Join the Oregon Department of Transportation Chief Innovation Officer, Maureen Bock, in conversation about the Nation's first statewide Road User Charge program and other forward looking projects addressing EV charging and more.
Transcription:
Christine Reynolds (00:07):
Hi everybody, I'm Christine Reynolds, Partner, Orrick, living in the great state of Oregon and delighted to be with you for you here this afternoon. Close to drinks but not quite this and one other session and then we'll let you get to the reception. I am delighted to be up here with Maureen Bock from the Oregon Department of Transportation. She's gonna tell you a little bit about herself. She is awesome, just telling you in advance. And then we're gonna talk a little bit about the future of transportation.
Maureen Bock (00:37):
What she's saying is after I'm done speaking, you'll wanna run for the bar. That's what I heard from that. I don't know. I'm Maureen Bock. I am the Chief Innovation Officer for the Oregon Department of Transportation. I've been in that role since about 2014. When we went worked, I was the business implementation manager and I had worked with someone who said business implementation manager of business operations. So he called me a bimbo the entire time we were setting the thing up. So I set up our first road usage charge program in the country and I've been refining it ever since. So, that's part of my portfolio. Tolling operations, which we're doing right now is the other part of my portfolio. And then I have the public private partnership program as well. So let's get this party started.
Christine Reynolds (01:27):
All right, let's get this party started. So many of you may not realize that Oregon is really just amazing leader in transportation. We were the first to implement a gas tax in the country in 1919, promoted as a way to get Oregon out of the mud. And it took about a decade before another state adopted one. We were the first to develop a weight mile charge and implement it on heavy trucks in 1947 because heavy trucks were becoming more common and our definitely something that deteriorates road quality. And as Maureen just said, in 2015, ODOT launched the first in the Nation Road Usage Charge program, orgo, which you'll hear a lot more about today. And we're gonna hear today about what's coming next. So with all of this great history in mind, where do we go from here Maureen?
Maureen Bock (02:23):
Well that's a really good question. What we're finding in the transportation sector is there are a lot of new technologies that are coming that people are expecting us to provide as road operators. And that presents challenges for us, but it also gives us opportunities to excel. For example, we can leverage the data that comes directly from connected vehicles to improve our safety functions in our intelligent transportation systems. Huge safety benefit for all people there. But let's talk about some of those technologies.
Christine Reynolds (02:57):
Okay,
Maureen Bock (02:58):
So I'm gonna ask you guys to raise your hands if you've heard of any of these things are familiar with them. Okay, I love that. That's perfect. These are all things that we are trying to deal with. Now back in 2001, the Oregon legislature created a road user fee task force because really efficient vehicles were coming on the market and they said that is the end of our funding for transportation if that continues to evolve. So did a number of pilots. Started looking at road user charging back in 2006. At that time I was running new fuel tax part, so I was like boatloads of money, super cheap to collect and then there's some kind of payback. I ended up getting stuck actually implementing our program that we have in place now. But the exciting thing about it is we've been able to evolve that program with the help of our legislature and we've pledged the revenue to repair bonds cuz we are trying to be good citizens and the future looks pretty bright. In fact, in the 2023 session we were asking our legislature to make the program mandatory starting with model year 2028 vehicles provided those vehicles have a combined fuel efficiency rating of at least 30 miles per gallon. And the trade off there is they will not have to pay an enhanced registration fee. That's basically the backbone of our program right now is that if you are in the Orgo program, you do not pay the fuel tax or you actually pay and get it back as a credit. But we also know what these technologies, the future's really pretty close. A lot of these are really near term and some of the headlines in this next slide indicate that is indeed the case. Yeah, we're ready to be the Jetsons. Do we get be? Yes, we are totally gonna be the Jetsons.
Christine Reynolds (04:55):
How?
Maureen Bock (04:55):
We are going to have an education corridor that let's these electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles take us wherever we need to be. Shared mobility. We won't have to own 'em, it'll be great and we'll have EV standards that we'll let you charge big trucks, little trucks, cars, anything you want to charge with a standard that is being followed by the mobile open blockchain initiative formely known as mobi. They're also working on things like a vehicle identifier that's based on blockchain technology that is basic like a birth certificate for your car. And so everything that happens to that car attaches as another block on that chain.
