The Oregon Legislature finally released the transportation bill this morning and it only took about two hours for the rhetorical sparks to start flying.
House Bill 2025, also known as the Transportation Reinvestment Package (TRIP) was made public around 8:00 am and the Joint Committee on Transportation Reinvestment held a meeting about it at 10:00 am. That’s where several Republican members voted no on a procedural motion that became a proxy for their opposition.
The 102-page bill would raise well over $2 billion (exact total expected to be released Thursday) with a bevy of increases in taxes and fees. New revenue would fund major highway projects, as well as public transit, cycling, and pedestrian needs. To help the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) win back some of the public trust they’ve squandered over the years, the bill calls for biannual performance audits, and a once-per-year audit of major capital projects.
Bills are tricky to read and I’m still deciphering all the details, but scroll down to learn the basics and get a sense of what lawmakers and advocates are thinking about it…
Where the money comes from
On the revenue side, the bill would raise the payroll tax that currently funds public transit via the Statewide Transportation Improvement Fund (STIF). Currently set at 0.1%, HB 2025 would raise that to 0.3% in a staggered increase between now and 2030. This is a significant increase from the 0.18% Democrats first proposed back in April, but it’s short of the 0.5% figure a progressive wing of the party proposed last week.
HB 2025 would also raise the gas tax a bit more than Democrats first hinted at in their “starting point” framework back in April. The bill seeks to raise Oregon’s current 40 cent per-gallon gas tax to 50 cents per gallon in 2026 and 2027. They’d add another 5 cents in 2028 to make it 55 cents per gallon. And then in 2029, the OTC would index the gas tax to inflation.
Another big source of new revenue would be increases to various vehicle fees and taxes. The registration fee for a new car would go from $43 to $113. The cost to take a driver’s skill test at the DMV would go from $45 to $111. The cost of a new license plate would nearly triple — from $12 to $33. There are over two dozen increases to vehicle-related fees.
The initial framework for this bill included a major increase to the bicycle tax; but that appears to have been dropped. HB 2025 will maintain the existing $15 tax on new bicycles.
New cars will be subject to a 2% “transfer tax” based on retail price and used cars will be levied a 1% tax.
Other provisions in the bill include: a new, $20 per vehicle permit fee for corporate delivery fleets; a revision of the weight-mile tax system, and a new, mandatory road usage fee for electric vehicle owners starting July 1, 2026.
Where the money will go
Using revenue raised by user fees and taxes, the bill would set aside $125 million per year into a new “Anchor Project Account” — a set of projects the state committed to in 2017 but has yet to complete. This account would spend first on the I-5 Rose Quarter project, and then the Abernethy Bridge project. The bill would then give the OTC the power to prioritize order of spending on three other named “anchor projects”: I-205 widening, Newberg-Dundee Bypass freeway project, and the Highway 22/Center Street Bridge project in Salem.
After that money is spent, the remaining funds will be distributed in the traditional 50/30/20 formula with ODOT getting 50%, counties sharing 30% and cities getting 20%.
HB 2025 would use money raised from the transfer taxes to bolster spending on orphan highway updates, safer streets near schools, and wildlife collision mitigation.
The bill would fund ODOT’s Great Streets program to the tune of $125 million per year. Transportation safety advocates will be very excited about this provision. Great Streets is a pot of funding that seeks to tame the state’s legacy “orphan highways” that run through many Oregon towns and cities and retrofit them with safer crossings, bike facilities, road diets, and so on. This $125 million would be a major increase to the program’s budget, which has had just $122 million in total funding in the last three years. And to think it wasn’t even mentioned in the framework proposal back in April!
$25 million per year would be set aside for the state’s Safe Routes to Schools Program. This is another big relief for transportation advocates, because the previous framework left this program out. It’s also $10 million more per year than HB 2017 allocated to Safe Routes.
The final set-aside from this revenue is $5 million per year for what lawmakers are calling the Wildlife-Vehicle Collision Reduction Fund.
One small but important thing
In what appears to be a bold move from forces that have been pushing against narrow lane widths for years, HB 2025 seeks to make it ironclad law statewide that all vehicle lanes on identified freight routes must be at least 12 feet wide. This has been a controversial issue for a while, as bicycle and pedestrian planners often clashed with other engineering staff and freight advocates over the need for 12-foot lanes. There was a committee set up to look into this through ODOT’s Mobility Advisory Committee, but I don’t think they reached a clear conclusion. It’s unclear who exactly snuck this in, but ODOT internal staff have been generally supportive of narrower lanes, so it might have been an outside freight advocate or lobbyist. More to come on this.
Reactions from advocates and lawmakers
Senate Bruce Starr, arguably the leading Republican when it comes to transportation given his long career in Salem and involvement on the topic for many years, claimed the bill failed to take non-Democratic views into consideration. Starr was one of a few Republicans who worked with Democrats in recent months to negotiate the bill; but those talks broke down. Starr championed a cap-and-trade plan that would have sent millions to highway megaprojects. The idea was panned and is no longer part of the bill.
And Starr’s Republican colleagues didn’t help his dream of bipartisanship when they floated a proposal last week that was dead on arrival in a statehouse with a Democratic majority.
