Tolling lessons learned for road usage charge

In 2021, the federal gasoline tax raised about $32.8 billion which
accounted for about 70% of the Federal Highway Trust Fund’s expenditures,
with a shortfall of $14 billion (FHWA, 2021). In response, many states
have launched pilot or full-scale programs of road-usage charge (RUC) as
an alternative transportation funding source. One of the fundamental
challenges of RUC is the high cost of implementation compared to a
traditional motor fuel tax (Caltrans, 2017). To address this, states look
to leverage existing vehicle-level pricing programs, such as road tolling
to learn possible 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.
Consequently, we built upon the interview findings with a multi-criteria
decision analysis (MCDA) to evaluate how ready the RUC pilot programs are
for implementation. Our results demonstrated that there are numerous
lessons that the RUC pilots can learn from the tolling industry and
develop an integrated system – tolling hub operations, methods to maintain
data privacy, technology, etc. RUC programs can benefit from integration
with tolling from the increased scale of operations which would largely
reduce administrative costs. Lastly, ensuring equity in RUC rate design to
alleviate any potential financial burdens on low-income populations and
ensuring that unbanked and underbanked populations have access to the
system is important.