Traveling the OReGO Trail - Saddle Up!

As I mentioned here, I signed up for OReGO.

Part of the program a device plugs into the vehicle's OBD II port to track the vehicle and report the mileage. The device arrived recently.

Tracking unit for the OReGO millage tax program

I popped the GPSr device into the vehicle and followed the Quick Start instructions. The unit registered and I received an email saying that my vehicle was now online with OReGO. 

This email was quickly followed by another stating that my cash balance was low ($0). The Azuga site wants you to pre-fund your account and then allow them to withdraw funds as you drive. This is not how I pay my phone bill, but it is sort of how I was paying the gas tax since I paid the tax when filling up and before burning the gas. So I put $5 (the minimum amount) in the account. I figured I'd start small and see how it goes.

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This account doesn't pay any interest, so there is no reason to have more than the minimum amount in there. If OReGO grows, as many in the transportation department would like to see, then millions of drivers would be funding these accounts. Even with small balances, Azure would be managing millions of dollars and paying no interest. hmmm. Also, is it FDIC insured? 

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As soon as I have my first trip logged, I'll be sure to share it.

The New Electric Avenue

In 2012, Portland State started an experiment called Electric Avenue. It was planned as a two year study of electric vehicle charging patterns. A one block stretch near the campus was selected and filled with 6 level 2 charging stations, bookended by 2 CHAdeMO stations.

The site was very popular with Portland going EV drivers. There were enough stations that you could usually get a parking space and charge up. The parking was not free, this helped ensure that people moved their cars once they had filled up enough to move on down the road to their next stop.

When the 2 year shutdown date approached, the EV community asked for the project to be extended and PSU was kind enough to do so; however, they made it clear that this was only a 1 year extension to allow planning for a new location.

On July 1st, 2015 that one year extension ended and Electric Avenue officially closed. The site was in rather sad shape for much of the final year. The person that had championed for the creation of the project had retired and the fact that it was scheduled for shutdown meant that the EVSE providers were not putting it high on the priority list for repairs.

On July 28th, the new Electric Avenue of Portland opens. It will be on SW 1st and Salmon St. near the Portland General HQ.

The ribbon cutting is on July 28th at 10AM at 121 SW Salmon St. All are welcome, although the Electric Ave parking spots will be filled with show vehicles. So please plan on other parking locations (or take the MAX).

The new Electric Avenue has:

• 4 Dual connector (CHAdeMO or CCS) Efacec DCQC- Credit Card or OpConnect card
• 2 High Power (80A) Clipper Creek L2 Stations 

 More DCQC spots should improve availability.

Anyone know how to remove the old locations from PlugShare?

Happy charging!

Traveling Down the OReGO Trail

I Signed Up For OReGO!

I've been critical of the Oregon mileage tax plan called OReGO. While I understand the need for road funds, there are fundamental flaws in the system. I have a lot of questions that were not answered in their FAQ. One of these, for example, is how is the amount of gas tax that I pay tracked? If this program exempts me from the gas tax (replacing it with a mileage tax), how am I refunded the gas tax that'll still pay at the pump? To truly understand how the program works, I signed up.

So I am saying that the OReGO program is flawed and I think there is a better way, but I signed up for it anyway. This seems incongruent but this program is a first in the nation and it is being watched by many other states and the federal government. The lessons learned here could shape the future of national transportation infrastructure funding and I don't think the participant list should be populated exclusively with ideologues.

To be fair and allow people that might be more supportive and enthusiastic about the program have a chance, I waited two weeks after enrollment opened before trying to sign up. The program is limited to 5000 vehicles.

They were still accepting applicants. There are two vehicles that I own and drive: a Nissan Leaf electric car and a Honda Passport SUV. The Leaf is my daily commuter and the Passport is used for occasional camping, skiing, or hauling trips. I've previously discussed why I have these two vehicles in my "fleet" here and how, eventually, I'll consolidate into a PHEV SUV, if one ever comes to the US.

