1. With a few exceptions, Interstate highways cannot be tolled. The major exceptions are facilities that were built as toll roads prior to the creation of the Interstate and incorporated into the system. As such, tolling on these facilities was "grandfathered" in. In addition, Congress has granted the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) a limited number of restriction waivers as part of the Interstate Toll Pilot Program.
2. Example from Todd Litman, "Pay-As-You-Drive Vehicle Insurance: Converting Vehicle Insurance Premiums into Use-Based Charges," Online TDM Encyclopedia, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, updated 24 November 2008, at www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm79.htm.
3. Jason E. Bordoff and Pascal J. Noel, Pay-As-You-Drive Auto Insurance: A Simple Way to Reduce Driving- Related Harms and Increase Equity, Hamilton Project Discussion Paper (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, July 2008).
4. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), "Toll Roads in the United States: History and Current Policy," at www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tollpage/history.pdf.
5 Benjamin Perez and Stephen Lockwood, Current Toll Road Activity in the U.S.: A Survey and Analysis, (Washington, DC: Office of Transportation Studies, FHWA, August 2006), p. 2.
6. FHWA, Toll Road Information, at www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/tollpage.htm.
7. FHWA, Highway Statistics 2006 (Washington, DC: U.S. DOT, 2008), Tables LGF-3B, SF-3B, and HF-10.
8. FHWA, Toll Facilities in the United States Bridges-Roads-Tunnels-Ferries, December 2007, at www.fhwa dot.gov/ohim/tollpage/facts.htm
9. On the SH 121 project, see North Texas Tollway Authority, at www.ntta.org; on Loop 49, see Texas DOT, at www.dot.state.tx.us/tyl/projects/SL49.
10. Based on a synthesis of information from the following sources: "Toll Roads Around the World," at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toll_roads_around_the_World; World Bank, "Tolled and Other Roads in Selected Countries," at www.worldbank.org/transport/roads/tr_docs/annex1.pdf; European Association of Tolled Motorway, Bridge and Tunnels, at www.asecap.com/english/pubinf-statcomp-en.html.
11. World Bank, "Toll Roads and Concessions," at www.worldbank.org/transport/roads/toll_rds htm#international.
12. U.S. DOT, "New York City Urban Partnership Agreement," at www.upa.dot.gov/agreements/newyorkcity htm.
13. Committee for Study on Urban Transportation Congestion Pricing, Transportation Research Board, Curbing Gridlock: Peak-Period Fees To Relieve Traffic Congestion, Volume 1 (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1994), pp. 31-33.
14. Alison Conway and C. Michael Walton, "Policy Options for Truck User Charging," presented at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, January 2009.
15. James M. Whitty, Oregon's Mileage Fee Concept and Road User Fee Pilot Program: Final Report (Salem, OR: Oregon Department of Transportation, November 2007).
16. University of Iowa, "National Evaluation of a Mileage-based Road User Charge," at www.roaduserstudy org.
17. Puget Sound Regional Council, Summary of the Puget Sound Regional Council's Examination of Transportation Pricing Strategies (Seattle, WA: January 2002).
18. German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs, "Heavy Goods Vehicle Tolls in Germany," at www.bmvbs.de/en/Transport/Roads-,2075/HGV-toll.htm.
19. Ideally any vehicle miles traveled system for heavy vehicles would charge by axle weight, since this is the factor most correlated with pavement damage. Real-time axle weight sensors have been developed, but they would have to be fully tested before widespread deployment would be possible.
20. Claus Dolla and Axel Schaffe, "Economic Impact of the Introduction of the German HGV Toll System," Transport Policy, vol. 14, issue 1, January 2007.
21. Dr. Joris Al, General Director of The Netherlands' Centre for Transport and Navigation in the Ministry of Transport, presentation at ITIF Breakfast Forum, November 5, 2008.
22. FHWA, op. cit. note 7, Tables SF-3B and LGF-3B.
23. Cambridge Systematics, Mercator Advisors, Alan Pisarski, and Martin Wachs, Future Financing Options to Meet Future Highway and Transit Needs, NCHRP Web Only Document 102, 2006, at onlinepubs.trb.org/ onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_w102.pdf.
24. Based on data from FHWA, op. cit. note 7, Tables HF-10, SF-3B, and LGF-3B.
25. Perez and Lockwood, op. cit. note 5, p. 2.
26. Calculated from data in FHWA, op. cit. note 7, Tables SF 3B, SF-2, LGB -3, and LGF-3B.
27. Ibid.
28. David Lewis, America's Traffic Congestion Problem: Toward a Framework for National Reform, Brookings Papers (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, July 2008).
