The Oregon legislature has been talking about a major transportation package for years, paying for far more than minimal road maintenance. The current transportation package has become a priority since nothing passed in the last Oregon legislative session. Let’s take a closer look at the proposed eight billion dollar bill.
Funding
The proposed transportation bill would raise money through an increased gas tax and increased title and vehicle registration fees by $40 for vehicles with higher than average fuel efficiency. The latter is an effort to ensure that electric and hybrid car owners are helping pay for the maintenance of roads. This means customers of Trail King dealers won’t pay more for titles and vehicle registration, but Tesla owners will.
The proposed gas tax increase is 14 cents, though that may change. There are challenges to the current gas tax formula, sending 20% of the money to the cities, 30% to the counties and 50% to the state. Eastern Oregon is demanding a larger share of the money since much of the last transportation bill has gone to cities on the coast. Smaller cities in Eastern Oregon are demanding more money and more stable funding, instead of relying on boom and bust funding via various transportation bills.
A state-wide payroll tax of 0.1% has been proposed; the expected revenue is $20 per year from minimum wage workers and $50 per year for someone earning $50,000 a year. Taxes on Oregon cars and bicycles were part of the transportation bill. New bike sales would see a new 5% tax. New vehicle sales would be subject to a new 1% tax in 2018. The transportation package introduces the possibility of tolling highways in Portland to pay for improvements.
A bill that may be included in the transportation bill would decriminalize public fare evasion. This is separate from Washington, with Clackamas and Multnomah no longer applying misdemeanor charges to those evading public transit fares.
Expenditures
The bill contains funding for mass transit, though one of the only specifics for this is not expanding light rail in Oregon; no one wants to waste money on trains to nowhere like California. There is money in the proposed package to build more pedestrian and bicycle paths. For rural areas, gravel road maintenance and repairing storm damage like washouts add up to millions of dollars.
Timeline
Work on congestion relief projects would start as soon as early 2018, as funding to resume work comes in. The gas tax wouldn’t spike, but would instead go up by 6 cents in 2018 and an additional two cents per year every other year through 2026. The vehicle sales tax would increase a half a percent in 2020 and 2022
Oregon’s transportation bill currently proposes to spend about eight billion dollars to upgrade bridges, widen roads and reduce congestion. Public transit users aren’t expected to pay more for these services, though everyone who owns a vehicle likely will whether at purchase, registration or each fill-up. The taxes to be implemented to pay for these road repairs and improvements will go up over time, while it is yet to be seen if Oregon city dwellers will be paying tolls in addition to higher fees and taxes.
