Transportation Maintenance Fee: Quick Facts

A Transportation Maintenance Fee (TMF) is an annual or monthly fee paid by residential and commercial properties to cover the cost of transportation maintenance activities such as pavement management and filling potholes, traffic signs, signals and marking replacement, median maintenance, and bridge repair. This type of fee is typically paid through utility bills, but can be assessed in other ways.

The TMF can raise up to $6,423,000, but the actual amount may vary. An example of spending, depending on infrastructure maintenance priorities, could look like:

As the city’s transportation system has expanded and matured, the cost to maintain and operate it has grown beyond the city’s annual dedicated sales tax revenue and budget. Unfunded and underfunded capital maintenance results in deferred maintenance, which ends up costing more over time. Cost escalation and price inflation for materials and labor also contribute to diminishing purchasing power. As part of the city’s Long-term Financial Strategy, the city is advancing a Transportation Maintenance Fee (TMF) as part of the city’s 2026 Budget to cover the cost of a select array of the most critical underfunded and unfunded transportation maintenance needs.

A TMF provides a predictable, reliable and scalable source of funding that is not subject to economic variability. Over the last 15 years, the city has analyzed a variety of potential funding mechanisms. This intensive community process resulted in two separate community working groups identifying the TMF as the most viable revenue mechanism.

In February 2020, Boulder City Council directed staff to conduct a nexus study for the TMF. Council prioritized the creation of a Long-Term Financial Strategy at its April 2024 retreat. Staff initiated TMF scoping later that summer and procured a consultant for the nexus study in fall 2024. Staff updated the Transportation Advisory Board in May 2025 and the city’s Financial Strategy Committee (FSC) in June 2025.

Over the last few months, the city finalized the fee’s nexus study to determine rates that properties would pay based on a person-trip methodology to establish the legal nexus for such a fee structure to comply with State law, and concurrently initiated focused stakeholder outreach.

The amount a property pays is determined by its typical use of the transportation system measured in trips generated by the use of that property, which is used to calculate a property’s fair share of the cost of maintaining the transportation system. Under the current fee study, the proposed rates for residential and commercial properties are provided in the tables below.

$6.4 million annually and $2.25 million in 2026. The city is anticipated to initiate fee collection mid-year 2026 and generate $2.25 million. Thereafter, the TMF will generate upwards of $6.4 million annually.

While the TMF will shore up funding for select critical maintenance needs, it will only cover a portion of the city’s overall transportation funding needs. Transportation funding in the city comes from a variety of sources, including local sales tax as well as external, competitive regional, state, and federal grants that supplement this limited local funding to realize Boulder’s transportation goals and climate commitment. The TMF will allow the city to have flexibility in meeting core maintenance needs while continuing to work on the bigger transportation funding strategy.

City staff have incorporated the TMF in the city’s 2026 Budget and the city’s Long-Term Financial Strategy. City Council approved enacting the TMF in October 2025 as part of the city’s annual budget process.