Goats Rule... Sheep Get Slaughtered...
Goats Rule... Sheep Get Slaughtered...
Money has always been the cure for all that ill's... right... or wrong...
Money, it seems, has always been the solution to any problem. Just ask the guy in Florida that won the lottery… and then was so thankful he won it again 3 years latter… because he was almost broke!
This week, we look at where ODOT says money from tolling will go as to where they said it would go earlier. Follow that…
In Short
Article 1 - This article was written in March, 2022, and it is still relevant in March, 2023. Tualatin’s Susan Noack was on it early. Others, for a while, were as well. Tolling got a look in the eyes and it blinked.
With the understanding that our businesses were about to get gutted we took the charge, because one, Susan, saw the need.
Article 2 - Sometimes it is difficult to make up a good party story… so we just look for the truth.
We get it, we all need the internet, we like to shop downtown, we need shelter and we want to get paid to ride the bus or bike to work. The Portland Bureau of Transportation, and your tax dollars, has you and others covered.
Article 3 - As we continue with numbers, we look at the amount of money lost annually to gas tax revenue. According to ODOT’s Brendan Finn, in the article below, ODOT is losing “…hundreds of millions in losses of gas tax revenue annually.”
According to the Oregon Electric Vehicle Dashboard, there are 61K Zero Emission Vehicles (ZEV) in Oregon. If these ZEV’s replace 61K gas vehicles that get 15mpg and are driven 11K miles annually (Oregon’s average per vehicle) then there are 45 million gallons of fuel not being bought annually… a substantial amount. But…
45m x .38 (cents per gallon for fuel tax) = $17.1 million. This seems to be a bit under hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Let’s hope ODOT doesn’t do their own taxes.
Weekly Articles
From early on Tualatin saw the issue with tolling
It is interesting that, according to your calculations (11,000 miles-15 mpg-$0.38 tax/gal) the average vehicle contributes $280/year. Seems a very reasonable fee for EVs to contribute.
This is easy, charge EV purchasers with a tax on the vehicles purchase for road maintenance. Add the cost of round trip: $4 (toll X 200 (work days/year) X 10 years of battery life = $8000 state tax for each EV sold in the State and a % for EVs with a current state license.