On a recent episode of “The Drive,” my co-host Karl Brauer and I got into a discussion about a pair of bills being considered in my home state of New York.One sets a goal of reducing driving across the entire state by 20%. The other would tax certain fuel-efficient vehicles by the mile and require an electronic device in the car to keep track.To calculate the tax, qualifying vehicles would be required to have an onboard electronic unit installed when the vehicle is registered, re-registered, or renewed. I had a fairly basic question: This might work for New York City, but how exactly are the rest of us supposed to drive 20% less?Even a Californian like Karl saw the problem immediately.“There's this whole area, the politicians might have heard of it,” he joked. “It's called Upstate New York.”Exactly.If you live in Brooklyn, you may have a subway station a few blocks away. Where I live near Buffalo, and across huge stretches of Upstate New York, your car isn't some luxury you can casually replace with a subway, bicycle, or comfortable pair of walking shoes.You drive to work. You drive your kids to school. You drive to buy groceries or see family.For millions of New Yorkers, driving isn't optional.Miles to goSo what exactly is Albany proposing?The Get Around NY Act, sponsored in the Senate by Brooklyn Democrat state Sen. Andrew Gounardes, would establish a goal of reducing the total number of vehicle miles traveled in New York state by 20% by 2050.Now let's be precise about what the bill does, because it's important. Nobody is proposing that a police officer check your odometer on Dec. 31 and issue you a ticket because you drove 12,000 miles instead of 9,600. The 20% target applies statewide, not to individual drivers. The bill would instead use transportation policy to push the state's total mileage downward.Under the legislation, state and local highway projects that expand road capacity would have to undergo a "vehicle miles traveled impact assessment." If a project doesn't align with the state's 20% reduction goal, officials would have to change the project or offset its effects through measures designed to reduce driving.Those measures could include expanded public transportation, pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, "micro-mobility" infrastructure, parking-demand management, transit-oriented development, and other land-use changes.What are the alternatives?Gounardes has been very clear about the idea behind it. "If we measure VMT, we can work to reduce it," he said while criticizing the state's transportation master plan. He added that this doesn't mean New Yorkers need to travel less because the state can create better ways for them to get to work, school, and everywhere else.I'll bite. What exactly are these better options for people who don't live in New York City?Even New York's own climate planners acknowledge the problem. State climate materials say many New Yorkers depend on single-occupancy vehicles because they have limited access to public transit.Of course they do. New York is a huge state. Once you get beyond its dense urban centers, the transportation equation changes quickly. The state itself administers rural transit programs specifically to help people in smaller communities reach jobs, schools, health care, and stores.That doesn't mean nobody should build better public transportation. Build it. If you can give somebody a faster, cheaper, and more convenient way to get where he needs to go, he'll probably use it.But you can't create a subway by passing a mileage target.Pay as you goAnd this isn't the only vehicle-miles proposal Gounardes has introduced. A separate bill, S4196, would replace some of the gas-tax burden on fuel-efficient vehicles with something entirely different: a tax on every mile they travel on New York's public roads.The proposal would apply to vehicles rated at least 30 miles per gallon or 30 MPGe. Owners would pay 1.9 cents for every taxable mile driven.Drive 10,000 miles in New York and that's $190. Drive 15,000 and it's $285.But here's the part that really caught my attention. To calculate the tax, qualifying vehicles would be required to have an onboard electronic unit installed when the vehicle is registered, re-registered, or renewed. The device would use GPS or comparable technology to determine how many miles the vehicle travels on New York public roads and regularly transmit the taxable mileage to the Department of Taxation and Finance.The legislation includes privacy protections. It says the unit would report aggregate taxable mileage rather than your exact location, travel times, or individual trips. Drivers of fuel-efficient gasoline vehicles could also claim a credit for the gasoline taxes they continue to pay.RELATED: Automakers were ready to kill the gas car. Buyers had other ideas. Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesUnwanted passengerGood to know — but we're still talking about the state requiring a GPS-capable electronic device in your private vehicle so it can calculate a tax based on how much you drive.And New York would make sure it's there. The bill would add the device to the equipment checked during the state's annual vehicle inspection. The inspector would record both your odometer mileage and the mileage reported by the onboard unit. Tampering with or disconnecting the device with the intent to evade the tax could bring penalties.The rationale for a mileage tax isn't difficult to understand. Gasoline taxes help pay for roads. As vehicles become more efficient and EVs buy no gasoline at all, states collect less fuel-tax revenue even though those vehicles still use — and wear — the roads.Look at the two proposals together. One bill establishes a state policy of reducing the number of miles New Yorkers drive by 20%. Another creates the infrastructure to measure the miles driven by a growing share of cars and charge their owners for every one.They're separate bills with separate purposes. The Get Around NY Act is aimed at transportation planning and emissions. The mileage-tax bill is aimed at replacing declining gasoline-tax revenue. But if you're a driver, they meet at exactly the same place: your odometer.And that brings me back to life outside New York City. What happens when you can't reduce your mileage?Maybe your job is 30 miles away. Maybe the closest specialist your child needs is an hour away. Maybe you're caring for an elderly parent in another town. Maybe your kids play sports. Maybe you live somewhere where "take public transit" means arranging your entire day around a bus that comes a few times rather than every few minutes.Those miles aren't indulgences. They're life.There's an enormous difference between giving people alternatives to driving and designing policy around the assumption that they'll drive less.Give me better public transportation. Give me roads that are safe. Give me communities where people who want to walk or bicycle can do it safely. Give consumers choices.But before Albany decides New Yorkers should collectively drive 20% fewer miles, I'd like lawmakers to spend some time asking why we're driving those miles in the first place.Because outside the five boroughs, the answer is often pretty simple. We have somewhere we need to be.