The Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) is proposing the replacement of the gas tax with a road use tax and is collecting community feedback in a series of meetings across the state. (A pilot program is planned for later in 2019.) 

Why the Change?

This is intended to ensure that funding for road and bridge maintenance and improvement is secured despite the future drop in the gasoline/diesel demand. The HDOT rationalizes that with the increased adoption of electric cars, hybrids, and more fuel-efficient gas vehicles, gas tax revenues will drop and this will put road maintenance at risk. For details of the pilot, go to the HDOT Road Usage Charge Demonstration page.

Our Position:

Ground transportation is a major consumer of the roughly 35 million barrels of crude that we import each year. Thus, electric cars play an important part in our Hawaii meeting its renewable energy goals. However, electric car adoption is still very low in Hawaii – there are about 8200 electric cars in the state, about 0.7% of the over 1 million passenger cars on our roads. The Big Island has 479 electric cars as of February 2019 (0.2% of the roughly 185k cars on our roads. (Source: Hawaii.gov Monthly Energy Trends.) Adoption is growing but it is still fairly nascent, and we must do everything that we can to not create a barrier to electric car ownership.

It is inevitable that we will eventually need to implement some type of road usage tax. However, it should be done in a way that does not counteract strategies that are designed us to meet our renewable energy goals, e.g., the electrification of transportation. 

What We Can Do:

We encourage you to reflect on the implications of this proposal and to share your feedback with the DOT in an upcoming session. We will be sharing points that will help you provide feedback on this in an upcoming post and email update, 

The Big Island sessions are:

• Kona – April 9 – 530PM-730PM – Natural Energy Lab (73-987 Makako Bay Dr, Kailua-Kona)
• Waimea – April 10 – 530PM-730PM – Waimea School STEAM Center (67-1225 Hawaii Belt Rd, Waimea)
• Hilo – May 9 – 530PM-730PM (AJA Veterans Hall (361 Haihai Street, Hilo)

To view the planned community meetings across the state, go to this HDOT page.

Electric cars play a key role in Hawaii’s transition to 100% clean energy economy. As electric car owners already participating in this important transition, we should be doing everything we can to ensure the state creates policy incentives and enablement, not barriers, to the electrification of transportation. Please make time to share your feedback.

Thank you – BIEVA