91ÊÓƵ

All eyes are on Oregon Department of Transportation‘s innovative Road Usage Charge Program, which will launch in about a year. But many unknowns exist in regards to how the program will look when it is up and running July 1, 2015.

Under the program, established in 2013 via Senate Bill 810, up to 5,000 volunteer participants will pay a 1.5 cent-per-mile road user fee and then receive a gas tax refund. The fee will be calculated via ODOT-approved high-tech equipment, including global positioning and non-GPS systems, installed in participants’ fuel-efficient cars and light commercial vehicles.

No more than 1,500 of the participating vehicles will be below 17 mpg, 1,500 between 17 and 22 mpg and 2,000 greater than 22 mpg.

Still unknown are the technologies that will be used, the types of participating vehicles, and how drivers of vehicles with greater fuel efficiency can be encouraged to participate, said James Whitty, manager of Oregon Department of Transportation’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding.

“We are doing it to demonstrate the system works,” he said. “We want to prove that charging by the mile is something that can be simple and easy. We’re not doing it to make money off a volunteer program.”

Ultimately, the goal is to create a revenue source to either supplement or replace the gas tax.

ODOT’s challenge now is to convince drivers of vehicles that achieve more than 20 mpg to participate even though the 1.5 cent-per-mile fee would cost them more than the gas tax.

“Until there’s a large market attraction that attracts vehicles that are more fuel efficient, the system will operate at a loss,” Whitty said. “Right now, we don’t have a solution for that.”

Ultimately, the program will have to become mandatory for it to start operating in the black, Whitty said. That is likely to happen in stages, beginning with newer vehicles that have greater fuel efficiency.

With a mandatory program, participation could be great enough to significantly reduce administrative costs’ ratio to revenue, Whitty said. At 100,000 vehicles, administrative costs would be about 10 percent of revenue. At 1 million vehicles, costs would be below 5 percent.

One way to accelerate that growth in participation would be to convince other states to piggyback, and officials in California and Washington are showing interest, Whitty said.

“We’re hoping that as we are designing this system, it could accommodate any number of people,” he said. “California could feasibly just jump on our system. It could all be billed together.”

Officials with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) visited Portland on at least two occasions last year and Whitty spoke to transportation leaders in the Golden State earlier this year about the Oregon program.

“The consistent message is they want to run a pilot,” he said. “They believe the Oregon platform is the most viable way to do that.”

California is creating its own pilot program, said Norma Ortega, acting chief deputy of Caltrans. But officials are just now developing program parameters, including how to conduct a test over a broad geographic area in a sizable state.

“We’d certainly assess whether we could use that,” Ortega said of Oregon’s pilot program. “If they have a contract that we could piggyback on, that is an option we would want to explore.”

Whitty, on visits to Washington, D.C., is drawing crowds of 60 to 70 lawmakers and planners to talks about smart transportation planning, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., said. Oregon’s position as an early adapter could help the state solve its transportation problems sooner, Blumenauer said.

“We’re not waiting,” he said. “That means we are more likely to get more investment and support and could mean we qualify for federal investment.”

Road usage fee technology also could be used for payment of bridge and highway tolls, parking and other transportation services, Blumenauer said. It also could help identify transportation hazards in real time.

“If we start in Oregon and engage our tech sector, there’s an opportunity to be a leader in the creation of a whole host of new businesses,” he said. “I think people will be surprised at what happens when it takes off.”

Currently, vendors are bidding to take part in the program, including roles for technology development and payment collection. Several major companies – including Intel, Verizon and IBM – have expressed interest in providing apps and products. Proposals are due July 18 and ODOT should make its selections by October, Whitty said.