Title: Public Involvement and Road User Charge Development: Oregon's Experience
Abstract: In 2001, the Oregon Legislature created a Road User Fee Task Force with the charge to design a revenue collection strategy that can effectively replace the fuels tax in order to provide a long-term, stable source of funding for maintenance and improvement of Oregon’s road system. The need to search for a fuel tax replacement stems from two causes. First, there is a growing perception that fuel taxes have little to do with road programs, and are therefore “just another tax.” Second, the fuel economy of new vehicles is soon expected to dramatically improve. This will cause fuel tax revenue, along with road program funding, to plummet. The Road User Fee Task Force and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) have jointly examined many ideas for replacing the fuels tax and analyzed many of the issues with potential replacements. As a result of work thus far, ODOT is pilot testing one potential concept for implementing a distance-based fee, which includes a distance-based congestion pricing component. This has been a small, but high-profile, program. It’s been managed in a very open manner, with a large amount of public outreach effort, considering the program’s size. It has both supporters and opponents. Opponents’ concerns are focused on privacy issues, the potential for rewarding the least fuel efficient vehicles, and the belief that distance-based fees would be in addition to the fuels tax, not a replacement. Early in this process, opponents were quite vocal. However, as ODOT continued to focus on the problems with fuel taxes, as ODOT and the Task Force specifically addressed opponents’ concerns about distance-based fees, as hybrid-electric vehicle sales continue to rise, and as oil prices have risen dramatically, opposition has become almost silent. The Oregon Department of Transportation’s (ODOT’s) process, distance-based fee conclusions, and public involvement observations are detailed.
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 13
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