Abstract:
Twelve Oregon agencies have adopted transportation utility fee (TUF) programs to augment shrinking roadway maintenance revenues. On average, the Oregon TUF programs generate roughly $6,000 per road mile annually through this mechanism. Clackamas County (pop. 345,000) investigated a transportation maintenance fee (TMF) program in 2003 that, if adopted, would become the largest agency in the state with this type of finance system. The TMF development process in Clackamas County included a convergence of traditional travel demand forecasting with near-term traffic impact techniques to create a road user nexus at a parcel level. To accomplish this, trip estimates were made using standard ITE trip generation estimation methods with a crosscheck to the regional travel demand model. A major challenge was to make a reasonable assessment of travel activity for every building within the county. Each of the 97,000 residential tax lots and 7,000 non-residential tax lots was evaluated using tax assessment and state employment records to estimate travel activity and proportionately allocate fees. Lessons learned in this project included the trade-offs between road user fee ‘market’ value versus technical and legal defensibility, and aggressive public outreach with potentially affected groups.