Christine Reynolds (05:39):
So no more lemon used cars.
Maureen Bock (05:43):
Hopefully not? We'll see. But society of Automotive Engineers is also working on these kind of standards. And then you have groups like Omni Consortium that are looking at how they certify and make sure that those technologies really work as planned and that they meet the standards that are being set. So I wouldn't buy a lamp unless it was you all listed. Cause I don't have to worry about it. Right?
Christine Reynolds (06:06):
There You go.
Maureen Bock (06:07):
I'm nears the same way with cars.
Christine Reynolds (06:08):
They're good. I like this. This is awesome.
Maureen Bock (06:10):
So there we go.
Christine Reynolds (06:12):
And this next slide is super cool, Drones.
Maureen Bock (06:15):
So this is one of the most fun things that we got involved in at the DOT. We have 25 licensed UAS pilots. I call them drone pilots. They hate that but that's what they are. Actually use lidar to go out and look at slides. So we have a lot of rain as you can imagine, Oregon, we have a lot of slides and they can actually fly over and using lidar. They can get a really good image of that slide profile and it saves us a lot of time about a week actually to go out and actually deploy equipment to clear those slides using that technology. They also take pictures of sites where we're doing improvements in our infrastructure, weave it into what's called a reality mesh. And then that middle picture there is actually an image of a planned roundabout in the central part of the state. So it's a way to communicate with the public about what we're doing and what it's going to look like when it is done. And that's pretty cool.
Christine Reynolds (07:17):
So those drones are gonna get a lot of use, not only landslides because of rain, because it rains in Oregon but wildfires. So how did you guys use them in response to the labor day wildfires?
Maureen Bock (07:27):
We actually were able to go up and do a really real time profiling of where there were hotspots that we couldn't see on the ground. And that was really helpful. We also use them for bridge inspections. So we still put people in the water to look at the pilings, but to look at the underside of a bridge, we use the drums very close. We get really granular detail and not put people at risk, that is awesome.
Christine Reynolds (07:51):
And by the way other people are more than welcome to pop in and ask questions. I am, as I have said, all conference long, modestly blinded. So jump up, do a little aerobics, wake up, ask questions. If you have questions that you wanna pop in and ask, Maureen told me she'd be okay with that. So,
Maureen Bock (08:10):
Cause I'm perfectly capable of going off on a detour or file, I go on any one of these things. It's what I do. But I think the thing that you probably are most interested in is this whole.
Christine Reynolds (08:23):
Thia thing.
Maureen Bock (08:24):
Current funding model and why it's unsustainable.
Christine Reynolds (08:26):
Cause we're not always gonna pay gas. We have gas, pay gas?
Maureen Bock (08:29):
That's true. Actually. Very true. We are projecting a substantial fiscal cliff coming very shortly if we do not do something to change our funding mix. And that's another reason we're doing tolling. But for us in rec world inflation has really taken us down a path that isn't sustainable and a lot of the new materials are very expensive. For example, if you look at reflective pavements, those cost more than the black pavement we have. Now those are potentially good for dealing with urban heat islands, but they cost more permeable concrete and permeable sidewalks cost more money to put in place. So, that's a problem. New materials, less money grease fuel efficiency, particularly in the light duty fleet has been basically a revenue killer for us. And it's going to increase because even medium duty vehicles are becoming more efficient. We don't have to worry so much about the class because we have a weight mile program. But the other thing we have in Oregon is we do biennial cost allocation studies. And that's used by the legislature to make sure that the fund mix for every vehicle class really matches its use of the roads and the damage that they do. So, if we start seeing declining revenues in the light duty fleet, then we have to start digesting downward what we see in the mediums and heavies. And that really is the death spiral. I'm being kind of dramatic with that. But the other thing is we're in migration state, so we saw more people move to our state even during the pandemic and we saw more vehicle miles being traveled during the pandemic in part because people were ordering things and having them delivered to their homes. And we don't yet have drone delivery doing that last mile thing so.
Christine Reynolds (10:30):
Amazon's working on that.