29. However, if a comprehensive pricing approach is implemented, the on-board units needed for comprehensive pricing could provide most of the needed functionality. Therefore much less infrastructure would be required for cordon pricing, and both the implementation and operating costs would be reduced dramatically. Based on comments received from FHWA.
30. Congestion Charge Secretariat, Facts and Results from the Stockholm Trial-Final Version (Stockholm: City of Stockholm, December 2006).
31. Transport for London reports presenting outcomes of congestion charging, at www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/congestioncharging/6722.aspx#2. By way of comparison, the proposed New York City cordon pricing initiative estimated much lower administrative costs as a share of gross revenues, with $62 million in annual operating costs and $491 million in gross revenues, U.S. DOT, "New York City Urban Partnership Agreement," at www.upa.dot.gov/agreements/newyorkcity.htm.
32. These are only capital and operating costs associated with enabling administration of cordon charges and do not include other "program" costs such as significantly increased capital and operating spending for transit or other activities that were envisioned as an integral part of the overall cordon pricing initiative. U.S. DOT, op. cit. note 31.
33. Based on phone conversations with various state DOT officials.
34. Ian W. H. Parry, Pricing Urban Congestion (Washington, DC: Resources For the Future, November 2008), Table 2.
35. Whitty, op. cit. note 15, p. 43.
36. See survey of literature in Todd Litman, "Transport Elasticities," Online TDM Encyclopedia, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, at www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm11 htm.
37. The Eddington Commission found that the London cordon pricing led to substantial mode shifts; Eddington Commission, Transport Demand to 2025 & the Economic Case for Road Pricing and Investment (London: U.K. Department of Transport, December 2006).
38. The Case for Action: Sir Rod Eddington's Advice to Government, Executive Summary of Eddington Commission, op. cit. note 37, p. 5.
39. Eddington Commission, op. cit. note 37, p. 56.
40. Committee for Study on Urban Transportation Congestion Pricing, op. cit. note 13, Chapter 4.
41. Lewis, op. cit. note 28.
42. FHWA, Value Pricing Pilot Program: Lessons Learned Final Report (Washington, DC: August 2008).
43. European Commission, Fair Payment for Infrastructure Use: A Phased Approach to a Common Transport Infrastructure Charging Framework in the EU, White Paper (Brussels: 1998).
44. Eddington Commission, op. cit. note 37, p. 134.
45. Figures developed by FHWA through the Highway Economic Requirements System.
46. FHWA, Multi-Pollutant Emissions Benefits of Transportation Strategies Final Report (Washington, DC: November 2006).
47. Anthony M. Rufolo and Thomas J. Kimpel, "Transit's Effect on Mileage Responses to Oregon's Experiment in Road Pricing," presented at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board, January 2009.
48. Andre de Palma, Robin Lindsey, and Esko Niskanen, "Policy Insights from the Urban Road Pricing Case Studies," Transport Policy, vol. 13, issue 2, March 2006, p. 150, citing C. Sikow-Magny, "Efficient Pricing in Transport-Overview of European Commission's Transport Research Programme," in J. Schade and B. Schlag, eds., Acceptability of Transport Pricing Strategies (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2003), pp. 13-26.
49. Robert W. Poole, Jr., and Ted Balaker, Virtual Exclusive Busways: Improving Urban Transit While Relieving Congestion, Reason Foundation Policy Study No. 337 (Los Angeles, CA: September 2005); Kenneth A. Small, "Road Pricing and Public Transport," in Georgina Santos, ed., Research in Transport Economics, Vol. 9: Road Pricing: Theory and Evidence (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2004), pp. 133-58.
50. Poole and Balaker, op. cit. note 49, pp. 27ff.
51. National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Compilation of Public Opinion Data on Tolls and Road Pricing (Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, 2008), pp. 1-2.
52. Ibid.
53. Ibid.
54. Environmental Defense Action Fund, Transport Workers Union Local 100, and Straphangers Campaign, "Congestion Pricing Facts," Legislative Gazette, March 2008; Zubin Jelveh, "The Stockholm Solution," Conde Nast's Portfolio.com, August 5, 2007.
55. FHWA, op. cit. note 42, pp. v-vi.
56. The efficient price will give incentives to avoid using the road or network at peak times (to reduce the need for added capacity) and to otherwise recognize the costs that driving creates. Economic theory says that if the capacity can be readily increased or decreased, then the revenue from efficient pricing should just pay for the cost of the road with the most efficient capacity. However, capacity increases are based on a long- term perspective and are implemented in the long term. For new capacity with little congestion, the price needed to promote efficient use may not be very high. As demand increases, the price to manage the use of the road or network should also rise. This may result in revenue below the cost of capital and operating costs for new facilities and revenue above those costs over time. Hence, there may be some trade-off between the need for a revenue stream to finance a road and the pricing system that best manages use of the road or network.
