Oregon Experiments With Pay-By-Mile Program, But Drivers Lacking
State transportation officials had hoped to sign up 5,000 drivers for the three-month-old pilot program but has yet to recruit even one-fifth of that number. Volunteers pay 1.5 cents for each mile they drive via a device installed in their cars. They receive a gas tax credit in return.
“I wouldn’t call 910 people so few,” Oregon Department of Transportation spokeswoman Michelle Godfrey said. “Actually, I’d call it a pretty good number. Five thousand was the limit. The system has been working very smoothly. We’re assessing as we go. We’re generating regular reports. We’re watching the system every day along with the account managers to make sure that everything’s working well. We periodically report to our legislative bodies. We’ll be doing a whole assessment, probably towards the end of the year.”
OReGO doesn’t include trucks because of its long-established weight mile tax.
“What Oregon is likely to see is a test of technology,” said Darrin Roth, American Trucking Associations' vice president for highway policy. “What their pilot is unlikely to demonstrate is all the administrative costs associated with collecting mileage-based fees. The type of people who are going to voluntarily participate in a pilot program are not the type of people who will try to evade payment. Evasion of a mileage-based fee is potentially a really significant and costly [issue] that won’t be dealt with in this program, or likely, any pilot program.”
Oregon is the only state without a diesel fuel tax. It joins Kentucky, New Mexico and New York as the only states with a weight-mile tax, which 22 states had at its zenith during the 1970s. North Carolina, Texas and Vermont are among a half-dozen states mulling the implementation of a weight-mile tax.
“These fees are being looked at out of concern that the gas tax will no longer be a viable revenue source at some time in the future,” Roth said. “That horizon is a lot longer for trucks than for cars, particularly for over-the-road trucks. The fuel efficiency of trucks, while improving, is nowhere near that of cars. The vast majority of fuel burned is by over-the-road trucks. The diesel tax will work fine for many, many years to come.”
Except, of course, in Oregon.
"The argument most commonly levied against the weight-mile tax by the trucking industry is that it’s an administratively unfriendly tax that’s burdensome with regard to the record-keeping,” said Gregg Dal Ponte, administrator of the state Department of Transportation's Motor Carrier Division. “While that may have been true in the past, it’s definitely not the case today. [Drivers] can get in their truck, drive wherever they want to drive … and at the end of the month I, in essence, send them an invoice for their metered use of the highway system. It’s no harder than paying your electric bill.”
