Oregon experiment tries out the idea of per-mile road taxes

By TIM FOUGHT
The Associated Press

11/23/2007

PORTLAND, Ore. — A yearlong Oregon test of gadgets installed in volunteers’ vehicles has concluded it’s feasible to pay for American roads and bridges by charging drivers for each mile they travel rather than each gallon they burn.

Feasible, but not likely soon.

The idea of replacing the gasoline tax, historically the main source of highway money, faces technological and political challenges. The greatest may be that the point is to raise more money from drivers.

The Oregon Department of Transportation reported Wednesday on an experiment that tested how to charge nearly 300 Oregonians a per-mile fee when they filled up their car rather than a cents-per-gallon tax.

Their mileage was:

— Recorded from their odometers on a device designed by Oregon State University engineers. It was installed under the dashboard or in the trunk. It used GPS to register how many miles the drivers traveled in Oregon, outside Oregon and in designated rush-hour zones.

— Read at the gasoline station by a device that received the data as a radio signal from the vehicle.

— Computed to show how much drivers would pay at the rate of 1.2 cents per mile.

Despite technological glitches such as devices that drained car batteries and varying sizes of odometer data ports, the experiment’s results showed that a per-mile charge could be instituted and paid at the gas pump — with some big ifs:

If the technology improvised for the test could be pushed to the point of commercial readiness.

If the system could be phased by starting with new vehicles rather than trying to retrofit the existing American fleet.

If Americans can be persuaded the technology isn’t a way of tracking their travel routes.

If the idea catches on with lots of other states or the federal government.

“If California or the U.S. government decided, ‘We’re going to make this happen,’ it could be done in a short time,” said Jim Whitty of the transportation department. “Oregon can’t do it on its own.”

The experiment was the culmination of a six-year effort that cost nearly $3 million, $2.1 of it from the Federal Highway Administration.

It was undertaken because Oregon voters were turning down gasoline tax increases and because state officials and legislators anticipate an era in which vehicles are much more fuel-efficient than they are today.

Looking at the situation from the standpoint of building and repairing highways and bridges, those leaders saw inflation eroding the purchasing power of gasoline tax revenue. That was true even as the overall volume of fuel sales rose — in itself a signal of more wear and tear on the roads.

They also foresaw a return to the demand for fuel efficiency that marked the period after the two oil price shocks of the 1970s — which would reduce gasoline tax revenues but not miles on the highway.

With oil prices pushing $100, the pressure for more fuel-efficient vehicles may have reached a critical point, said Whitty, manager of the department’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

“We’re going to have cars that get 100 miles per gallon,” Whitty said. “They’re on the drawing board.”

Whitty said the question that weighs most heavily on critics’ minds is whether the system in the Oregon test could be used as a tracking device. He said it could not be used to track travel in real time, only to record aggregate mileage.

“It’s not like OnStar or any other navigation service,” he said.

How much more revenue a mileage fee could raise would depend on how a legislature or the Congress set up the tax, and the system designed by the Oregon department could work along with other price incentives or penalties.

The report suggests scenarios in which efficient vehicles pay a mileage fee, while gas guzzlers continue to be taxed by the gallon, or in which a fuel-inefficiency penalty is attached to the mileage charge.

“It could be structured so the Hummer pays a penalty,” Whitty said. “A legislature would have to figure that out.”

At the insistence of the federal agency, the test was set up to allow miles to be recorded at rush hours in congested zones — a way for government to charge extra and thus discourage driving at heavy-volume times.

Whitty said the work in Oregon is expected to lay the groundwork for more research. The University of Iowa plans a federally financed test in which volunteers would drive leased cars rather than their private vehicles. That would give researchers uniform technology.