Is it value capture? Portland's proposed property-based road fee

There's a proposed fee in Portland that smells a little like value capture. Streetsblog recently reported in a post that Portland is pressing forward with a plan to charge property owners a transportation fee (Bike Portland reports that "The monthly ‘Transportation User Fee’ will be $11.56 per single-family household, $8.09 for low-income households and will rely on a calculation based on trip generation for businesses.") Much of the fees proceeds will fund roadway maintenance while some will be used to stripe bike lanes and provide other safety features.

A classic example of value capture was the frontage-based fees for paving roads. Property owners were required to pay for the improvement to their property's access based on how much property they owned (or a proxy based on street frontage). This measure of relative scale served as a rough approximation of the value of the property and the relative utility paving provided (whether you used the land to its full potential was your choice). The fee was based on the "beneficiary pays" principle of taxation where taxes are assessed proportionate to the benefit one receives from the corresponding government service.

A fee like Portland's, one based on a per unit basis or on trip generation measure, is also based loosely on the "beneficiary pays" principle in the form of a "user pays" scheme. The fee is proposed such that land users, the sources of trip origins, pay for access to a quality road network based on the number of trips that are anticipated to originate from the location (single family homes are all expected to generate about the same number of trips). 

So, is it value capture? As framed, the fee is not posed as one that captures the value created by having well maintained, safe streets accessible by multiple modes. The fee is not assessed proportionate to the value of the properties in question or the type of roadway access they are afforded. While one might assume that there exists proportionality between the demand for trips and the roadway supplied in a location, that may not be the case. If properties were to pay based on the access quality that the fee afforded them, then single family homes could have vastly different fees. For example, a single family home on an arterial avenue close to downtown would pay significantly more than a home on a lane in suburbia. In one instance, the value of access would justify a higher capture rate and provide an incentive for the single family home owner to better utilize their highly accessible property so that they could pay the fee (a wonderful feature of value capture taxation). Yet, in Portland's case, the two houses pay the same rate based on anticipated usage of roadways (though this is measured in trips and not distance or marginal impact on congestion... another topic for another time).

Based on the framing of the fee policy, particularly the assessment rules, this does not appear to be an instance of transportation value capture. That said, with a few tweaks (and a lot more political will) this could easily be transformed into a value capture policy.