On the OReGO site, I selected signup and entered the data for my two vehicles. Surprisingly, the Leaf did not qualify for the program. Why not? It's a modern car with an OBD II port for their monitoring device. One of the major aspects of the OReGO initiative is to collect taxes from high mileage vehicles that are "not paying their fair share", so I was surprised to see the Leaf rejected. Here is the explanation they provided:

The SUV, on the other hand, had no problems and was accepted. The SUV gets about 17 MPG. With the state gas tax of 30¢ per gallon, that works out to ~1.8¢ of road funds per mile. The OReGO program will reduce this to 1.5¢ per mile. Then there is the overhead of paying for the monitoring device and the 3rd party fees for collecting (the device uses the cellular network), storing, and analysing the data. This overhead means that about 40% of the money collected goes just to funding the OReGO program itself. So now the "roads" are only getting 0.9¢ per mile of funds from the Passport. With the discount from 1.8¢ to 1.5¢ and the 40% overhead, that about a 50% reduction in funds from the SUV that go towards filling potholes or shoring up bridges.

So the electric car didn't qualify and the useful funds from the SUV are reduced by about half. I am not seeing how this program will improve our transportation funding shortfall, but I am curious how the experiment will play out.

The OReGO site has blogs by other participants that support the program. There are ODOT employees, local politicians, policy wonks and the like, but as far as I know, I am the only person signed up that is critical of the program. So don't expect to see my blog posts republished on the OReGO site anytime soon; but that's OK, I'm happy just writing here in my own little corner of cyberspace.

I'll keep you updated on my travels down the OReGO trail.

Road Funds Part 6 - OReGO

We have been looking at way to fund the roads and bridges. This discussion was started because of  OReGO the program that Oregon is trying out to replace the gas tax. We have discussed OReGO here several times, most recently here.

I admit that I am not a fan of the program, but we have established our scoring criteria and so let's see how OReGO does.

First for non-fleet vehicles, there are two options. One of the options collects location information, the other does not. If you allow your location data to be collected, you can avoid paying the road tax when you are out of state or on private roadways. Both methods require a device to be plugged into your car's ODB II port, but privacy and out-of-state driving fees are both in our scoring criteria, so we'll need to score these two variants of OReGO separately.

When we wrap this series up, we'll discuss the implications of the program in more detail, but for now, let get the scores. Here are our 7 vectors:

Road fund taxes/fees should:
1) Have some correlation to road wear
2) Not be excessively regressive
3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs
4) Be simple to pay
5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy
6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees
7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads

OReGO GPS Option: 

1) Correlation to road wear - 80 points
This program correlates to road wear better than say property taxes, but it has no weight component, so it has a minor deduction. The deduction is small because in this weight range, the impact of vehicle weight is not a significant factor in road wear calculations.

2) Not A Regressive Tax - 100 points
This program is less regressive than the gas tax. It is also not as progressive as the property tax. To get full points in this category, the only requirement was to be "not be excessively regressive". This tax meets that bar.

3) Provide adequate funds - 100 points
This mileage tax isolates the tax rate from the fuel economy of the vehicle. The average fuel economy could increase every year and this method would still collect the needed funds.

4) Simple to pay - 0 points
To use OReGO, you have to setup a digital wallet and fund it with a credit card or bank account. So far these are just one-time setup items and not too difficult. But the hard part, the reason it scores a zero IMHO is because you have to track the tax that you pay at the pump. There is no way to wave a wand at the pump to tell them that you are in the mileage tax program. This means that you will have to keep track of this and provide the data to the OReGO program, then you will pay or receive a refund based on the OReGO tax vs the gas tax. Sounds complicated to me. If the gas tax were completely removed, and you only had to deal with the OReGO tax, this would score higher. However, currently, both are in place and since only 5000 vehicles out of the millions in the state in in OReGO, this item scores a zero.

