Technology Considerations for the Implementation of a Statewide Road User Fee System

INTRODUCTION The fuel tax system used for financing the U.S. highway transportation infrastructure is becoming less effective and less equitable over time. While many people prefer the relatively less fuel-efficient sport utility vehicles, the general trend over time is toward more fuel efficiency. While the popularity of light trucks and SUVs has slowed the increase in average fuel economy for new vehicles, the continuing replacement of older, less fuel efficient vehicles with newer, more fuel efficient ones tends to lead to continuing increases in fuel efficiency for the light vehicle fleet as a whole. Further, the introduction of hybrid and fuel cell vehicles will also affect average fleet fuel economy over time. The increasing use of more fuel-efficient vehicles and alternative fuel vehicles means that tax revenue does not keep pace with road usage and that there is greater variance in payment among drivers of different vehicles. In response to the potential for declining revenue even as vehicle miles traveled (VMT—see Table 1 for a list of all abbreviations used in this paper) increase, some agencies have begun testing innovative forms of road finance in order to meet their infrastructure needs. For example, agencies have constructed new toll roads on new rights-of-way and converted a high occupancy vehicle lane facility to a high occupancy toll lane facility Some of these have been made possible by the emergence of new, low cost, reliable toll collection technology. In response to these changes, the state of Oregon has created a Road User Fee Task Force to consider new road finance strategies and develop a series of pilot demonstrations of several alternatives. The objectives of this paper are to assess available revenue-collection technology, develop a technological framework for collecting an alternative fee or tax in lieu of or to supplement a statewide gasoline tax and introduce some of the issues that must be addressed with these technologies. While specifically developed for Oregon, the issues would be generally applicable to most jurisdictions considering alternative finance strategies.