Today Sen. Starr called HB 2025 a, “partisan tax increase” and said he was “disappointed” with the final product. He also threatened a referral to voters if it passed when he said, “At the end of the day, it’s Oregonians who we all serve, and who very well may have the last last look at this.”
JCT Co Vice-chair and House Representative Shelly Boshart-Davis, who’s been working with Republican party leaders to cut all “non-essential” ODOT spending on public transit and cycling infrastructure, said HB 2025 was, “Born in the basement and in secret.” She’s voting no before even having time to read the bill.
On the other hand, Democratic Senator Khanh Pham said from what she’s read so far, HB 2025, “Appears to be moving in a direction that acknowledges the voices that we heard from across the state,” referring to a series of public town halls she attended with other members of the JCT to garner feedback on transportation needs.
And House Rep. Mark Gamba, the Democrats leading transportation policy advocate who crafted the SMART Framework released last week, also seemed pleased with the bill. “I think this is moving us in the right direction,” he said at this morning’s meeting. “I think it also begins to bend the curve a little bit on safety and keeping people alive, and I think it is incumbent on us as a state to behave responsibly and begin to invest in solutions to those problems. And I think this bill does that.”
Move Oregon Forward, a coalition of transportation and environmental nonprofits, had mixed reviews of the bill. In a statement released this afternoon, they lauded some of the bill’s investments, but then added, “More is needed to modernize and electrify our transportation system, trails have been left out of the bill, and there remains a large gap in accountability.”
What happens next
There’s another JCT meeting tonight at 5:00 pm, then there are three public hearings planned this week, starting Tuesday at 5:00 pm. There are less than three weeks left in the session, so expect a flurry of activity until the end of the month.
Thanks for reading.
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I know the revenue aspects are getting more attention, but I’m concerned by the section at the very end of the bill that would prohibit reducing lane width below 12 feet on freight routes (like SE Powell). Wider lanes facilitate faster driving, the opposite of what we should be encouraging in urban areas.
Hey David. Yep I have a little graf on that in the post. I saw that too. Last page! Clearly someone snuck that in. It’s not a settled issue AFAIK and it’s something that could get stripped out if any lawmaker is willing to burn the political capital to bring it up. I am prepping a post about it and am trying to learn more about how it got in there. I know the Mobility Advisory Committee (which is essentially the place where every project that might impact a freight route has to get an “OK” from), had a workgroup about this lane width debate, but I’m not sure if they reached any conclusions.
Didn’t you post last week about OTA President Jana Jarvis having inside knowledge about the negotiations over HB2025 that she shared with the Portland Freight Advisory Committee? It would seem much more likely that the minimum 12 foot lane requirement on freight routes that was tacked onto the end of HB2025 came from OTA lobbying efforts since they have a lot of pull with the Legislature on transportation policy rather than from ODOT staff.
Yes I misspoke a bit there. I’m not sure who might have snuck the provision in. But from what I know, ODOT staff is generally supportive of 11 foot lanes. So yes, I agree with you that a more likely scenario is that this provision was put in there by an outside advocate like Jarvis or someone else who got hold of a lawmaker’s ear.
This is a concern of mine also. In addition to the fact that wide lanes encourage faster speeds, the models used to design freight truck movements make intersection corners a wider radius. This makes pedestrian crossings longer and more dangerous. Freight industry has long manipulated the legislature to enable their excesses. Few on this blog (or apparently the legislature) remember the “cracked bridge crisis”, brought about in the 90s, when freight lobbyists convinced the legislature to loosen bridge weight restrictions by eliminating the engineered safety factors of those structures. The result was that several dozen bridges cracked and needed replacement to the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. All because Freight wanted to run heavier (more dangerous) trucks for more lucrative trips.
“identified freight route” is disturbingly vague. Allocation of roadway space is a zero sum exercise. More for travel lanes = less for bike lanes. Wider lanes = faster speeds. This would be a setback to advances made at the national and local levels (and even some at the state level). A legislative mandate of lane widths goes against established national and local guidance, removes engineering judgment and would tie the hands of those looking to improve safety.
ODOT has a map of them – it’s pretty much everything downtown. It’s a clusterfuck of guaranteed deaths to appease the truckers, when we have better and better technology for trucks to easily navigate narrow streets safely.
Freight companies are always trying to increase the size and weight of vehicles because they think it will reduce labor costs. Bigger vehicles = fewer trips = less overhead = more profit. Or so they believe.
Profit is the primary motivation, safety for citizens is WAY down the priority list.
Transportation departments claim to prioritize safety but it’s clear that their primary goal is freight movement and safety gets much lower priority. This is in spite of the fact that freight movement is a small fraction of the total number of vehicles on the road.
Many companies have realized that safety and profit are linked. Having lots of injuries, lawsuits, or insurance claims eats up profit.
And would more people driving smaller freight vehicles around create a safer environment? It might, but it also might not. Especially if you were to limit vehicle size to the large vans that don’t require any special licensing or training at all to drive.