5) Privacy - 10 points
There is a GPS enabled device in your car. The only reason that this scores any points is because they have made some effort to scrub the data before it is ever seen by the state. Here is what they say in the FAQ:

Commercial Account Managers collect location information to determine whether you are driving inside or outside Oregon, and for the purposes of administrating their value-added services. In the regular operation of the program, location information is not disclosed to ODOT. ODOT employees may review data for program audit purposes. All program-related data remains confidential based on Oregon Law and ODOT policy.

That sounds pretty clear to me that location data is collected and it can be reviewed for auditing or unusual purposes.

6) Out-of-state travel - 100 points
If you travel outside of Oregon, you will not have to pay the OReGO tax. Of course if you buy gas in another state, you'll be paying their gas tax.

7) Tax out-of-state drivers - 100 points or maybe 0 points later
If 100% of the vehicles in the state were on this program, then the gas could be eliminated. That would simplify paying (see #4), but if the gas tax was gone, that would mean that out-of-state drivers would not pay anything for the road wear they cause. So as it is today, with the gas tax remaining as the mileage tax is tested, it scores 100 points.

Adding it up, the OReGO GPS option scores 490 points.

OReGO No GPS Option 

The No GPS option is similar in several regards. Items 1-4 and 7 are the same as the GPS option.

1) Correlation to road wear - 80 points

2) Regressive Tax - 100 points

3) Provide adequate funds - 100 points

4) Simple to pay - 0 points

5) Privacy - 60 points
The No-GPS option scores better than the GPS option since your location data is not collected. Here is what the OReGO FAQ says:

The ODOT Account Manager (Sanef) does not collect location information, only miles driven and fuel consumed. All program data is destroyed on a set schedule per program policy.

So they still have a record of how many miles you have driven on any given day. This is far more information than they can collect from an odometer reading at the DMV.

6) Out-of-state travel - 0 points
Every miles that you drive under the No-GPS program is taxed. If you drive to another state and buy gas, you will be paying the OReGO tax and the other state's gas tax.

7) Tax out-of-state drivers - 100 points

Adding up the No GPS OReGO program scores 440 points.

Scores so far:
 raising the gas tax 520 points
 increasing property taxes 380 points
 increasing vehicle registration 380 points
 tire tax 350 points
 GPS OReGO 490 points
 No GPS OReGO 440 points

OReGO scores better than several of the options that we've explored but simply raising the gas tax is still the high score option.

Toll roads, congestion zones, and many other ideas are still to come.

Road Funds Part 5 - Tire Tax

In this series we're exploring different ways that Oregon could possibly fund roads as the gas tax revenue decreases. Each idea is scored against the criteria we defined in part 1.

One of the ideas that's been proposed is a tire tax. Today's gas tax averages about 1.5 cents per mile. Passenger car tires generally last 30 to 50 thousand miles, so the tax would be $450 to $750 for a set of 4 tires. That is about $100 to $200 in tax per tire. Given that tires generally cost $90 ±, this is more than a 100% tax.

Paying for tens of thousands of miles of state road taxes on day 1 of a tire purchase is prohibitive and could more than double the price of the tire. Charging more than 2X for tires in Oregon would encourage people to find a way around the tax. Tire sales over the border in surrounding states and online would spike while the tire market in the state would likely collapse.

I find this to be an impractical method of excising a tax. Despite this, let's run it through our scoring and see where it lands.  

Road fund taxes/fees should:
1) Have some correlation to road wear
2) Not be excessively regressive
3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs
4) Be simple to pay
5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy
6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees
7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads


1) Correlation to road wear - 100 points
Tires wear with use, so there is an excellent correlation.

2) Regressive Tax -  20 points
This tax is not based on income, property, or even the tire cost.

3) Provide adequate funds -  100 points
Assuming the taxes were actually paid (which is a big assumption), this tax could replace the gas tax.

