|
program.
According to Pearson, in 2001 the Oregon Legislature became concerned about declining motor fuel tax revenues in the
future. It mandated that a task force be formed to consider possible alternatives.
"The task force met for about 18 months and it came up with about 28 different ideas," Pearson said. "It settled on the
mileage tax as being the most logical, simple, practical and easiest to implement."
The technology was developed by two Oregon State University engineering professors - David Kim, a former General Motors
research scientist, and David Porter, an information technology specialist.
The task force decided to conduct a pilot program using the new technology in the Portland, Ore. area with 280 motorists
and two service stations. The vehicles are equipped with electronic odometers and Global Positioning Systems or GPS. The gas
pumps are equipped with transponders that are able to read the vehicle's mileage. A computer in the pump then replaces the
24-cent per gallon state motor fuel tax with a 1.2-cent tax per mile driven in the state. The mileage tax was calculated to
be revenue neutral, according to Pearson, generating neither more nor less revenue for the state.
Pearson says ODOT received a grant from the federal government to assist in the study. However, Pearson says that the
grant came with a requirement - to include congestive pricing, or higher fees for driving in certain areas at certain times.
Under congestive pricing, motorists driving in the highly congested zones during rush hour times are charged 10 cents per
mile for that travel. The GPS system knows where they are driving and when they are driving in these zones.
"People say one of their biggest concerns is privacy," Pearson said. "People think we are tracking them and we know where
they drive, but that is not true. Our GPS system only works one way. It's through a short-wave radio frequency, so we'll
know that they're in the rush-hour zone, but we won't know if it's Monday, Wednesday or Friday. We just know how many miles
they drove in the rush-hour zone between fill-ups. We don't know what roads and we don't know what day."
|
While Pearson admits that GPS is capable of tracking every vehicle with precision, she said that's not the intent of the
program and ODOT really doesn't care where motorists are driving except for billing purposes.
"The privacy issue has been something that we have really tried to work on so that it becomes a non-issue," she said.
The pilot program began about six weeks ago and is scheduled to run for about 10 months at which time the task force will
crunch the numbers and report back to the legislature. Pearson figures that even if things go smoothly, it would be about 10
years before it could be implemented and that would be on a gradual basis
Pearson said she doesn't expect anyone - either car owners or the government - is going to want to pay to retrofit
existing cars, so it will be a gradual transformation as old cars are replaced by new cars equipped with the new technology.
However, the remaining 49 states, the U.S. Department of Transportation and even foreign countries are watching closely;
they all see motor fuel tax revenues leveling off and heading into a permanent decline - and with them, a decline in the
money to build and maintain roads and bridges.
"We've heard from many different states and even from different nations like Japan and England that are seeing the same
thing," said Pearson. "We look out to the future and with the hybrid cars becoming more popular, we can see the revenues
declining and more people are using the roads, so this alternative - user pay - seems like a fair way to go. We're not
trying to get more money. We're trying to keep it from going down. We want to maintain what we'll need to keep the roads in
shape."
|