Having lots more small delivery vehicles around with inexperienced drivers wouldn’t necessarily make me feel safer.
Are they? 18-wheelers seem like they are the same size as they were 40 years ago.
I think you might be reading the ‘arterial’ designation (yellow roads) as the freight map. When I use the layers for National Highway Freight Routes + OHP Routes, the only things that show up downtown are the highways (HWY 20, 26, 30). On the eastside I also see Interstate Ave and Greely up to Going Street, Hwy 99 and part of Grande south of Morrison. Not to say you should watch and be worried about this, but this may also help us advocated push back on those lane widths EVERYWHERE that aren’t these highways.
Yay gas taxes! Boo road widening! Looks like ODOT was successful once again selling the legislature on a made up “fix” for a bottleneck for the rose quarter in 2017 and getting four times as much funding for an absolute boondoggle of a plan to fix said bottleneck. All for safety too! Never mind the fact that deaths and serious injuries will increase along this section now but fender benders will go down and we’ll have more throughput!
Trails as in MUPs or bike trails?
Thanks for the coverage!
Time for drivers (including me!) to start paying more of our fair share for the incredibly expensive infrastructure we demand. This bill moves in that direction.
Also glad to see EVs pay a per-mile cost. No more free ride for Elon.
A per-mile fee is badly needed but I have little faith that the current crop of hapless companies ODOT has cobbled together to track mileage will keep OR resident location data secure or private.
So strange, I’ve been assured lately that criticizing Oregon government or suggesting that they could do better is akin to wearing a MAGA hat while clubbing baby seals. Is ODOT the exception to this?
It’s a shame this statement is so clearly MAGA in that it attacks the competence of the ruling party because it makes sense and I have yet to see any of the proponents of per mile fees address the obvious security risks.
So it’s MAGA to criticize crony-capitalist privatization of essential government functions (as opposed to increasing government functions)…well…OK…then “Jake”.
I see. I might not have been clear.
I’m not criticizing you or calling you MAGA. I agree that if government dollars are being spent it should be by government people. I am absolutely against privatization to include the proliferation of non profits given tax dollars to administer government functions.
None of that was the main focus of my post.
I was just surprised that others were not calling you out for criticizing choices made by the local government when any criticism of local government seems to garner a reflexive pushback and the criticizer labeled MAGA.
That make more sense?
Your victimhood complex is certainly right up there with the Narcissist in the WH, that’s for sure.
You also seem to think that the present day Repub party is not full on MAGA, like there is a difference, so since you align with the rural Republicans in Oregon, why object to the label?
The Oregon Republicans embrace it, so should you.
I appreciate the perfect example of what I was describing. Thank you!
I don’t know what things got you called MAGA, but the actual criticism matters. If you’re criticizing local government for being a sanctuary city, that’s MAGA. If you’re criticizing them for not building enough bike infrastructure, that’s not MAGA.
Easy enough to understand now? Hope that helps.
I’m not really the one who needs a briefer on when to call someone MAGA or not or under what conditions. I’ve mainly been called that by the usual suspect, so it’s lost any meaning, but my point with all this was the use of specific dog whistle words or phrases that posters use in lieu of any coherent argument. It diminishes debate and the chance to share experiences to make the whole better than the individual parts.
Don’t our cellphone manufacturers and phone-service providers already collect and store HUGE amounts of data about our uses, locations, etc etc? And we’re okay with them doing it but not a gov’t contractor?
I’m not accusing anyone – just asking the question.
Due to government regulation telecoms tend to release this data very reluctantly (e.g. court order/warrant) and have more robust cybersecutiry. The small startups ODOT hired are not well-regulated and likely have very poor cybersecurity. Like many things we farm out to small consultancies and small for-profit corps, this is something that should be done by government for the people, ATMO
In Oregon, you can pay your mileage fee using an odometer reading and a paper form. No tracking required.
I agree with the fundamental point that mandatory tracking by a government agency that has the power to arrest and imprison is different than voluntary tracking by a business entity that uses that data to provide you with a valuable service.
This is worded oddly and makes it sound like there is a $20 per-mile fee when it is actually a $20 per vehicle permit fee.
Sorry. I’ll fix that. Thanks for catching the mistake.
All of the media comms have focused on “fixing our roads” – my assumption being that this bill would put a heavy emphasis on maintenance resources: paving, potholes, landscape maintenance, etc. How does that fit into this? Is that just part of the 50/30/20 dollar split and jurisdictions can choose to use that money for capital or maintenance as they see fit? And then I guess any roadway in the Great Streets and School Streets would get all the general upgrades as well?
Did you also see the funding for jurisdictional transfer?
Any idea how that compares to current funding levels?
Ah! I missed it in the article. You mention Great Streets and I was searching for “jurisdictional”.
Ooh! Tell me more! Are we instituting weight based fees to ask the users of increasingly heavy personal SUVs, pick-up trucks and Cyber Monsters to pay more to fix the roads than those who choose lightweight sedans and compact economy cars?
Many engineers support 11ft lanes and are concerned regarding this line and what it means to safety and calming speeds. Hopefully we’ll see more testimony asking for reconsideration of this being in the bill.