4) Simple to pay - 30 points
The simple model is that you just pay the tax when you buy the tire. On the surface, it seems simple. There is no additional information or tracking required. But looking deeper, there are many complications to this tax. If a tire gets punctured soon after you buy it, do you get a refund of the tax? If so, who assesses the miles driven on that tire? If tires are retreaded, do you have to pay more road tax?

5) Privacy - 100 points
Buy a tire, pay the tax. Just like any sales tax, no personal information needs to be collected.

6) Out-of-state travel - 0 points
Once you have bought the tires, you have paid the tax. It does not matter where you travel, you would not get a refund for miles outside of Oregon.

7) Tax out-of-state drivers - 0 points
It is unlikely that any but the most desperate travelers would buy tires in Oregon if they have a very high road tax.

Adding it up, the Tire Tax only scored 350 points on our scale, making it the lowest scoring option that we have examined yet.

Scores so far:
 raising the gas tax 520 points
 increasing property taxes 380 points
 increasing vehicle registration 380 points
 tire tax 350 points

Toll roads, congestion zones, and many other ideas are still to come.

Road Funds Part 4 - Vehicle Registration

Welcome to part four of our road funding exploration. Oregon has recently launched OReGO, a vehicle mileage tax. While it is easy to criticize any government policy (especially a tax), the hard part is coming up with a viable way to fund our mutual goals, so we'll look at several suggested funding methods (as well as a few of our own) and score them to see how they stack up.

In this post, we'll look at the idea raising the vehicle registration fees.

Oregon's first vehicle registration law was enacted in 1905. It was a one-time only fee of $3 and was dedicated to road construction. Today, a regular vehicle title is $77 per year (you have to pay for 2 years at a time) and, if your car requires smog checking, is usually rolled in with a DEQ fee. Vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) over 26,000 pounds pay $90 per year.

Today, most people drive about 12,000 miles per year. Assuming an average fuel efficiency of 23 MPG, that means the average annual gas tax payment is ~$156. If the gas tax were to be completely replaced with a registration fee, we'd have to pay an additional $312 registration fee every two years. That would bring the total up to $466.

To assess each tax or fee idea, we'll walk through each item on the list and score it from 0 to 100. Let's see how an increased registration fee scores against the criteria we defined in part 1:

Road fund taxes/fees should:
1) Have some correlation to road wear
2) Not be excessively regressive
3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs
4) Be simple to pay
5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy
6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees
7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads


1) Correlation to road wear - 0 points
Registration has nothing to do with miles driven

2) Regressive Tax - 30 points
This fee have no coorelation to income or vehicle cost. It is generally regressive. The only reason it earns any points here is that lower income households don't tend to have Jay Leno garages with a card catalog of vehicles to select from.

3) Provide adequate funds - 100 points
The registration value could be selected to meet the road fund needs. In down economic years, the number of miles travels varies more than the number of registered vehicles.

4) Simple to pay - 100 points
Registration fees are already paid today. No new infrastructure is needed to collect these funds.

5) Privacy - 100 points
The state would not need to collect in additional information about you for this fee.

6) Out-of-state travel - 50 points
This fee is not associated to miles traveled, so it does not matter where you drive.

7) Tax out-of-state drivers - 0 points
Out of state drivers would not register their cars here and if there is no gas tax, then no fees would be collected from out-of-state drivers.

Adding it up, raising the registration fee scores 380 points. For reference, raising the gas tax scored 520 points and increasing property taxes scored the same 380 points. We still have several more funding methods to consider.

OReGO Has No Wings

Willamette Week and Fox News don't agree on much. The Oregon Department of Transportation has managed to create something that the liberal newspaper and the conservative news channel agree upon. They both hate the new vehicle mileage tax that started in Oregon on July 1st.

The program is called OReGO and it is open to 5000 volunteers. The participating vehicles are fitted with a GPS unit that plugs into the car's diagnostic port. Drivers are charged 1.5 cents per mile on Oregon roads and they are refunded any gas tax they pay at the pump. 

So what is it that has both the left wing and the right wing upset with this program? 

