Tax for miles travelled

It is not uncommon for people to grumble about paying highway tolls. But a stronger public reaction seems likely if a proposal to tax drivers for the miles they travel, perhaps using GPS technology to collect the data, ever becomes regional law in Northern California.

The concept is under study by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, a regional agency covering nine counties in the San Francisco Bay area. But agency officials, possibly in response to an uproar over privacy concerns, point out that it is merely one idea among many being considered. A similar concept has been floated in Florida.

In 2009, the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Financing Commission recommended that the federal government switch from a gas tax model to what it called a mileage-based usage fee by 2020. The switch “more accurately aligns the costs and benefits of the surface transportation system to those who are using it,” the group said in a statement.

TransForm, a transit advocacy group in the Bay Area, is one of the groups that lobbied the commission to include the mileage proposal. Stuart Cohen, the group’s executive director, said in a telephone interview that inflation had eroded the value of the flat gasoline tax, resulting in “billions of dollars in unfunded transportation needs.” A user fee, he said, was fairer than raising revenue through a sales tax that was also paid by nondrivers.