The surge of road pricing projects in the U.S. and around the globe over the past fifteen years has been enabled by a set of new communication and transportation technologies. There is currently a wide array of technical configurations ranging from systems based on “tried and true” short-range radio communications to experimental systems relying on global positioning satellites. These technologies provide for a more efficient collection of simple tolls, and also facilitate a movement toward more dynamic, variable user fees.

In this study, we provide a comprehensive literature review of eight road pricing cases to identify types of tolling technologies employed, given various policy objectives. In particular, we examine two examples from each of four types of road pricing programs: 1) facility congestion tolls, 2) cordon tolls, 3) weight-distance truck tolls, and 4) distance-based user fees. In the selected cases, we specifically examine various suites of technologies and evaluate approaches to their implementation in road pricing programs with regards to system design and policy.

In our literature review, we first describe three major technical tasks to be performed—metering road use, calculating charges, and communicating data—that are implemented by a set of nine technologies varying from on-board units to global navigation system satellites. Secondly, we identify six primary policy goals of these road pricing systems: a) maximize underutilized capacity, b) offer a congestion-free alternative, c) generate revenue, d) reduce congestion, e) allocate costs to users, and f) develop a user-fee alternative to the fuel tax.

In our careful synthesis of the literature, we find that two main policy decisions most often determine the selection of roadway tolling technologies: (1) the geographical scale of the road network tolled, and (2) the complexity of calculating the fee to be charged. The combination of these two factors can vary greatly – from tolling individual facilities with flat fees, to nationwide road networks priced with dynamic tolls that vary by vehicle class, time of day, and congestion level. Taking into account the severe funding shortfall for transportation infrastructure, serious concerns about traffic congestion, and related adverse environmental impacts, we expect electronic road pricing systems to continue to grow in scale as well as in number. While systems with newer technologies are continuously in development, the most difficult hurdle for road pricing programs is now less of technical feasibility, but rather political and public support for implementation.

Smart cards are gaining momentum as transit agencies across the country have been implementing them as a fare medium. Smart cards hold the promise of revolutionizing the way riders use transit, and how transit systems operate. But in order to adopt smart cards, transit agencies must purchase new equipment and upgrade their entire fare collection system – a very expensive process. In addition, many of the oft-touted benefits of smart cards are vague, and it is not at all certain if they are worth the high cost of implementation.

This study examines how transportation agencies in three metropolitan areas evaluated smart card systems – the only three major transit smart card cost/benefit analysis studies that we found in the U.S. by the date of data collection. In addition to these three studies, we also reviewed other less extensive analyses that only partially address issues associated with the implementation of smart card technologies as transit fare media. In reviewing documents from these analyses, combined with information collected in the previous steps of the research, we found that the analyses are neither consistent with one another nor definitive to provide any systematic evaluation of costs and benefits of smart card deployment. These shortcomings are mainly due to: (1) difficulty of estimating many of the qualitative benefits, such as convenience for transfers and comprehensive regional travel data, (2) a significant variation in quantitative cost estimates among the analyses for unclear reasons, and (3) difficulty in generalizing costs and benefits among cases with the unique organizational structures and particular political issues in different regions.

Given a lack of solid information available in the literature, we drew on the relevant studies available to identify the cost and benefit items of smart card media and systems and examine the level of reliability and certainty of information for these items. Then we developed a framework on how a proper transit smart card cost/benefit analysis ought to be conducted. With this proposed framework, we found that individual transit operators and multiple agencies bear the majority of the deployment costs, while transit users and individual operators enjoy most of the smart card benefits. The proposed framework sheds light for more comprehensive cost/benefit analysis to evaluate smart card transit fare systems in the current status of knowledge.