57. Kenneth Small, Clifford Winston, and Jia Yan, Differentiated Road Pricing, Express Lanes and Carpools: Exploiting Heterogeneous Preferences in Policy Design (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2006).
58. De Palma, Lindsey, and Niskanen, op. cit. note 48, p. 150.
59. Anna Matas and Jose-Luis Raymond, "Demand Elasticity on Tolled Motorways," Journal of Transportation and Statistics, vol. 6, no. 2/3 (2003), pp. 91-108.
60. Peter F. Swan and Michael H. Belzer, "Empirical Evidence of Toll Road Traffic Diversion and Implications for Highway Infrastructure Privatization," presented at Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, January 14, 2008.
61. Kaan Ozbay, Ozlem Yanmaz-Tuzel, and Jose Holguin-Veras, "The Impacts of Time-of-day Pricing Initiative at NY/NJ Port Authority Facilities Car and Truck Movements," Working Paper No. 1960 (Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, 2006).
62. Transportation Research Board, Paying Our Way: Estimating Marginal Social Costs of Freight Transportation (Washington, DC: 1996).
63. Dolla and Schaffe, op. cit. note 20.
64. Presentation to the Finance Commission by the German Federal Ministry of Transport, Building and Urban Affairs, September 2007.
65. Todd Litman, "Evaluating Pricing Strategies," Online TDM Encyclopedia, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, at www.vtpi.org/tdm/tdm70.htm.
66. This assumes that the tendency of higher-income households to purchase larger and more powerful vehicles does not continue.
67. Sarah West, "Equity Implications of Vehicle Emissions Taxes," Journal of Transport Economics and Policy, vol. 39, no. 1, January 2005, pp. 1-24.
68. E. Deakin and G. Harvey, Can Transportation Pricing Strategies Be Used for Reducing Emissions? California Air Resources Board Research Notes No. 98-1 (Sacramento, CA: June 1998).
69. B. Starr McMullen and Lei Zhang, Socio-economic Effect of Vehicle Mileage Fees, Research Report 2008- 81 (Portland, OR: Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium, 2008).
70. Ibid.
71. Lewis, op. cit. note 28, Table 6.
72. James M. Poterba, "Is the Gasoline Tax Regressive?" in D. Bradford, ed., Tax Policy and the Economy, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991), pp. 145-64; see also edt.missouri.edu/Winter2007/Dissertation/KimH-042607-D/research.pdf.
73. Elena Safirova et al., Welfare and Distributional Effects of Road Pricing Schemes for Metropolitan Washington DC, Discussion Paper 03-57 (Washington, DC: Resources for the Future, 2003), p. 3.
74. Kenneth A. Small, Clifford Winston, and Jia Yan, Differentiated Road Pricing, Express Lanes and Carpools, Brooking Papers (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, March 2006).
75. Lewis, op. cit. note 28.
76. FHWA, op. cit. note 7, Table HM-14; U.S. Census Bureau.
77. McMullen and Zhang, op. cit. note 69.
78. U.S. DOT, FHWA, National Household Travel Survey, at nhts.ornl.gov/tools.shtml.
79. Mark Cooper, "Rural Households Benefit More from Increases in Fuel Economy," Consumer Federation of America, Washington, DC, June 2007.
80. Based on preliminary analysis provided by the U.S. Department of Transportation.
81. Joseph R. Brimacombe, Deputy Director, Compliance Policy, Small Business and Self Employed Operating Division, Internal Revenue Service, Testimony Before the Full Committee of the House Committee on Ways and Means, Washington, DC, July 17, 2003.
82. Based on a survey of tolling authorities and tollroad management and toll technology firms in the United States conducted by the Reason Foundation and provided to the Commission. Publication by the Reason Foundation is forthcoming.
83. Based on preliminary analysis provided by the U.S. DOT.
84. Ibid.
85. Based on supplemental information provided by the Oregon Department of Transportation.
86. AI,op. cit. note 21.
87. See "Sticker Tags 'Doing Fine' Says Biggest User-Houston," TollRoadsNews, June 2007, and "Georgia Contracts with TransCore for Read-only Sticker Tags," TollRoadsNews, February 2005.
88. Based on input provided by FHWA.