Maureen Bock (10:31):
They are, but they have privacy issues cuz you know, gotta fly on corridors. We're not looking in people's windows in the backyard and that kind of thing. Potentially people get details uncomfortable about that. Yeah, little details hence the aviation corridor conversation. Yeah. So are you guys really the only people doing this or no? Are there other Actually Utah joined us in 2020 and theirs is just for alternative fuel vehicles. So they didn't do everybody in the pool. And then Virginia just went live this year. But we're also seeing more states wanting to do pilots. So actually it was really interesting. Wyoming was gonna go big bang everybody in the pool and their legislature. Yeah, no. So, it's not just us on the left coast being crazy. It's like the East coast has its own thing as well. Trish Hendron is a great resource if you're on the east coast. She is the executive director for the Eastern Transportation Coalition, formerly the I 95 COR Corner Coalition. Okay. But we're seeing lots of I think that maps even out of date now. I think Kansas and Oklahoma are doing a pilot together. So it's exciting times, very exciting times. Lots of, I think we think in 2023 there'll be upwards of 20 states. So, we'll introduce some kind of road use to charge bills to study it or do something. So we're hoping 2023 mandate for swim on the country.
Christine Reynolds (12:10):
And you've mentioned tolls as well. What are you guys doing there?
Maureen Bock (12:13):
Well we are looking, yeah we're can make big money and pay for big projects. So we've had this image for a long time that tolling and charging really can peacefully coexist on the same platform. There's a lot of similarities except in REC you don't really need roadside equipment cuz you get that little device in your car or the telematics that is native to a car can actually report mileage but the data collection needs to occur. So that's a similar function in both tolling and rock. And then the transactions have to be priced and processed and put on somebody's bill. So that's another similarity between rock and tolls. And then the account management piece is the technology, their transponder and O B D 2 type of device in the vehicle. People setting up accounts, paying account accounts, all of that kind of thing. That's what we call account management. And then the administration is the piece that sits over make sure that rules are in place and that auditing occurs and all those kinds of things. So, we're setting up a toll program right now. It's not the first time Morgan's done tolls just we have this thing where we do it until we pay for the thing, the asset, the road, the bridge, the whatever and then we stopped doing it. So I don't know if that's gonna happen.
Christine Reynolds (13:38):
You just have to operate and maintain it details.
Maureen Bock (13:42):
Details, no, we just have to pay you guys off whoever you guys are that have loaned us money and then we're pretty happy about going, oh well the state highway fund can pay for that. Yeah, it's kind of crazy.
Christine Reynolds (13:54):
So One of the things about the gas tax that some of the other panels talked about is the fact that nobody really realizes they're paying it. You go, you fill up your tank, you pay your bill, you are unhappy cuz gas is expensive right now, but you don't really know how much of that 60, 70, a hundred dollars whatever you've paid is state fed money to BP or whoever. How. Talk about tolls and REC and how we can, people definitely aren't excited about tolls because they know exactly how much they're paying, they don't necessarily feel like they're getting value for money, although they are my opinion. So talk about REC and tolls and gas tax.
Maureen Bock (14:36):
Oh I love gas tax in part cause I ran the program, it was really interesting. I wasn't around when they set it up. I just wanna be clear about that
Christine Reynolds (14:45):
You weren't around in 1919.
Maureen Bock (14:46):
I kind of feel like I was sometimes but I wasn't. So fuel tax in our state is collected at two different points. So gasoline, gas blends and aviation fuels are taxed at first distribution. So, anybody that is paying or buying those products actually is reimbursing that this station owner who has prepaid those taxes. And similar on the federal level in our state we have diesel and other alternatives, fuels tax when they go into the fuel tank of a vehicle. So, that's a real direct thing that people see. Public education is a really key though people don't because they don't understand how transportation is paid for now they don't understand that they're paying any kind of fuel tax at all. Going out and talking to 'em about the importance of transportation, what it does for them. And what we heard in our state was it keeps us connected. It keeps us connected to recreation, family jobs, emergency services, all of those things that are really important to us. So, when we started saying, well we're going to leave fuel tax in place for the foreseeable future, have a very long tail because the fleet doesn't turn over that often and then we're going to make sure that these other people who aren't paying their fair share and fuel tax are paying their fair share through this other mechanism and people will pay either one or the other. They won't pay both. So education's really important and then giving people an opportunity to try the program was also really important in driving public acceptance. And it's true. It's like how many of you have listened to music?
