The present and future of road Financing: Leveraging knowledge from the tolling industry to implement road-usage charge programs in the u.s

Abstract

Historically, transportation funding in the United States has been supported primarily by motor fuel taxes. In recent years, revenues from fuel taxes have been shrinking. In response to the revenue shortfalls, many states have launched pilots or full-scale programs of road-usage charge (RUC) as an alternative to motor fuel taxes for transportation funding. Some of the challenges facing RUC is the cost of implementation compared to traditional motor fuel taxes, operational complexities, and the equity concerns (Caltrans, 2017). To address these challenges, states are looking to leverage existing vehicle-level pricing programs, such as road tolling, to learn about synergies between RUC and tolling. In this paper, we conducted semi-structured interviews with experts from tolling programs across the U.S. to identify areas of overlap between tolling and RUC. We built upon the interview findings by conducting a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to evaluate how well the state-level RUC pilots and programs can integrate with tolling systems. Our results demonstrate that there are numerous mutual benefits of a RUC-tolling integration. Both the tolling industry and RUC implementations can benefit from the increased scale of operations and the spur of technical innovations, which would reduce administrative costs. RUC programs can also learn from the tolling industry to address data privacy and security issues. In terms of policy and program designs of RUC, it is essential to design RUC rates which are equitable by considering the financial burdens on low-income populations and ensuring access to the system for the unbanked and underbanked populations.