A New Approach to Assessing Road User Charges

David J. Forkenbrock
Jon G. Kuhl
2004

For many years, the mainstay of highway finance in the United States has been the motor fuel tax. This mechanism for assessing road user charges has certain advantages, perhaps the greatest of which is that the tax is roughly proportional to the distance traveled. Some would argue that it is functionally invisible because motorists generally respond to the total price of a gallon of fuel, not to the tax component of this price.

The times are changing. In an effort to help the U.S. become more energy independent and to improve the air quality in our cities, the auto industry and the federal government are working cooperatively to design a new generation of vehicles that are either hybrid-a combination of electric and conventional internal combustion power-or are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Several auto manufacturers also are experimenting with internal combustion engines powered by hydrogen. Various prototype vehicles have performed favorably in early testing, and several hybrid vehicles already have entered the marketplace.

It will be a few years before vehicles with these new propulsion systems become prevalent enough to severely impair motor fuel tax revenues, but the day almost certainly will come. Thus, this is a propitious time to explore a new approach to assessing road user charges-one that will accommodate vehicles with any of the possible propulsion technologies. This research has been carried out to develop such a new approach.

We began our research with a clean slate, in that many possible approaches were considered. Ultimately, the choice came down to smart roads and dumb vehicles or smart vehicles and dumb roads. Smart roads already are in operation; various technologies are being used to charge users of high-capacity toll roads (e.g., E-ZPass in the eastern U.S.), but roadside interrogators have little to offer in applications such as residential streets or low-volume county roads.

Rather quickly, we concentrated on smart vehicle technology: some form of on-board system that would enable a user charge to be assessed on the basis of the distance driven, wherever the travel occurred. In designing the new approach presented in this monograph, we emphasized user friendliness. The new approach must preserve the privacy of the road user, and it must be convenient and amenable to desirable features such as on-board navigation and emergency vehicle location. From the standpoint of the agency operating public roads, the new approach must be secure, robust, reliable, and sufficiently flexible to enable a variety of public policies to be supported.

Our research has been funded by a special pooled funding arrangement led by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. The participating agencies included 15 state departments of transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. The research was carried out at the University of Iowa's Public Policy Center.

$17.95, 113 pp., 3 figures, 8 tables, perfect binding
ISBN 0-87414-133-8