(16:34)
And I hate that song. That's just so weird. And then you hear it over and over, you're like, hey, that's kind of catchy. And the next thing you're like tapping your foot and you're kinda like getting into the groove. That's what happens with the rec program. So people need to try it. It's the familiarity effect. It happens with food and music and oddly enough, taxes. There you go. So yeah, we're pretty excited about how REC and tolls could peacefully coexist. But to do that we really did something at the beginning that was actually mandated by our legislature. They asked us to base our rec program on an open architecture. And that has really been important because it allows us to bring new account managers in with very little confusion. They can have their own proprietary backend system for dealing with administration, but on our side it's an open architecture and that allows for bundling a lot of different transportation services at the end of the day. We early on had conversations with our TriNet, which is our largest transit provider in the Portland area about whether or not they would be willing to partner and share customers in certain, allowing us to bundle services and then have a payment platform for paying for those services. And they have an open architecture system. So they were pretty excited about it. We haven't yet gone any further in that little dance, but we think there's some possibilities there for bundling other services besides tolling and rec.
Christine Reynolds (18:09):
Awesome And then there's this map, lots of projects going on
Maureen Bock (18:14):
This is our toll map. So the little green warming looking thing at the bottom is the first program to go live. It will be seven miles of transportation improvement on the I 205 corridor and it's from 12 River Bridge to the Abernathy Bridge. Both all of those bridges are not seismically sound. And we live near the Cascadia subduction zone. So, it'd be really nice if we had that corridor, which is a key freight corridor and emergency service corridor open. So the first toll program project to propose to go live is on that corridor. And then there's another little green line at the top of the map there that is the interstate bridge replacement. That's a joint effort between Washington and Oregon. So that's kind of a complicated dance between us. We've tried it before and didn't go very well. We're trying to dance again. So that's an exciting effort too because that also will take a bridge that is 105 years old and retrofitted. So it will be seismically sound and it'll have some transit capability on it as well. And then the blue is our regional ability pricing project and that proposes to toll 62 lane miles in the Portland metro area basically in a congestion pricing model. So we're gonna control congestion and raise revenue at the same time. And I know those of the youth that are done tolling or van and project, you're like, that doesn't happen. What are you talking about? But we are going to thread that needle somehow when we do our administrative rules, we're going to have all the factors so our transportation commission can set rates and figure out what to do. That will be a very challenging project in part because there are areas in that where there's radio frequency interference. So RFID tags won't work very well in those areas. So, we may have to do find some complicated algorithms to price trips.
Christine Reynolds (20:20):
There's like a dead zone. I leave my office and there's like two blocks where everything goes dead. So that's not gonna be very good for tracking me. Yeah,
Maureen Bock (20:27):
Yeah well we monitor you. We don'y track you, words matter.
Christine Reynolds (20:33):
They do.
Maureen Bock (20:34):
We kinda early on in the rock program that we didn't want, say we track people, we monitor their driving. Yes. So we can
Christine Reynolds (20:41):
Where the car goes. Not my driving, which is perfect.
Maureen Bock (20:45):
Although people in the program will frequently say it was really cool, I could see how my kids were driving my car and it's like. I don't wanna hear that. That's great. So happy for you. But we do not care. But we actually tested our rec program with a project in the Portland area doing basically that kind of thing. And again, people who had not been exposed the program were involved in that pilot to an N 25 people and they thought it was really easy to understand. It was very affordable. And several of them said, why aren't we doing this now? We're like, well you asked and here we are and we got a deal for you.
Christine Reynolds (21:28):
Here's open.
