TELEMATIC TOLLS:Comprehensive tolling to phase out gas tax

The project officially has the bland title “A New Approach to Assessing Road User Charges.” It is an initiative of the Minnesota Dept of Transp’s research department led by Adeel Lari and is being conducted by a team led by David Forkenbrock, director of the University of Iowa Public Policy Center with Max Donath of Univ Minnesota providing engineering support. Forkenbrock has posted a prospectus for the project on his university website (www.uiowa.ed/~ppc/ then transp research “ITS finance”.) It is a pooled fund study with support of FHWA and nine state DOTs including the largest states California, and Texas as well as MN, IO, KS, WA, NC, MI, and WI. Oregon is likely to join since legislators are looking for an alternative to its controversial truck weight-distance tax. Florida is also in a stance of rethinking financing and might join. $300k is committed to the first phase. Testing of the GPS element of the hardware is waiting a new GPS correction tower for most of Minnesota. The first proposed tower ran into local opposition, delaying the tests.

The project aims to harness several location-finding (GPS) and mapping (GIS) technologies (telematics), a mobile phone and a computer that are expected to be incorporated into 2003 or 2004 model vehicles by GM, Ford and other carmakers. GM is apparently expanding its popular OnStar system that combines GPS and a mobile telephone by adding an in-car computer. (The present OnStar has almost no system storage.) Ford and other manufacturers are working along similar lines and may adopt the same software. The enhanced OnStar type systems will use the computer in each car to reduce the labor intensity of the OnStar-type services which presently rely on an operator contacted by mobile phone who gets the calling car’s location by GPS, and then accesses the central OnStar database to assist the motorist with information about the nearest pharmacy, directions to find a friends house, listing of Mexican food joints or whatnot. OnStar will contact a motorist immediately an airbag deflates, attempt to inquire about the seriousness of the problem, and if there is no response, notify police and ambulance. The OnStar operator can toot the horn of a car and flash its lights if the motorist calls because they have lost it in a large parking lot. If asked, they can also track a car if it is stolen.

GM apparently wants to maintain the popular human touch with motorists including telephone access to an operator, but to enhance the system by using the computer to control driver displays including speed, fuel level, odometer, engine temperature, oil pressure etc recording this data for service diagnostics. It may also provide support an in-car navigation system for directions. These are based on the GIS (Geographic Information System) standard. The prospective package of telematics in cars two to three model years away could include the mobile phone, GPS, GIS and the computer with multi-appplication and segmentable memory.

The Forkenbrock project will use these planned in-vehicle telematics as a hardware platform on which to deploy a mostly software based system for managing data to be used to allow road managers – whether the federal or state DOTs, city or county road providers, private franchisees or toll authorities – to levy flexible road user charges (tolls) that would displace gasoline, diesel fuel, weight-distance taxes, and cash tolls.

“Key to the new approach is a simple onboard computer. The computer receives data from several sources and stores a record of actual road use. Periodically, this record is downloaded and transmitted to a data processing center. The center bills a vehicle owner and reimburses the state DOTs, counties, and cities operating the roads on which the vehicle traveled.”

The project starts from the proposition that existing fuel taxes are a “blunt instrument” because they bear a weak relationship to the costs of road provision, charging some far too much and others too little. Evasion of fuel taxes is high (15 to 20% for diesel, 5% for gasoline), and administration quite costly (2%.) A more automated road charging system (telematic tolls) could also replace a lot of paper heavy truck charging systems and permitting. A further reason why state DOTs are interested in the project is strong public resistance to raising fuel taxes – indeed there is pressure to lower them – while increased fuel efficiency is lowering revenues per mile-traveled. Alternative fuels such as ethanol and hyrbid gas/electric and diesel/electric engines threaten to erode the fuel tax base. The federally supported ‘partnership for a new generation of motor vehicles’ program and other industry programs promises huge increases in fuel efficiency and emission reductions, but could heavily undercut per-gallon fuel tax revenue.

The Forkenbrock prospectus says: “From the standpoint of public policy, motor fuel taxes are highly unsatisfactory. Vehicle operators are not given price signals to make them aware of the costs a particular trip imposes on society. It is very difficult for government agencies to provide incentives to vehicle operators to change the nature of their road use, such as traveling on higher-standard roads or during off-peak hours.”

The telematic tolls system (TTS) will use the car’s GPS system and a GIS digital map to record miles traveled on different legs of roadway around the country and would record these in the car’s computer. In one scheme Forkenbrock is examining , perhaps while fueling, the driver would use some communications link to download the car’s trip data to a TTS billing center where a toll rate would be assessed against each leg traveled since the last download and the total telematic toll due would be computed. The customer would be billed, paying by credit or debit card, via a prepaid account or via a mailed account. Regular fuel taxes could be waived from the fuel bill. No ‘double taxation.’

The TTS billing center would maintain a database of charges on road legs all over the country. Road providers would set their charges. Some might have different charges for peak vs off-peak travel. Some might charge different rates on different roads. Others might have quite simple flat rates. There could be emission-related rates. Each jurisdiction would maintain control over its TT rates. All the different rates would be maintained in the TTS billing center data base and applied to each motorist’s downloaded trip report. Then the funds due would be remitted to each road provider.

