I've written about this before, but I thought it was timely to repeat the point...
Early on with this blog I bemoaned the plethora of words that have been created to mean different ways of pricing for road use, and the willingness of different jurisdictions to mix and match these terms.
I tend to use the following three terms to mean separate pricing concepts:
• Tolls: A fee, which may or may not vary by vehicle type, direction of travel or time of day, for using a specific segment of road infrastructure. Commonly bridges or tunnels, but also frequently new sections of motorway, superhighway to provide a faster, more direct connection than the pre-existing route. Tolls typically charge fees for passing specific points on that section, either a single entry or exit point, or multiple points. Most tolls exist to recover the capital costs of construction and the maintenance/operating costs of the tolled infrastructure, but some persist beyond the “payback” period for the road, and are used for other purposes.
• Road User Charge (RUC): A fee which charges for use of a road network, based on consumption of road space through distance. It typically varies by vehicle type and may vary by location and/or time of day (but not necessarily except by identifying being on the priced network). In some jurisdictions fees may vary by emissions category of vehicles. Fees are typically metered or by prepayment of distance. RUC exists to recover network wide road costs, and to reflect differences in consumption of road use, and for heavy vehicles different costs generated from network use.
• Congestion charging/pricing: Fees set based on time of use and location for the use of a road, set of roads, or network of roads (or a lane or lanes on a road). These may range from a single all day pass to use the priced road, or metered use of the priced roads. There will be a variation by time of day, with higher prices at peak times of demand, and there may be variations based on direction of travel. Congestion pricing is usually designed to change behaviour, reducing congestion or emissions. However, many jurisdictions design them to raise revenue to pay for specific infrastructure projects, including non-road infrastructure.
There are variations which crossover between these. Toll lanes and HOT lanes, look a lot like toll roads (but not all lanes) and congestion pricing (because they don’t operate a single price 24/7). However, I will fail in having a universal application of these definitions because….
In Europe, road user charging is called “tolls” usually. Why? Because EU Directive 1999/62/EC… defines tolls (Section 2(b))
means payment of a specified amount for a vehicle travelling the distance between two points on the infrastructures referred to in Article 7(2); the amount shall be based on the distance travelled and the type of the vehicle
European Commission Directives call distance-based road charging “tolls”. This is why when “truck tolls” are discussed in Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, Belgium etc, it isn’t meaning a handful of roads being tolled, but an entire network. Although most European countries don’t apply charges to all public roads (Switzerland and Iceland are notable exceptions), most of these systems resemble road user charging systems, not tolls. Of course, Austria and Slovenia look a lot like toll systems, because they use toll technology (DSRC toll tags) to measure road use on motorways for heavy vehicles, with fees based by distance. That’s where tolling and RUC look similar, noting that the technology used in both systems is not scalable to the entire road network, unlike the GNSS telematics-based systems in Germany, Belgium, Denmark etc.
What IS called a “road user charge” in the EU, is actually a “vignette”. It is defined as:
means payment of a specified amount conferring the right for a vehicle to use for a given period the infrastructures referred to in Article 7(2)
That is a time-based prepaid charge for access to a national highway network, based on purchasing a set number of days. The Eurovignette (which only applies in Sweden, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (until later this year)) is the most well known example. Vignettes are being phased out, but they are legally called a “road user charge”. Therefore if you talk about RUC with Europeans, they may think you are talking about vignettes.
In the UK, congestion charging is legally called a “road user charge”. That being a fee imposed for using a specific road or area. Local authorities (and the Secretary of State for Transport) can set up such schemes. They might resemble tolls (the Dartford Crossing is a "road user charge”) or congestion charging (“Durham”), and could be distance based on the specific road or area, but that’s not quite network wide distance-based road user charging.
In the US, congestion pricing is often used to refer to managed toll lanes or high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, because there are around 40 of these, and only one actual congestion charging type scheme – New York. That of course confusingly has been called the Lower Manhattan Toll but is now the Congestion Relief Zone.
Also in the US, there is RUC, which is called Road Usage Charging (not User), because that is what Oregon chose to call it. There are also five weight mileage taxes (WMT) which are essentially RUC systems for heavy vehicles. However, they are not related to what those states are doing on RUC, as in the US, RUC is almost always about light vehicles.
Confused?
It would be easier to call everything the same. RUC is a great term, except in the UK and Europe. Tolling is a great term, except in the EU where it also means types of RUC. What really matters is what is behind the title, meaning:
- What configuration of roads are being charged? (a single point or a whole network)
- What is the chargeable event?
- What is the basis of the fee?
- What is the purpose of the fee?
- How is the chargeable event measured?
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