Maureen Bock (21:30):
And then this next thing is our effort that we did on for a group called Rock West. It was is now Rec America. So, any state d o t can belong, there's currently 19 of them that have joined. We're trying to figure out how to do interoperability in the road use to charge arena. And so without a clearinghouse, it looks pretty messy. It looks like a big plate of spaghetti there on the left side. But with a clearinghouse, we actually modeled this and it worked really well. And so the next iteration of this, and I think the next slide actually shows the data flows through that use California and some other states data. We're actually going to do this with blockchain and see if we can do a clearinghouse using blockchain technology or distribu ledger technology. But the thing that really is going to enable us to scale the rec program is an effort that we're involved in now. It's a public private partnership. We're just starting negotiations with a potential partner and that's the connected vehicle ecosystem. And that allows us to really leverage these three technology choices and deliver better and safer highways to our citizens and potentially it could enable us to scale the rock program. So, we're pretty excited about that. Like I said, we've got a public private partnership thing that we're doing and we're negotiating on how to commercialize this venture, how to roll it out. So phase zero will be the stage where we really put all those pieces in place.
Christine Reynolds (23:12):
I am feeling like I, you're bursting my bubble here. I feel like when I'm in my car I'm by myself. And what I think you're telling me is I am, but I'm not.
Maureen Bock (23:21):
That's right, you are not. Your car is actually putting data out into the ether right now to do things like have signals phased so traffic can flow more easily. That increases our capacity. We did a model project in Salem where I live and signal phasing helps people get out of Salem quicker to get back to Portland. This kind of technology and this ecosystem also allows things like us to have better ideas about where there are vulnerable road users, be they pets or pedestrians or bicyclists or whatever. So, school kids. Yeah, it's really amazing technology and it also allows us by communicating to the network that there could be potential weather events. So for example, your car is putting out information if you're driving a connected car about how your slippage how often you use your windshield wipers, that kind of thing. So, that data is collected and anonymized. So it can be used to provide weather warnings and that kind of thing. So, if there is one car on the road in a bunch of cars using its windshield wipers, that probably is not signaling a weather event. That's probably signaling that you're cleaning your windshield, right? With the wipers. But if you have 99% of the cars on that road doing their wipers, that's probably an indication. There's a weather event. And if you could marry that to your actual weather detection system, you can tell whether or not that's rain or sleet or snow or whatever. And you can broadcast that over your very bold message signs.
Christine Reynolds (25:03):
And so what drops down all the speed limits where it says advisory speed effects and all that sort of stuff.
Maureen Bock (25:08):
Snow ahead or fill in the blank. Yeah, it's really pretty amazing technology and you can actually leverage some machine learning with that and then make your traffic operation centers more efficient as well.
Christine Reynolds (25:21):
Very cool.
Maureen Bock (25:22):
It's very cool.
Christine Reynolds (25:23):
Very cool.
Maureen Bock (25:25):
Yeah. This is another little schematic that we did to show how it could work. We have some OEMs that are potentially interested in coming and playing on our infrastructure to see how this works. And one of the other things is the Society of Automotive Engineers has actually done a adoptive standard. It allows your vehicle to be a mobile payment platform, was developed for tolling. Nice. And then we said, well there's this other thing called road usage charge that applies to every lane mile in our state. And they were like okay, well we can be used for that too.
Christine Reynolds (26:06):
Sign me in.
Maureen Bock (26:07):
We're pretty excited about that.
Christine Reynolds (26:09):
And then carrying that one step further, The mobile marketplace.
Maureen Bock (26:15):
This is where we really wanna be. At the end of the day, we had a contractor, WSP worked with us to develop this schematic and we wanted to think about how to better deliver services to the public that we serve. And so what we heard when we did our listening tours around the state was they really wanna bundle services. They wanna have separate accounts for tolls and road usage charging and all that kind of thing. So with an open platform, we think this is very, very doable for people to be able to bundle services. We have one account manager currently who's a private partner on the road usage charge system that has been qualified to deliver remote emissions testing to people that are in the air sheds where that's a requirement. So, Portland and Medford in Oregon have bad air quality and so they're required to do remote emissions testing. So these people don't have to go to test anymore. They can do that remotely from their home. So that takes people out of those congested sites and gets them in there. So we're starting to see this kind of merging of these things that people need.
Christine Reynolds (27:25):
One account, one password, I'm all about that.
