The twin thesis of my latest column, “The Oregon Solution,” is this: (a) Virginia’s gas tax has a limited life expectancy before revenues start plummeting, and (b) that the best replacement, both from a policy perspective and a political perspective, is a “road user fee” that combines a mileage-based tax with congestion pricing. I’ve made similar arguments before, but I’ve never pulled them together in one strand. And this time, I’m buttressed by the fact that the Oregon Department of Transportation has reached exactly the same conclusion! (I hate to admit it, but ODOT reached this conclusion before I did — I just didn’t know about it in my previous writing.)
The road user fee should make the Business As Usual lobby happy because it injects more money into the system for road maintenance and construction. It should make market conservatives happy because it is based upon market principles: The more miles you drive, the more you pay to maintain the roads. The more you drive in rush hour congestion, the more you pay access scarce road capacity. It should make fiscal conservatives happy because the system is far more transparent and accountable than the politically driven funding mechanisms we have now. It should make conservationists/ environmentalists happy because it would drastically reduce funding for extending roads into virgin territory for the benefit of land speculators and green-field developers. Finally, it should make citizens happy because it would do more to improve mobility and access than any competing funding scheme out there.
In sum, the Oregon “road user fee” looks like the grand compromise that could unite Virginia’s warring factions and create a sustainable, long-term funding source for transportation that does not perpetuate dysfunctional human settlement patterns. The Oregon solution does not, repeat does not, address the need for achieving Fundamental Change in land use policies and governance structures. It’s only one piece of the puzzle. But it is a very big piece.
In a second column, “When All Else Fails, Try Capitalism,” I explore how congestion pricing might look if applied to Tysons Corner. Congestion pricing would have three huge benefits: (1) it would reduce congestion to levels that maximize throughput on arteries like Rt. 7 and Rt. 123, (2) it would incentivize people to carpool, ride buses, telecommute and employ flex-time, and (3) it would provide stream of revenue to finance mobility-enhancing improvements to Tysons Corner.
For assistance, I called upon Bern Grush, founder of Skymeter, a Toronto company that wants to get into the road-user-fee business, to describe how a congestion-pricing scheme could work. Anticipating the criticism that administration of a congestion-pricing scheme would absorb the lion’s share of revenue generated by the program, I spent more time than I should have outlining Grush’s credentials. I’m not endorsing his service — I’m merely noting that technology has matured to the point where satellite-based systems can make congestion pricing cheaper and more flexible than land-based systems using more primitive technology, like those in London, Stockholm and Singapore.
Oregon’s “road user fee” system represents a huge conceptual breakthrough that could provide the foundation for a lasting transportation-funding settlement in Virginia. I hope it gets the attention it deserves.