G. David Felt
Staff Writer Alternative Energy - www.CheersandGears.com

 

Oregon DOT starts first in Nation Charge per mile program!

 

The new MyOReGO program kicked off July 1st with a 1.5 cent per mile charge for driving on Oregon roads. This new program allows people to sign up and receive a credit for state gas tax paid at the pump. Quoting per their web site OReGO covers the following:

 

• OReGO volunteers will pay a road usage charge for the amount of miles they drive, instead of the fuel tax.
• The OReGO road usage charge is set at 1.5 cents per mile.
• Volunteers will get a credit on their bill to offset the fuel tax they pay at the pump.
• Volunteers will have their choice of secure mileage reporting options offered by OReGO’s private-sector partners.
• Volunteers’ personal information will be kept secure and private.
• The first phase of OReGO is limited to 5,000 cars and light-duty commercial vehicles.

You can check out their calculate and compare subsection, Choices and more.

 

 

Over the last few weeks many various news outlets have covered this story and you can read both the State of Oregon news release and other news outlets stories on this.

 

http://www.myorego.org/press-room/news/

 

This program will run and allow the state to see if it makes better sense to charge everyone a per mile road tax versus a gas tax. Many myself included believe we need to move away and dump the whole petrol / alternative fuel tax and have everyone pay a per mile tax for use of the roads.

 

Thoughts? Sound off!

I'm a big fan of this line of thinking. 

 

Frankly I'd like to see things go further yet, with congestion taxes automatically levied against city drivers who choose to commute in or through certain high-density areas during peak times. That way, people who choose to drive pay for their usage, and are also dinged for adding an extra vehicle to the road when alternatives exist. 

It would take, at BEST, 20 years for Big Gov't to determine which better pays for road deterioration, what with the subcommittees and algorithms required to "process" the data. 

 

OR…….. . . . .  . . .  .    . .  they take roughly 5 minutes to tally which fattens their coffers more.

 

I still strongly believe this is about one singular thing (which was verbalized at the onset); maintaining revenue stream.

I for one would've thought, you know; to maintain the illusion- that they would've chosen 'to better maintain the infrastructure'.

 

It is all about the roads, right?

 

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95% of my annual mileage is work related. Tho I do not have commercial plates, I would not appreciate getting dinged for 'not using alternative transportation' when that's not possible in my line of work. I doubt it would come up, I'm only occasionally in small cities, nothing major, but who knows what this will ultimately turn into?