Massachusetts admin mulls proposal for EVR road use charge in Boston to replace tolls, gas tax

Massachusetts new transport secretary and turnpike chairman James Aloisi is proposing an interim increase in the state's gasoline and diesel taxes to be phased out in favor of a road use charge (RUC) by 2014, according to the Associated Press. The road use charge would be collected by an electronic vehicle registration (EVR) tag or transponder issued by the state registry of motor vehicles to all new vehicles.

AP quotes from a  draft of Aloisi's paper: "The Patrick administration recognizes that a greener, more fuel-efficient transportation system means that the gas tax will become a less viable (means) of funding our transportation system. A user-fee based system, collected electronically, is a fair way to pay for our transportation needs in the future."

Road use charges were recommended in Sept 2007 by a Transportation Finance Commission that had been appointed by the Massachusetts legislature. They advocated a flat rate road use charge of 5c/mile (3c/km).

The real power of such generalized electronic tolls, however, is that they can be varied by time of day and different types of road to manage traffic and set a price that reflects the benefits to motorists.

earlier report on finance commission's report:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3139

3M, Sirit and TransCore are among the companies ready to supply electronic vehicle registration (EVR) tags which can be incorporated in a windshield sticker, in a license plate or in both.

Passive read-write tags they contain a processing chip with memory and a foil antenna operating at around 915MHz. TransCore has supplied several million of their "eGo" sticker tags for toll collection in Texas, Puerto Rico, Washington state, Georgia, and Florida. The same tags can easily be used for electronic vehicle registration (EVR).

Their only use so far as EVR is in Bermuda.

Sirit is offering a EVR tag and reader system based on the open ISO 18000-6C standard and they sell an IDentity 5100 reader. 3M has packaged and marketed both the TransCore and Sirit sticker tags, and is testing a license plate based tag from Sirit set in a recess pressed into license plates. TransCore's sticker tag is an adaptation of a ISO 18000-6B standard.

Electronic vehicle registration needs cameras as backup to read license plates in case of broken or missing local tags plus the many out-of-state vehicles.

see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3868

Competing technologies

Competing technologies are GPS satellite receivers such as Skymeter and Siemens are proposing.

see

http://www.skymetercorp.com

In addition the next generation of transponders at the higher frequency of  5.9GHz are seen by some as the technology for generalized road use charges of the kind envisaged by Aloisi. Martin Capper president of Mark IV, manufacturers of the present generation of E-ZPass transponders sees road use charging as the likely key early application for 5.9GHz. Being developed by a broad coalition and planned for factory installation in future car models the 5.9GHz transponders would serve a wide variety of functions.

Prospects always cloudy in Massachusetts

Massachusetts has been much talk and all-procrastination on tolling and highway finances for years, so nothing may come of this beyond another argument.

The legislature has proposals for a mega-merger of highways, tolling and transit authorities into a conglomerate Massachusetts Surface Transportation Authority, a reorganization task so contentious and difficult it could delay any changes from present tolls and taxes for years.

3M on EVR: http://www.tollroadsnews.com/sites/default/files/3Mevr.pdf

SEMANTICS: Jim Aloisi uses the term "road useR charge" which is in common use. The better term is "road use charge" because what is being charged is road use. A gasoline tax, a registration fee or a car sales tax is also a charge on road users and so is a road user charge.

A road use charge is really just a road toll of course.  What's different is that with technology it can be applied over a wider area and over more roads, potentially all roads.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-02-09