LANSING, Mich. (Michigan News Source) – Michigan motorists are already up in arms over Flock cameras tracking where their vehicles go. Now imagine adding a meter to the equation. Because if tracking where you drive wasn’t controversial enough, the next question could be how much you’ll pay for getting there. And it’s more than just talk. The state of Michigan is spending millions to study a system that could track how many miles you drive – and eventually charge you for every one of them.

The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is moving ahead with a “road usage charge” pilot program that could eventually replace some or all of the gas tax with a fee assessed for every mile driven. The purpose of the study, according to MDOT, is “to guide the development and evaluation of a road usage charge study and pilot program to assess the potential and positive and negative findings for mileage-based revenue collection for this state’s roads and highways as an alternative to the fuel tax system.”

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Planning for Michigan’s pay-per-mile pilot began in June, while the actual six-month test involving roughly 1,000 volunteer drivers is expected to begin in February 2027. The final report is due by the end of 2027.

Surprise! It Was in the Budget

Michigan voters can be forgiven if they don’t remember lawmakers having a big, public up-or-down vote on a mileage tax. They didn’t. The pilot was tucked into the enormous fiscal year 2025-26 state budget. Public Act 22 of 2025 was approved by lawmakers and signed by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Oct. 7, 2025.

The bipartisan legislation appropriated $7.65 million for the study and pilot program and allows the project to be carried out by utilizing state employees or contracts with service providers, or both.

MDOT says the project involves testing technology and administrative methods, examining data privacy and security, conducting public outreach and evaluating whether a road-usage charge system could be reliably operated on a broader scale in Michigan.

How is the Data Collected?

To figure out how such a system might work, MDOT plans to test several ways of collecting motorists’ mileage – including self-reported odometer readings, smartphone apps, plug-in vehicle devices and data transmitted directly from a vehicle’s built-in telematics system. Some of those options could also potentially provide location information, not merely a mileage total.

Flock Cameras With a Cover Charge?

The timing is interesting with Americans already increasingly uneasy about Flock-style automated license-plate readers capable of creating searchable records of vehicle movements.

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Michigan’s mileage experiment isn’t the same technology, but it raises a familiar question: How much information about your movements should government collect?

Yosef Gage, in an interview with Fox 17 West Michigan, said he didn’t like the idea of being tracked. Liz Cook agreed, saying, “I don’t think that they need to track every mile and everywhere I go. They basically do that already with all the cameras everywhere.”

Michigan politicians, perhaps wary of how voters might react to the program, haven’t exactly been rushing in front of the cameras to stake out a position – even though lawmakers included funding for it in the state budget.

What About the Constitution?

The Supreme Court has already recognized constitutional limits involving long-term electronic location tracking. In United States v. Jones, the Court held that the government’s attachment of a GPS device to a vehicle and its use to monitor the vehicle’s movements constituted a Fourth Amendment search. In Carpenter v. United States, the Court similarly recognized a privacy interest in extensive digital records revealing a person’s movements.

Neither case says a mileage tax itself is unconstitutional, but both illustrate why a system that collects detailed location data about where motorists travel could raise Fourth Amendment questions. A review of reported cases did not turn up a major court decision striking down an existing passenger-vehicle mileage-charge program on Fourth Amendment grounds.

Drive More, Pay More

Then there’s the fairness question. A retiree driving 2,000 miles a year might love pay-per-mile. A DoorDash driver, home-health worker, traveling salesperson or anyone living in rural Michigan who routinely drives 20,000 or 30,000 miles? Maybe not so much.

Truckers would raise an even larger issue because their livelihoods depend on mileage and interstate travel. For now, MDOT says the Michigan pilot will not include the trucking industry and will focus on passenger vehicles. But there’s no guarantee truckers will remain on the sidelines if Michigan eventually turns the pilot into a permanent pay-per-mile system.

Michigan Isn’t First

Oregon’s OReGO program currently charges participating passenger vehicles two cents per mile, while Utah allows eligible alternative-fuel vehicle owners to choose a mileage-based charge instead of an additional flat fee. Virginia likewise allows eligible drivers to choose a mileage program rather than paying its annual highway-use fee upfront. MDOT stresses that Michigan hasn’t actually adopted one yet. Doing that would require another act of the Legislature – giving voters plenty of notice and time to make their opinions known to the lawmakers who would ultimately decide whether Michigan adopts it.

But for now, Michigan taxpayers are spending $7.65 million to find out whether Michigan should someday charge them for every mile they drive.