News briefs - Colorado, Indonesia, Missouri, Norway, Russia

I-25 HOT lanes Denver

The Denver Channel.com reports that Colorado has received US$15 million from the US Federal Government as seed funding to enable the start of the new I-25 HOT lane project.  The total cost of the project is US$44 million, with the state, regional and local authorities providing the rest.  It comprises additional lanes between route U.S. 36 and 120^th Avenue in Denver.   The project is intended to relieve this very heavily congested stretch of highway by narrowing hard shoulders in favour of creating a new HOT lane in both directions.

What’s worth noting is that this project isn’t getting funded because of the toll, but the toll is being used to manage demand on the road.  Certainly, the marginal revenue on the lanes will be helpful,  but the bottom line is better use of the existing corridor through pricing.   Vehicles with two or more occupants, including buses, will not be charged.

 Bali toll road

Jakarta Globe reports that the 11-kilometre toll road linking Nusa Dua to Bali’s Ngurah Rai international airport is expected to be open for traffic in July 2013.  The project is expected to cost US$244 million.  The concession is held by Jasa Marga Bali Toll for 45 years with tolls expected to range from RP4,000 (US$0.42) - RP10,000 (US$1.06) per vehicle. 

University of Missouri study

A study from the University of Missouri suggests tolling would more equitably allocate costs of road capital and maintenance among road users compared to fuel taxes according to a report fromForConstructionPros.com . The report indicates the key equity benefits being that those who use the road the most pay the most, and that it would far more effectively reflect the wear and tear the heaviest vehicles impose on the network.  Further evidence that relegates fuel taxes to being an inferior option if charging road users is meant to reflect equity.

St. Petersburg toll road

Construction Europe reports that finance has been obtained for the 1.5 billion Euro (US$1.87 billion) next stage of the St Petersburg Western High Speed Diameter project.  The new segment, which will be tolled, is expected to carry 140,000 vehicles a day.

Norway peak pricing of public transport

OK so it's not road pricing per se, but the Nordic Page is reporting that Ruter - the public transport authority of Oslo and Akershus, is planning to introduce congestion pricing on public transport.   The intention is to charge much higher at peak times, where capacity is scarcest relative to demand, but discount during off peak periods when much capacity lies idle.

Given Oslo has had road pricing for some years now, it makes some sense to start applying rational economic principles to public transport pricing, as the key problem with urban transport pricing is that peak demand is typically underpriced on both roads AND public transport.  If only a few more cities recognised this, and saw road pricing as a opportunity to think holistically about transport pricing across the board.

Cross border toll enforcement - Colorado style

One of the perennial problems for toll violations is when people from outside the national or state jurisdiction fail to pay a toll on a free flow toll system. In London it is a problem with foreign registered vehicles from Europe violating the congestion charge. Having said that, the solution has been for Transport for London (as has been the case for parking violations) to sub-contract enforcement of such vehicles to a private company which has arrangements with the authorities in other countries. One report I saw suggested around one-third of foreign vehicle violations were being captured.

In the USA, between states, it should be easier. A recent report indicated that violators from Nebraska who had used the E-470 Denver toll road were now receiving notices of bills. With the withdrawal of toll booth in 2009, an ANPR system was instituted to send bills to those without accounts and to capture violators. Of course it was limited by the ability of the toll road to access name and address details only of owners of vehicles registered in Colorado.

The toll road operator now has access to the Nebraska DMV, and can send bills. About 12,650 were expected to be sent (the toll road operator chose to ignore violations of more than six months previous).

The Omaha World Herald had this quote:

“We sell our license plate data to toll companies across the country,” DMV director Beverly Neth told me. Neth said the Nebraska DMV, in accordance with state law, releases the names of vehicle owners and their addresses when selling its information about the 2.2 million licensed vehicles in the state.

This database information can be sold “for only a few reasons” — toll roads, insurance companies, law enforcement agencies, motor-vehicle-recall data collectors.
“I don't want to leave the impression that we just willy-nilly sell data,” Neth said. Sales of DMV records bring in about $250,000 each year for the DMV, $2 million for the state's general fund and about $1 million for the state agency that handles recordkeeping, she said. So the state collects more than $3 million from DMV database sales, money that would come from Nebraska taxpayers without those sales.

States selling database information to toll road operators ought, of course, to ensure that they don’t onsell the information to others. As long as other states have similar rules to Nebraska about selling such private data, I’m relaxed about that being a way of pursuing enforcement. Otherwise, such government data could be used for marketing purposes or people may use it to snoop on others.

In Europe, it is clearly a big issue for toll operators with freeflow systems, particularly in the Schengen area (borders with no border control). The European Commission has been trying to broker an agreement among Member States to enable cross-border enforcement of a wide range of traffic violations, but has run into some opposition from Member States who want a right of appeal for their citizens. This isn’t an issue that is easy to fix between countries with different legal systems and approaches to handling citizens’ private data, but will need to be addressed if free flow tolling is to be encouraged in Europe.