“The approach to charging road users must not be burdensome, and it must be tamperproof, highly reliable, and a useful tool for achieving a variety of policy objectives through road pricing.”

Heavy trucks charging would likely incorporate a weight element, and provide for a record of the complete consist including the trailer or trailers. Trucks could incorporate onboard axle scales .

“Road segment-specific truck user charges would thus be feasible. User charges would be based on the truck weight and configuration, the type of road on which the vehicle is traveling, and the specific rates levied by the political jurisdiction where the road segment is located. It is noteworthy that the new approach eliminates the pitfalls of such methods as weight-distance taxation: the uniform per-mile rate (regardless of current weight) of that approach is replaced with a much more flexible approach,”

Truckers would benefit by automated interstate permitting, and the elimination of some filings and inspections. The regular TT downloads could be programmed to include specified weight data, information on recent service dates for different systems and other information required by the weigh and inspection stations.

CWARUM

Another initiative called Certified Wide Area Road Use Monitoring (CWARUM) is a private sector approach relying on private concessionaires who would monitor in-vehicle recorders and GPS location devices communicating with low earth orbit (LEO) satellites or mobile phone datalinks to gather information on vehicle characteristics (weight, class etc) and road use by time and segment. The concessionaires would guarantee confidentiality of the information, but provide relevant data to various road charging agencies in what they call “confidential road use transparency.”

CWARUM is sponsored by Daniel Malick, Junea Alaska-based systems consultant an Loyd Henion, a longtime Oregon DOT trucking specialist.

CWARUM would consist of multiple road use monitoring and service companies competing for motorist subscriptions and selling data on road use to road providers for them to levy tolls. They would offer motorists GPS/Cell-phone-data or LEO transponder units and the package of online services at $15 to $25/mth, take responsibility for privacy and forward computed telematic tolls to the various road authorities whose facilities the motorist was using. Independent auditors would make regular checks on the system. As with the Forkenbrock model CWARUM would package payment of road user charges with a range of other services to spread overhead costs.

The model would be open to new packages of services and new technologies for collecting and communicating data. Data security and privacy would be protected by contract and civil law.

Tamper-proofing & enforcement

CWARUM would have the GPS/comms transponder mounted on the windshield much like a regular DSRC (dedicated short range comms) ET tag though presumably it would have separate antennae.

They have a description of schemes to provide visual and electronic interrogation of the units to check they are functioning properly. The Forkenbrock TT system relies more for tamperproofing on the fact that its software is installed within a telematics system that is integral to other operations of the vehicle.

CWARUM says explicitly that the road service providers would be responsible for checking that equipment moving through their roadways was working properly. Forkenbrock says he has a team working to look at different schemes but the main defenses against tampering would be implanting the software in a locked part of the computer. To take down the TT system it would be necessary for the driver to take down the whole telematics system of the vehicle.

The two approaches are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The Forkenbrock TTS system would be for new vehicles only from 2003 or 2004 because it would spinoff from the telematics suite. He told us he doesn’t envisage it as a retrofit to existing vehicles because of the excessive cost of installation. So there would be a transition period (of 8 to 12 years depending on the life of the vehicle fleet) during which some vehicles would have TTS and not be paying fuel taxes while the non-equipped vehicles would continue to pay the old taxes.

CWARUM however is mostly envisaged as a retrofit system, lacking the on-board computer for storage and doing realtime downloads via its LEO or mobile phone data links.

5.9GHz

The major US transponder manufacturers are working on design of an open-standard very high data rate and longer ranging DSRC system than the existing 915Mhz systems, and a couple of generations beyond the limited 5.8Ghz European CEN 278 system. It is competing for US government endorsement as a compulsory install in cars to support safety and warning systems and vehicle registration information. Its range of 300m (1,000') versus present 5m to 30m is dictated by the distance that roadway signs are from the car when the sign message can usefully be transmitted to the car by an on-sign transponder and displayed for the driver to react and stop the vehicle in time to avoid a hazard.

The group considered two broadband US approaches and a next generation Japanese TXX system, which was a continuation of the narrowband approaches so far used in all transponder systems, US, Japanese and European. A recent meeting of the 5.9 gig group ruled out the narrowband Japanese system, and now plans to choose between the US broadband systems. A ‘freeSpace’ system of Motorola seems the favorite. With a 20 to 30 fold increase in data rate as compared with present transponder systems, it would have major m-commerce (mobile), mapping and entertainment capabilities (such as downloading CD equivalent files) as well as its basic safety role. It could be incorporated into a telematics toll system doing enforcement and data downloads. And since basic electronic tolling is not very demanding it could easily replace present toll tag. [Contacts Dan Malick, Loyd Henion CWARUM Certified Wide Area Road Use Monitoring home.earthlink.net/%7Edmalick/CWARUM/ tel 907 789 2803 (Malick) tel 541 926 4061 (Henion) dmalick@earthlink.net lhenion@dnc.net; David Forkenbrock, University of Iowa Public Policy Center “New Approaches to Assessing Road User Charges” www.uiowa.edu/~ppc/ tel 319 335 6800 david-forkenbrock@uiowa.edu; Dick Schnacke, TransCore (Amtech)Working Group on new DSRC transponder system 5.9GHz www.transcore.com tel 972 733 6623 Tim McGuckin 202 659 4620 mcguckin@ibtta.org]