How soaring gas prices could affect Oregon's state transportation budgets

The increasing cost of gas is likely affecting taxpayers in more ways than one.

Though still unclear what the exact impacts of those costs will be on Oregon’s biannual budget, state lawmakers and transit officials say citizens are not the only ones closely monitoring the gas meter.

“We are seeing these gas prices go up a lot, just like everybody is around here. But these are expenses that we can’t just stop," said Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) spokesman Don Hamilton. “We’ve got our incident response vehicles out on the road, they are helping people out. We have got emergency service vehicles out on the road. We have got repair vehicles out on the road. We have got to keep these vehicles going.”

Though he could not provide estimates on the increase in operational costs, Hamilton noted that the department is continuously monitoring those numbers.

“We are going to see what that is going to mean for the budget for later this year, what it’s going to mean for the budgets in years to come. We are going to take all of this into consideration,” he said.

The department works with lawmakers on the Joint Transportation Committee to make sure any abnormal costs are accounted for during the budget process. Representative Susan McLain (D-Hillsboro) said if it comes down to a serious imbalance, ODOT may start to re-work some priorities.

“If the price of gas actually goes up to the point where they are going to have to not have as many service they would not pave as much,” she said. “They will always move around resources from one project to the other looking at which one is an emergency which one could wait a year and really try to analyze specifically where is the public going to get the best maintenance project or program where are they going to get the best safety improvements.”

Hamilton said thankfully it has not come to that yet.

“There is no immediate emergency because of these gas prices, but we are going to be looking at all of these things,” he noted.

McLain said lawmakers will also start to consider whether they should plan for adjustments to the budget that is set to be drafted in June of 2023.

“We would always go through and really try to check it out and make sure that there are realistic expectations for what the costs are for the system,” she said, noting that they will also consider how pandemic funds and federal grants may play into that in terms of whether that money will need to be supplemented in years to come.

“Because of the pandemic years, we realize that there have been federal dollars and that sometimes as we come out of a pandemic or another emergency, we have to look at gaps in our partners’ - ODOT, et cetera - work and also gaps in our own work,” she said.

The state also funds portions of public transit operations through organizations, like the Tri-County Metropolitan Transportation District, which is run by a board of directors.

When asked whether costs of operations increased as a result of gas prices TriMet responded with the following written statement.

“TriMet uses a blend of renewable diesel known as R99, which is a cleaner-burning fuel derived from plants and other renewable resources, not fossil fuels. We made the transition to R99 from B5 biodiesel last December, for the roughly 700 buses that are used for daily, fixed-route service. None of TriMet’s buses use gas, but they did run on diesel years ago, prior to our move to B5 and now R99.

The budget price for fuel in TriMet’s current, five-year contracts includes a contingency for unexpected spikes in fuel prices. Therefore, we do not anticipate cost overages for the current or upcoming budget year, which starts on July 1.”

TriMet’s ridership has decreased significantly since the pandemic and despite the increase in cost of gas riders do not appear to be opting for public transit as an alternative. A comparison of the agency’s average weekly boarding during the month of April in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, shows ridership is still at about half of what it was pre-pandemic.

In a written statement, the agency noted that it is seeing some improvement in ridership on a monthly basis but said it can not link that to the cost of gas.

“While we’ve been seeing our ridership increase month-over-month, we don’t have data that expressly shows that people are choosing TriMet over driving due to gas prices,” the statement reads. “The gradual monthly increases to ridership have mainly tracked with more destinations opening up and people returning to offices. Our average weekly trips for May topped 1 million, which was the second consecutive month that has happened since March 2020.”