Study Ties Road Usage to Tolls
There’s a great study going on in the Puget Sound area that may foreshadow things to come.
Miller and his fellow volunteers could be charged for driving on every highway and significant arterial from SeaTac to Everett. Cellular and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology will track their travels. Tolls will be deducted electronically from prepaid accounts.
Tolling is an old idea that is attracting renewed interest from transportation planners searching for ways to both curtail congestion and raise revenue. From California to New York, they’re experimenting with tolls on roads.
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Here’s how the test will work:
Project managers will give each participant what they call an "endowment account" from which the tolls will be paid. GPS/cellular devices will be installed on their car dashboards to track where they drive, and transmit that information to a computer server, which will deduct the tolls from the drivers’ accounts.
If there’s money left in those accounts when the experiment ends in December 2005, the volunteers will get to keep it — in real dollars, perhaps hundreds.
The purpose is to see how charging for actual road usage impacts driving and commuting behavior.
If people had to actually pay for the roads they use, would they drive as much? I’m sure they wouldn’t.
Think what would happen to suburban sprawl if suburbanites had to actually pay for their roads rather than sending the bill to everybody else. Think what it could do to protect the environment if people had to pay for the roads they use by the mile.
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