[00:00.00]Portland, Ore., is at the vanguard of the war to reduce gasoline consumption. 
[00:06.40]You can find evidence all over its downtown area ... and at its car dealerships.
[00:11.81]We're looking at hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric cars.  
[00:16.55]There's some hyper-efficient diesel engines in the works.
[00:21.06]Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer's constituents have been more enthusiastic buyers of green cars than people anywhere else in the country -- but drivers across the U.S. are catching up. 
[00:31.67]And over the next twelve years, EVERY new car will become more fuel efficient thanks to an agreement that President Obama struck with thirteen automakers, including Detroit's Big Three:
[00:42.07]The companies here today have endorsed our plan to continue increasing the mileage on their cars and trucks over the next 15 years.
[00:50.67]Mileage targets for passenger cars will increase by two-thirds -- from about 30 miles per gallon this year ... to nearly 55 MPG in 2025. 
[01:01.22]Which means Americans will be able to keep cutting back on their purchases at the pump. 
[01:05.81]And that's where the bad news in this story starts¡­
[01:09.82]By definition, more efficient cars use less gas. 
[01:13.12]If drivers buy less gas, state and federal governments collect less in gas taxes. 
[01:19.27]But those gas taxes ¨C a federal tax of about 18 cents per gallon and state taxes that range from eight cents to more than fifty cents a gallon¨Care what covers the cost of maintaining highways and bridges across the country.
[01:32.35]And that's already a huge problem -- 
[01:37.90]Taking the example of the news that broke in May,when an Interstate Five bridge collapsed just a couple hundred miles north of Portland. 
[01:45.00]By next year, the federal highway trust fund -- the source of almost all of the funding for bridges and roads that comes from Washington -- will go bust.
[01:54.50]The bottom line is that we're in a downward spiral.  
[01:57.50]What it means is the federal government is not going to be able to able to help states and localities maintain what they've got.  
[02:03.25]It means that people will pay with less safe driving conditions.
[02:08.75]does the gas tax generate enough revenue for the state of Oregon to maintain its roads properly?
[02:14.10]No. Just plain no.
[02:16.25]Vicki Berger is a Republican member of the Oregon house. 
[02:19.40]She says ... as the state's residents buy even more efficient cars -- and less gas -- the budget crunch is only going to get worse. 
[02:27.20]But she thinks there may be a solution: instead of having Oregon motorists pay a thirty cent state tax on every GALLON of gas they buy, have them pay a fee of a penny or two for every mile they drive. 
[02:40.84]It's known as a Vehicle Miles Traveled or VMT fee. 
[02:44.54]Oregon was the first state in the union to impose a gas tax nearly a century ago ... 
[02:49.34]and in two thousand six it set up an experiment to see whether it might be able to lead the nation again.
[02:55.20]300 volunteers let the state hook up computers and transmitters to their cars, so that their mileage in Oregon could be tracked with a GPS, global positioning system.
[03:06.45]The technology worked pretty well. But civil libertarians and privacy advocates said the GPS was a way for Big Brother to snoop on drivers. 
[03:16.61]So the legislators in Oregon's state house decided the whole idea was political poison, and for five years, it faded from view.
[03:24.55]Until the Oregon Department of Transportation ran a new experiment late last year. 
[03:30.10]This time, participants had a range of choices. 
[03:33.66]They could let their smartphones track their movements ... install GPS units that sent data to a private firm instead of the government ... 
[03:41.73]or use a device that recorded only how many miles they drove, but not where they drove. 
[03:47.18]That's what Vicki Berger chose for her car. 
[03:49.94]Every month the unit transmitted her mileage count to the state DOT, which then sent her an invoice.
[03:55.79]From a tax policy point of view, this was really interesting to me because when I go to the pump, I am filling my car with gas.  
[04:02.36]I'm not thinking about the taxes I'm paying. And I'm paying both federal and state. 
[04:05.96]When you get a bill in the mail, you think about the taxes that you're paying. 
[04:10.30]And that does sort of awaken this sense of, "Oh, I'm paying a tax here for the privilege of using the roads." 
[04:18.18]Which I don't think people think about when they just fill their tank.
[04:22.10]But skeptics think administering a program like that would create a bureaucratic mess. 
[04:27.35]And they say taxing fuel-efficient cars sends an anti-green message, charging hybrids more than Hummers.
[04:34.62]We are reducing the incentive for people to shift to fuel efficient cars.
[04:40.60]Kari Chisholm is a Democratic political consultant and blogger based in Portland.
[04:45.00]Gas tax is a great incentive to get folks into fuel efficient cars, to put less carbon in the atmosphere.  
[04:52.26]By going into a tax that hits-- plug-ins and electrics and high-- high-mileage cars, we¡¯re reducing that incentive.
[04:59.28]But what do we do? I mean, the national highway trust fund is nearly broke, the amount of revenue gathered on the state and federal level-- 
[05:06.78]from the gas tax is declining like crazy and at the same time we have bridges that are falling apart, we have roads that are crumbling.  
[05:13.38]What's the alternative?
[05:14.88]The first thing I would do, if I were king of the world-- is raise the gas tax and then index it to inflation over time.
[05:21.48]In other words, the gas tax would automatically rise at the rate of inflation. 
[05:26.08]Supporters of mileage fees argue that legislators lack the political will to raise gas taxes -- 
[05:32.91]so, they say, state and federal governments need another plan to pay for critical repairs to roads and bridges. 
[05:40.06]Last month, Oregon passed a law expanding of the mileage fees program starting in twenty-fifteen -- this time to five thousand vehicles. 
[05:49.36]Meanwhile, Portland's Democratic U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer is looking for a Republican cosponsor for a bill that would test the fees nationally.
[05:58.61]I want to take that Oregon experience and move it to the national level.  
[06:04.86]Where states can apply to test it in their own locations so that-- road users, can understand how it works, what the advantages are and-- make it less mysterious.  
[06:19.91]The idea is to be able to encourage other states to innovate.