“The high revenue potential to tax, and the low cost of administration, make it a great place to test this idea,” Michael F. Gorman, Niehaus chair in business analytics and operations management at the University of Dayton, said during a panel Tuesday organized by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF).
Because of the weight they haul, trucks contribute 10 to 20 times more damage to roads than cars, Gorman said. Their mileage, too, has increased 75 percent since 1993, the last time the federal gas tax was increased. That tax is 18.4 cents per gallon for gasoline, and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Consequently, the federal Highway Trust Fund is underfunded, with revenue not keeping up with inflation or changing technologies, such as increased fuel efficiency and the transition to electric vehicles (EV).
For these reasons and others, some states have been exploring other revenue systems like developing programs for charging road usage fees.
The trucking industry is the sensible place to begin a shift in road usage fees, Gorman said, because trucks have the largest impacts on roads and could be easier to administer than, say, unfolding a system which has to begin tracking millions of autos.
Trish Hendren, executive director for The Eastern Transportation Coalition, comprised of the District of Columbia and 19 states along the Interstate 95 corridor, said not so fast.
“The motor carrier industry is capable, but not ready,” Hendren said during the panel. “I think they are willing partners to develop a sustainable funding path forward. But it needs to be simple, consolidate fees and focus on reporting complexities.”
A refrain repeated by trucking companies, Hendren said, has been, “do not make reporting difficult. Do not make this complicated.”
“We need uniformity. We need scalability, and simplicity,” she said. “They don’t want yet another fee to make things more complicated.”
The movement is ripe for new policy directions that require truck-makers to equip new vehicles with the kinds of technology and telematics to handle reporting, payments and other tasks, Robert Atkinson, ITIF president and panel moderator, said.
“You could imagine many different fees built into one integrated [vehicle miles traveled] VMT system,” Atkinson said during the panel. “And the beauty of all of this, I think, is that the technology makes this simple.”
Could Congress set an Original Equipment Manufacturer mandate, which “would mean all the new trucks would have that?” Atkinson said. “And then eventually, as the old fleet goes away, you don’t have this problem anymore.”
Now is the time to begin exploring road usage charges, technology watchers have pointed out, given vehicles’ technological advances and their data collection capabilities, and the rise of EVs — which are putting pressure on policymakers to develop equitable solutions for this sector to fairly pay for its use of the roadways.
Provisions in the federal budget proposal, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and now under consideration by the U.S. Senate, would charge EV owners an annual $250 fee to be paid into the Highway Trust Fund. Flat fee approaches like this one are viewed as unfair because they do not take into consideration the actual use of roadways, experts have said.
“That’s what a flat fee doesn’t do. It doesn’t reflect variations in use,” Hendren said.
Several states have taken the lead to develop road usage charge programs. Oregon has its voluntary OReGO initiative. Utah also offers a voluntary road usage charge program where participants pay 1.11 cents per mile, up to an annual cap of $143.25. And in Virginia, the voluntary mechanism is Mileage Choice, which allows drivers to pay their Highway Use Fee per mile rather than as a lump sum.
Still other states like Colorado and Oklahoma have partnered with Emovis, a maker of tolling and road usage charging technology, on several pilots to explore the concept.
“We have some technological solutions to bring into this,” Hendren said. “Let’s grab that opportunity.”
