With the project demonstration phases completed, the Final Project report, a culmination of the past three years of work, is now available:
Community Outreach, Participation, Feedback
To understand the unique circumstances and perspectives of Hawaii’s different communities, open-to-the-public meetings were held on Oahu, Maui, Hawaii, Kauai, Molokai and Lanai from March to May 2019. In all, 14 in-person community meetings and one virtual meeting were held. Learn more about the community engagment and view feedback from the community meetings.
To understand reactions and questions to a road usage charge (pay per mile driven), driving reports comparing an individual’s current gas taxes to what he or she would pay with a road usage charge were sent to over 350,000 people who collectively drove nearly 3 billion miles. However, all individuals were encouraged to respond to a survey found on the HiRUC website or mailed to them at their request.
Eleven percent of the 359,969 responded to the survey. Eighty-six percent of survey respondents preferred to report mileage using the odometer reading collected at their annual vehicle (safety) inspection. Ten percent preferred a plug-in device that reports mileage without any action from the driver and four percent preferred OdoFoto (photo of mileage taken with a smart phone).
Electric vehicle (EV) drivers represented five percent of the individuals who received drivers reports.
In the last stage of the demonstration project, 1,896 drivers across the state volunteered to test three technology methods to report mileage: OdoFoto, Plug-in Device with GPS, and Plug-In Device without GPS. Volunteers from all four counties participated: 316 from Big Island, 1,294 from Honolulu, 109 from Kauai and 177 from Maui. Together they drove 4,095,994 miles during the technology test drive from July 2020 through January 2021.
Sixty percent of the technology test drive volunteers elected to pilot the OdoFoto reporting method, 30 percent the plug-in device with GPS, and 10 percent the plug-in device without GPS. Eighty percent of the vehicles involved were powered with gasoline, one percent with diesel, seven percent were hybrid, two percent were plug-in EV and six percent were EV.
A Help Desk (phone and email) was available throughout the project and 228 emails and 251 phone calls were received.