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Utah official outlines voluntary road usage charge program and enrollment options
Summary
Lyle McMillan of UDOT described Utah's voluntary road usage charge: two reporting options (telematics and camera-based odometer), registration fees, evolving mileage rates, and privacy protections. He said the program will return to a 1.5¢/mile rack rate and increase the registration cap to $280 to spur enrollment.
Lyle McMillan, director of strategic technologies at the Utah Department of Transportation, walked the California Road Charge Technical Advisory Committee through Utah's voluntary road usage charge program, which began in 2020 and "is now in its 8th year." He described two mileage-reporting options—telemetrics that report miles through an account manager and a camera-based odometer capture validated with machine learning—and said the state removed OBD-II plug-in devices from contracts because of privacy concerns and cost.
McMillan explained the program's pricing and enrollment design: a registration fee that has been $180 and will rise to $280, a historical rack rate that moved from 1.5¢/mile to 1¢/mile and plans to return to 1.5¢/mile, and a cap mechanism that allows many EV owners to choose a fixed annual payment. He told the committee Utah now has more than 16,000 vehicles enrolled and expects growth as administrative costs are reduced and the cap increases. "We are finally gonna get back to where we started on January 1. We will get back to a wreck rate of 1.5¢ per mile," McMillan said.
Utah's approach emphasizes minimizing data collection: account managers supply only a miles-driven number rather than location data, and the camera-odometer option avoids continuous tracking. McMillan also advised future programs to include contract clauses to capture cost savings as telematics vendors reduce middlemen and integration costs.
