Charging, Tolling & RUC

Vendors, service providers and US states who want to seek and share information about the new road usage charge legislation recently passed by the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) should attend a day-long meeting on 13 November at the World Trade Centre in Portland, Oregon. ODOT wants to share details as well as gather information that can help it craft the nation’s first road usage charge program. The ODOT team will be available to meet with specific vendors in scheduled one-on-one sessions.

A significant milestone in the redevelopment and expansion of Interstate 35W in Fort Worth, one of the most critical and most-congested corridors in the North Texas region and in the country has been achieved by NTE Mobility Partners Segments 3 LLC (NTEMP3). They have reached financial agreement on Segment 3A of the North Tarrant Express (NTE), paving the way for the reconstruction and expansion of the interstate. The project is being financed through a unique combination of public and private funds: US$

Brazil’s government announced plans in 2012 to sell state asset to private investors through long term concession deals that would give the winning bidder the right to operate roads, rails and ports, many once built by the government, for around 30 years. The government is now looking to contain the risk involved with high tolls during the privatisation process for roads, and will initially auction off motorways with the lowest tolls.

Brazil's national ground transport agency Agência Nacional de Transportes Terrestres (ANTT) has received eight bids for its US$1.34 billion BR-050 federal highway concession between the states of Goiás and Minas Gerais. The thirty-year concession involves the construction of the BR-050 highway, including restoration, maintenance, road widening and other improvements to provide a 437 kilometre highway along the Minas Gerais and São Paulo border, with six toll booths.

The Ohio Turnpike and Infrastructure Commission (OTIC) has approved the US$930 million funding needed for ten projects in northern Ohio, each within twenty miles of the turnpike. The 241 mile-long, limited-access toll highway serves as a primary corridor to Chicago and Pittsburgh.

A new report by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board (MWCOG) finds that support for a toll managed lanes network grows somewhat the more it is discussed, whereas a vehicle miles travelled charge loses support after discussion. Among 300 people who participated in five-hour moderated small group discussions of alternative ways of dealing with traffic congestion in the Washington DC metro area, toll express lanes on all major highways receiv

NATSO, the US association representing travel plazas and truck-stops, has rejected the report prepared by the Reason Foundation that pushes for widespread tolling. "The public detests interstate tolls, and with good reason," said NATSO president and CEO Lisa Mullings. "Tolls divert motorists and truck drivers to non-interstates, leading to more traffic deaths. Additionally, it costs the government more money to collect tolls than to collect fuel taxes."

A new study, Interstate 2.0: Modernising the Interstate Highway System via Toll Finance, by US public policy think tank, the Reason Foundation, details how much it will cost to reconstruct and widen Interstate highways in all 50 states and shows how to pay for the modernisation efforts with toll revenues. It makes the case for lifting the federal prohibition on tolling existing lanes of the Interstate highway system and states: “…as the reality of the cost of Interstate reconstruction and modernisation s

After years of delays and cost overruns, the newly built US$6.4 billion eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge opened with few problems other than the traffic snarls that were common around the toll plaza of the old span. The single pylon suspension span replaces a structure that was damaged during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. It is designed to withstand the strongest earthquake estimated by seismologists to occur at the site over a 1,500-year period.

One of the ten key projects launched in 2006 by Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport aims to build the world’s most intelligent highways. In a world where eighty per cent of traffic accidents on expressways are attributed to driver negligence, Korea records the lowest level of traffic safety among OECD member countries. The smart highway project aims to reduce the accident rate and encourage people to use expressways more conveniently by integrating information, automobile and road mana