out by the EZ-pass transponder is unencrypted and could be read by anyone. Each transponder is uniquely linked to a particular credit card account. The states maintain databases of EZ-pass tolling data for indefinite periods of time. Uniform standards for access and use of this data do not exist. This data may be subject to demands by other private citizens, and has been successfully subpoenaed as evidence establishing the locations of alleged philanderers in divorce cases. In sum, as implemented, EZ-pass violates the locational privacy of its users.
There's no reason the system must expose its users to locational privacy violations. Over a decade ago, automated highway tolling systems which did preserve locational privacy were successfully implemented, notably David Chaum's Dynacash in Holland and Japan. Dynacash and others were based on one of the fruits of modern cryptography -- electronic cash.
Q: What's electronic cash?
A: Electronic cash functions like ordinary cash, but it is "virtual'' and stored in a computer. To use it, I go to a virtual "bank'' and buy some electronic cash using "real'' money. Later, I spend the electronic cash on goods and services. The vendor can then redeem it for "real'' money with the bank.
Q: What does "function like ordinary cash'' mean?
A: When I give you a twenty dollar bill, you know you were paid. You can exchange that bill with other people. But once that bill is in circulation, no one knows who gave it to you. Once I've given it away, that bill is gone. And I can't tell just by looking at my remaining money where that particular bill went. Finally, the bank that originally provided the specific bill never knows whether I spent it or to whom I gave it.
Q: How would this work in the toll-collection context?
A: Users would purchase electronic cash and use it "charge up'' their EZ-pass transponders. The transponder then pays tollbooths using the electronic cash. From the user's perspective, there would be almost no change in how EZ-pass works.
Q: But the bank knows I bought the electronic cash. Isn't my privacy violated?
A: No. Even if you buy the electronic cash from the state, the state knows only that at the beginning of the month a certain amount of money was purchased to be used for tolls -- not which tollbooths were used.
Q: This seems like magic. Does this really work?
A: Yes. In fact, electronic cash systems are widely used for internet purchases. And electronic cash based tolling systems were implemented temporarily in Holland and Japan in the early 90's. Modern cryptography is amazing. We trust it every day to secure our use of the internet (via https) and ATM machines. Modern cryptographic techniques have been proposed to help ensure the safety of electronic voting. Electronic cash is based on the same kind of technology.
Q: Could we use electronic cash to implement congestion pricing?
A: For simple congestion pricing systems, definitely! For instance, if a proposed congestion pricing plan charges a fixed amount to anyone who comes within a set boundary drawn around the downtown district during business hours, electronic cash would work well. But it doesn't work as well for more nuanced systems (e.g., the charge depends on the amount of driving within the downtown boundary), and it doesn't integrate well with privacy-preserving automated traffic enforcement solutions. For a richer approach to congestion pricing which preserves locational privacy, see our other posting.
Authors of this posting are Andrew J. Blumberg, Department of Mathematics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, email blumberg @ math.stanford.edu and Robin Chase, Meadow Networks, email robin @ meadownetworks.com
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Labels: electronic tolling, EZ pass, privacy