Let's start with the left: OReGO taxes all vehicles at 1.5 cents per mile. This means that Hummers pay the same per mile as a Prius. With gas tax, there was an incentive to drive a fuel efficient vehicle. This flat rate removes the state tax incentive to have a smaller carbon footprint. 

Moving to the right: OReGO puts a GPS tracker in your car. Everywhere you go can tracked. The program is designed to have this information scrubbed by a 3rd party before it is seen by the state, but the invasion of privacy is big government stepping far over the line into our personal lives.  

There are more complaints on both sides, but these are the biggest two. This leaves the program vastly without support from the left wing or the right wing.

Without support from either political wing, OReGO
is like a plane with no wings. it's not going to fly  

Road Funds Part 3 - Property Taxes

Today Oregon roads are funded from a variety of sources. According to a 2014 study by The Tax Foundation study, the sources for Oregon funds are:

User Fees	Fuel Tax	License Fees	Property Tax
3.1%	22.4%	29.4%	45.1%

There is a concern that the fuel tax funds are diminishing as fuel economy improves and more plug-in vehicles hit the roads. The idea we'll look at in this part is eliminating the fuel tax completely and moving this burden to the property tax column. Let's run this through our seven criteria from part 1 and see how it scores:

1) Have some correlation to road wear - 0 point
This tax is correlated to the value of the property that you own and has no connection to how much you drive.

2) Not be excessively regressive - 80 points
This will increase the tax on people with non-farm property. The more property you have, the more you would pay. This is not a regressive tax.

3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs - 100 points
Property taxes are currently used to pay for many things, including roads. It could be used to cover the fuel tax.

4) Be simple to pay - 100 points
Property taxes are already in place. This would just add to how much is collected. No new system is needed to make payments or collect funds.

5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy - 100 points
No additional personal information would be collected.

6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees - 0 points
If you own property here, you will pay, regardless of where you travel.

7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads - 0 points
This would not collect money from people that travel here.

Summary 

Adding it up with our scoring system, this solution of increasing property taxes only scores 380 points. This is less than the 520 points that increasing the gas tax scored.

Raise The Gas Tax: Road Funds Part 2

In part 1, we established that our transportation infrastructure is in poor shape and desperately needs funds and we determined what criteria would be used to measure the success of any new funding scheme.

Now we'll look at proposals that have been put forth as well as invent a few of our own. Here is the first proposal:

Raise The Gas Tax

One potential solution is to simply raise the gas tax. Gasoline is still our primary fuel source for cars on the road today and it will be for many years. In the last year, Virginia and Massachusetts raised several taxes to cover transportation costs, and a handful of states raised their gas taxes. This is the solution that Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer likes. In April of 2015 Rep. Blumenauer posted:

"The people on the ground understand there is no viable alternative to fund America's infrastructure needs. A gas tax increase is the only solution that is dedicated, sustainable for the long term, and big enough to do the job. ‪#‎FixTheTrustFund‬"

Increasing the gas tax would decrease gasoline use thereby reducing all the political, military, and environmental problems associated using gasoline. Additionally, no new mechanism is needed to collect these funds. This would be able to fund our roads for at least the next 20 years.

However, is it fair that EV drivers don't have to pay for roads at all? You could (and many EV drivers do) argue that EVs more that make up for this by not polluting the air or requiring the military to guard the Strait of Hormuz. But, your local DOT is only worried about fixing potholes and making sure the local bridges don't collapse. The externalities related to gasoline use are very important, but let's put them aside right now and focus only on transportation infrastructure funding.

