vmt

Skymeter's Bern Grush calls it TDP pricing - standing for charges that involve measures of Time, Distance, Place. Others call them vehicle-miles fees or mileage charges. Sometimes they become VMT charges for Vehicle Miles Traveled. Others again call them road user charges or road use charges, hence RUCs. Texas Transportation Institute scholars call them Mileage Based User Fees, MBUFs.

Paul Sorensen, lead author of the NCHRP-RAND-AASHTO report on nearterm technologies for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) charges has responded to criticism, claiming the group does not dismiss the utility of RFID. In a posting to the congestion pricing weblist "con-pric" he says the report authors considered equipping vehicles with RFID transponders and mounting readers through the most heavily trafficked parts of the highway network.

AASHTO, the state DOTs lobby in Washington DC has a report from the Academies of Sciences' Transportation Research Board (TRB) that determinedly avoids toll technologies and expertise in the search for a quick fix to declining gas tax revenues. Written by a RAND Corp led team the report lists three options for estimating vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) charges:

Engineers at the University of Minnesota (UMinn) have devised a plug-in device for measuring vehicle-miles traveled and logging it for road use charges (RUC) that they say could be deployed near-term. The system makes use of an electronic processor and memory that can be plugged into an existing vehicle data bus via a Data Link Connector plug, and which uses cellphone data links.

Attendees at the ITS America annual conference at National Harbor Maryland say they are very encouraged by  Obama administration officials' interest in road pricing and other ITS technologies. Ken Philmus, ITSA board member and a toll industry veteran now with ACS, says US officials have been attending the conference and inviting ITS people in large numbers.

US House Transportation chair Rep James Oberstar is attempting to backtrack from his recent advocacy of swift action to institute a national vehicle-miles charge. He has had an aide claim the press "mistook" him.

The aide John Schadl put out a statement this week as follows:
 

House transportation committee chairman James Oberstar is hot for implementing a vehicle-miles charge to take over from the failing gasoline tax as part of the next 5-year federal financing bill, the XYZ-TEA. In a back and forth with Rep Earl Blumenauer (Dem OR) in a committee hearing Tuesday April 29 Oberstar said that a VMT (vehicle miles traveled) charge was something "we have to do" and is "going to be done."

December estimates by FHWA of traffic  throughout the US in December 2008 (2008-12) show a decline of 1.6% in vmt on 2007-12, the smallest drop in the previous corresponding period (pcp) in eight months. Urban interstate traffic was level on pcp, while rural interstate traffic was 1.6% lower.