As current federal-aid surface transportation legislation is scheduled to expire in September 2009, and with infrastructure needs far out-stripping funding from current taxes, Martin Capper, CEO of MARK IV IVHS told the 5,000 delegates of the 15th World Congress that a mileage-based fee is technically possible and is a fair way to collect funds needed to meet North America’s infrastructure needs.

According to Capper, “With key transportation leaders seeking an annual increase in infrastructure spending as great as $50 billion per year, we must look at alternatives to the motor fuel tax, especially in the long term when fuel tax revenue will decline because of fuel economy, alternative fuels and a long-term increase in oil prices.”

To raise $ 50 billion annually with fuel taxes would require an increase in the current federal motor fuels tax of about 28 cents-per-gallon. A two (2) cent-per-mile user fee would raise the same amount based only on activity in the top 100 major Metropolitan areas. Nationally the revenue collected would be substantially more.

“Because of its inherent fairness in allocating costs to system users, a per-mile fee is one option that should be considered,” added Capper. “5.9 GHz is proven and could be utilized to implement such a new fee, as well as offering coast-to-coast ubiquity for motorists in applications that today utilize disparate technologies such as electronic toll collection.” 5.9 GHz has moved past the theoretic stage with successful field testing in California and Detroit during 2008. Once in place, a 5.9 GHz open-architecture system would be available for many additional applications, including a mileage-based fee to support infrastructure.

MARK IV IVHS supplies the majority of electronic toll collection equipment in the northeastern United States. With more than 17 million transponders on the road and more than 3,000 lanes equipped, MARK IV is the largest supplier of its kind in North America. Known for its innovations, MARK IV technology has enabled many landmark intelligent transportation system deployments, including: Canada’s Highway 407 ETR, the world’s first, non-stop, all-electronic toll road; interoperability between truck electronic preclearance systems and toll collection, numerous border crossing projects; and, the E-ZPass® system of the Interagency Group of 24 toll authorities.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 5:07 pm and is filed under Trucking. Tags: California Canada Detroit disparate technologies electronic toll collection equipment Highway 407 Interagency Group MARK IV IVHS Martin Capper Metropolitan Michigan North America oil prices truck electronic preclearance systems United States World Congress . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.