Portland Approves New Monthly Transportation Fee After Years of Debate to Help Fix Crumbling Roads

PORTLAND, Ore. — A new monthly street fee will hit Portlanders’ pockets in January 2027, after the Portland City Council approved an ordinance on Wednesday in a 9-3 vote.

Portland Monthly Street Fee to become a Reality in January

Thirty-one other Oregon cities, including Hillsboro, Lake Oswego, and Milwaukie, have a transportation utility fee in some form, and Portland will now have one too.

The funding comes as city leaders seek ways to close a chronic funding gap within the Transportation Bureau and to slow the ongoing, costly crumbling of streets, sidewalks, and other public assets.

After local leaders tried but failed for decades, the transportation utility fee ordinance, or so-called street fee, was finally passed.

The surcharge is designed to bolster the city’s ailing transportation system. 9 councilors voted in favor, while councilors Dan Ryan, Loretta Smith, and Eric Zimmerman voted against it.

The street fee, estimated to bring in up to $47 million a year for the Portland Bureau of Transportation, will be charged as a $12-a-month levy per house, $8.40 per apartment, and an average of $61 per commercial and non-residential property. Low-income residents will be eligible for a discount.

A separate surcharge paid by contractors to help repair roads and other public rights of way they damage during construction was also created by the City Council earlier this month. The fee is expected to bring in an additional $22 million annually.

But the combined additional $69 million in annual revenue is a drop in the ocean compared to the multi-billion-dollar backlog of infrastructure maintenance, which ballooned by $600 million in the last year alone.

Portland’s transportation maintenance backlog now sits at $6.6 billion- a 10% increase over the $6 billion figure the bureau publicly shared last year.