Do The Math & Read The Writing on The Road

Road Usage Charges

Once a government agency starts "talking about" or "investigating" or "studying" an issue, you gotta know what's next.  Implementation.  

Either government workers implement a program and save not only their own jobs and create a cushion of new employees, or they admit their ideas were not very good and are left without a project to work on and a reason not to be employed.  There are also a number of bureaucrats, the 4th (unelected) branch  of government, who take the power to create, regulate and control the public for their own agenda.  

And what do the bureaucrats do after their pet programs are up and running?  They think of new ones  to work on.  Another layer of government, more regulations and more state employees.  

You Prius, CNG and Leaf owners out there have to know you're the real target.  But then what would the incentives be to use more efficient and cleaner fuels?  

Example:  I drive a Prius that gets 41.5 mpg (but only 38 in the winter because of government-mandated ethanol blended gas).  At 10,000 road miles per year at about 40 mpg and at $0.30 per gallon gas tax, it costs about $75 per year in tax. With the new road use tax, (they call it a charge or  fee) at $0.015 per mile, the tax per year would be $150.  Why would I voluntarily choose the new tax program?  And you gotta know ODOT has a calculator or two, so what is their endgame?  

When will bike road miles, paths and improvements be taxed?

Note: Drivers will have the option of using a GPS to track when they are out of state, or just be charged on total miles driven.  Here's a new meaning for Oregon's motto - "She flies with her own wings" but with a GPS monitor and a tax meter running the whole time.  

Legislature approves volunteer 

per-mile road usage charge

The 2013 Oregon Legislatures passed Senate Bill 810, the first legislation in the United Sates to establish a road usage charge system for transportation funding. SB 810 authorizes the Oregon Department of Transportation to set up a mileage collection system for 5,000 volunteer motorists beginning July 1, 2015. ODOT may assess a charge of 1.5 cents per mile for up to 5,000 volunteer cars and light commercial vehicles and issue a gas tax refund to those participants. This will not be another pilot program but rather the start of an alternate method of generating fuel tax from specific vehicles to pay for Oregon highways.