Maureen Bock (27:27):
Yeah.
Christine Reynolds (27:27):
Simple, easy.
Maureen Bock (27:29):
Especially if your car becomes your payment platform. Easy.
Christine Reynolds (27:34):
Yeah, I like it.
Maureen Bock (27:35):
Now if we can just deliver pizza.
Christine Reynolds (27:37):
Yeah, right. Exactly. And now you talked about blockchain. What else? That's always a word that trips everybody out. What the heck has blockchain got to do with me in my car?
Maureen Bock (27:48):
Well, the mobi group is really big on, and it was founded by OEMs. Oddly enough, Audi is one of their big supporters, BMW, lots of those kind of high end car companies, phone more Moby. And they are looking at how to use that as a way to deliver, I said a system for your car to have a birth certificate that then all the transactions attached to. They're looking at ways to give you a identifier so you can protect your identity. The example I like to use is I'm over 21, I wanna go buy alcohol at the liquor store. I don't really want the person who is checking me out to actually know my address or anything else about me. With mobi, you can have a digital identifier that protects anything and just gives them access to the fact that you're over 21. Because it's a digital identity that can't be changed. So we think there's some interesting things. I had kind of poo-pooed honestly. Until I got my law journal and it had a whole thing about how blockchains couldn't change discovery. And then I was talking to an auditor and she's going to CLE on or CPE on whatever on blockchain auditing. I'm like, it's a thing, we better get ahead of the curve on this. It'll change how we do accounting for our assets potentially. So, we might as well start small and try it in our rec program and see if we can make it work.
Christine Reynolds (29:25):
Awesome.
Maureen Bock (29:26):
I'm really excited about it. My boss makes fun of me all the time. He's like, oh, I just threw it out there cuz I knew she was gonna bring up anyway. like, yeah, well one of these days it'll be a thing.
Christine Reynolds (29:36):
It will be. So, I think the bottom line message is transportation. The world is changing. Transportation funding needs to change too. Now are you guys there? Does anyone have questions? Maureen would love to talk to you.
Maureen Bock (29:52):
Of course. If you meet me at the happy hour event, then you'll buy your leg off to get away from me.
Christine Reynolds (29:59):
Aha. Question. Turn on the mic.
Audience Member (30:10):
Is it on? Oh, There we go. I'm from Oregon, also from Metro but I know some of our other local governments and we had state government people running explicitly on no tolling platforms. What's the view inside ODA on how much trouble it's gonna be implementing some of these given where some of our partners are?
Maureen Bock (30:36):
I think that's a really fascinating question and in part because the only reason we're doing tolling is the legislature told us to. So, in 2017 they passed house bill 2017, big transportation band it says you need to do tolling and it enumerates them. And then in I think it was about 30, 55, they gave us some projects that we had to accomplish. And I think the thing that trips us up repeatedly is we talk about these as tall projects and they're really infrastructure improvement projects. That is the only reason we are doing these projects. So, if Portland Metro is worried about diversion or they're worried about freight routes or they're worried about all those are, I think things that can be addressed through really serious conversations. Let's talk though about what the underlying interest is that we have and that's a resilient transportation system and the future's going to be coming at some point. We're going to have autonomous trucks trying to plate on our infrastructure that changes the complete weight profile of those in those bridges. And we don't have bridges that can sustain that. So we potentially, if we're not gonna improve our bridges and we're going to allow platooning, we need a way to signal to those vehicles that they need to decouple when they cross our infrastructure or we won't have bridges. So, I think it's just a matter of a conversation with people about why we're doing it. And I think we do have done ourselves a servicing, we're doing tolling program, we're doing infrastructure improvements and we're paying for them with tolls. Sorry, I got all my soapbox about that.
Christine Reynolds (32:28):
Well, I think we have run a little over time but one of the key themes running through all these sessions has been the need for better public education about the importance of our infrastructure. So, look forward to hearing the next session, which is a little bit about the continued future of cities and transportation infrastructure. So we'll turn it over to them. Thank you everybody.
Maureen Bock (32:46):
Thank You.
Highway innovations
November 30, 2022 1:30 PM
32:52