Utah to Test Personalized Road Usage Pricing

Utah announced a pilot program that could lead to “hyper-specific” road usage fees based on drivers’ specific driving habits and needs.

The program uses an electronic dongle to monitor exactly where, when, and how much people drive. “Then, communities can consolidate that data into a single road usage charge that can be automatically adjusted based on their unique priorities — think extra tolls for using the express lane, or graduated fees for low-income motorists who truly have to drive — and automatically distributed to the agencies that manage the exact roadways those drivers' actually traveled.”

The concept is one way to replace gas tax revenue that many states rely on heavily for transportation funding and that will rapidly shrink as electric vehicles become a larger share of the market. But it could face resistance from drivers with privacy concerns, Wilson notes. “Even if most U.S. drivers get past privacy concerns about equipping their vehicles with hyper-accurate GPS dongles and the dizzying network of high-tech eyes that are already watching them, they might fight back against being charged more for entering a busy downtown at rush hour, as New York City's long, messy congestion pricing fight has illustrated all too plainly.”

In the future, cities could use the technology to incentivize a reduction in driving or charge vehicles based on weight “to compensate for the extra damage they cause to roads (and the bodies of pedestrians they strike).”