From Don Demsak comes a rant against electronic tolls and how they can be used to track an individual. He rants about EzyPass which can be used from the New York to Virginia (as far as I know). Australia is also increasingly using electronic means of toll collection. He argues for the privacy oriented Swiss model of toll collection to protect against possible abuses of electronic tolls.

From the article;

Distances between toll booths is known to the inch, so with the simple equation of average speed = distance / time, it will be easy to determine who was speeding, and issue a summons, with absolutely no way to wrangle your way out of it. That is of course once the politicians make sure their EZPass accounts are hidden from this scrutiny.

Don also worries that it will be used to track you in instances say where you didn't pay New York sales tax, or you hadn't renewed your license on time, or even your insurance. Which is one of the reasons being touted for the British traffic surveillance system . Something that is not good for freedom.

What does Don offer as a solution instead?

Well, in Switzerland they use yearly tax stickers (called a 'vignette' pass ) is used instead of tolls, and if you get caught on the toll road without one, heavy fines are levied (minimum fines are 6 times the yearly tax, which will discourage most). The idea is to only sell yearly stickers, which keeps the administration costs down, meaning more of the toll money can go to supporting the road, and less to administering the total.

This is a kind of user pays system. As he notes it can be segmented by type of vehicle with larger vehicles such as semi-trailers paying more each year. But NSW has user pays taxes already, on gasoline and registration. The federal government taxes petrol, LPG and diesel too. So this is already being leveraged.

In many instances the tolls in NSW are set up to pay off the initial investment, but then they never go away. The Harbour Bridge has been payed for many times over, but the tolls have never gone - in fact they inflate every couple of years.

The other issue with the Swiss 'vignette' system is that is an imprecise user pays system. Tolls collect money from those on the road being used. Whereas as someone who uses the New England Highway in Tamworth is paying the same as someone who uses the M2. Maybe the vignette could be scaled depending on region, but then it would be rorted. I can recall back in the late-80s it was cheaper for me to keep my car registered in the Hawkesbury as it was considered country, than it was to transfer the car to my city address.

I would be in favour of one yearly toll charge for car owners if, and only if; the registration and gasoline taxes were removed.