Scoring 

Here's our criteria from part 1:

Road fund taxes/fees should:
1) Have some correlation to road wear
2) Not be excessively regressive
3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs
4) Be simple to pay
5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy
6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees
7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads

To assess each tax or fee idea, we'll walk through each item on the list and score it from 0 to 100. Some of these might be more important to you than others feel free to compute your own scores and add or subtract criteria.  Let's see how raising the gas tax scores:

1) Correlation to road wear - 30 points
Since heavier vehicles generally use more fuel and cause more road wear, there is some level of correlation. However, a gas tax increase does not cover alt-fuel vehicles. Electric cars, veggie oil, CNG, compressed air, or any other alt-fuel that can be dreamt up would sidestep a gas tax increase. These alt-fuel cars cause just as much wear as similar weight gas cars. The fact that some fuel types get a free ride here greatly reduces this solutions score in this area.

2) Not be excessively regressive - 0 points
A gas tax increase could be significantly regressive. Nearly all of us need to drive, whether it's for work, shopping, or errands. Increasing the gas tax would increase the tax burden more on the working poor.

3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs - 100 points
Increasing the gas tax certainly could fund the roads. Any new tax should include automatic periodic inflation adjustment.

4) Be simple to report and pay - 100 points
Paying at the pump is simple; no forms, no bills, they even take credit cards.

5) Not invade personal privacy - 100 points
Paying at the pump does not ask you where you were or what road you were on. You can even pay in cash and it is completely anonymous.

6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees - 100 points
When you drive to another state and you are buy gas somewhere else, you would not be paying Oregon road taxes.

7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads - 90 points
When people in gas cars drive here from other states and fill up at a gas station in Oregon, they

Summary 

Tallying it up, Increasing The Gas Tax scored 520 out of a possible 700 in our system. Increasing the gas tax is a simple solution with no additional overhead costs. And since gas will dominate our transportation system for at least the next decade, it will meet the funding needs. Additionally, this can be done with no invasion of privacy. There are only two drawbacks to increasing the gas tax. one it is a regressive tax and, two, it does not tax EVs or other alt-fuels.

Road Funds - Is there a perfect solution? Part 1

Construction of bridges and roadways, maintenance of bridges and roadways: paying for our transportation infrastructure is not cheap.

Transportation infrastructure is deteriorating nationwide. States are finding it difficult to maintain their roads and bridges and to fund new construction projects. One of the primary sources of funding for infrastructure is a gas tax. This source, however, is drying up.

A one-two punch has hit the gas tax. One, cars are being driven fewer miles. Oregon, for example hit peak driving in 2004. Each year since then has seen fewer miles on the state's roads. Millennials just don't drive as much as previous generations. They are digital natives and are happy to work at the corner coffee shop rather than an office 20 miles from their home. The second punch is that vehicles are becoming more fuel efficient. Hybrid and plug-in vehicles are steadily increasing the MPG rating of new cars.

Even with the reduction in miles driven, many of the road maintenance costs continue. So how should we fund our roads?

There are always behavioral elements associated with a taxes and fees that must be considered. In a simple model, governments tax the things they want to discourage and have incentives for the things they'd like to see proliferate. For our road funding thought experiment, I propose that any potential solution would be measured with the following criteria:

Road fund taxes/fees should:
1) Have some correlation to road wear
2) Not be excessively regressive
3) Provide adequate funds for transportation maintenance needs
4) Be simple to pay
5) Allow for collection without invasion of personal privacy
6) Allow for out-of-state travel without paying in-state road fees
7) Tax drivers from out-of-state when they are using Oregon roads

Constructing a solution to meet all of these goals will not simple. What do you think of these are the success criteria? People often disagree about things because they have different goals. If we have agreement on the goals, we're more likely to have agreement on the solution(s).

You might have noticed that there is no item in the above list for air pollution or CO2. These are important, but this is an issue for road funding. If the externalities of fossil fuel use is to be addressed (and I think they should), that would be independent from road funds. So something such as a carbon tax is outside of the scope of the road funding discussion.

In the next few posts let's look at a few proposed solutions and see how they rate against these criteria.

	Potential Funding Method
Part 2	Raising the gas tax
Part 3	Increasing property taxes
Part 4	Increasing vehicle registration
Part 5	Tire tax
Part 6a	GPS OReGO
Part 6b	No GPS OReGO