CIHT and Bentley Systems have today launched a white paper ‘Charging for Road Use – What is the Future of Mobility pricing?’ that looks at the options for using direct charges to pay for the maintainance of the network and help tackle challenges such as congestion, poor air quality and the push for Net Zero. The paper warns that a failure amongst professionals to collaborate to overcome the practical and political barriers to introducing new schemes means there is a risk that this powerful tool will be off the table for a generation. 

Sue Percy CBE, Chief Executive, CIHT said:

“In the UK, a series of recent reports from Parliament’s Transport Select Committee and a range of think tanks and research organisations have all advocated for a national pay-as-you-drive system to eventually replace Fuel Duty. In Europe, charging HGVs to use the road network is increasingly the norm, while many US states are developing schemes for charging electric vehicle (EV) users.”

“In this report, we argue that as transportation professionals it would however be a mistake to believe that some form of pay as you drive road pricing is the inevitable, response to “how should we pay for roads”, there are alternative options – many less politically painful.”

Mark Coates, Vice President of Infrastructure Policy Advancement, Bentley Systems

“The ball is in our court. Advances in technology and data are opening up exciting new opportunities to use charging to solve out transport problems but the profession needs to step-up and make the case in a way that makes sense to politicians and the public”.

Delivered with the support and input from a range of stakeholders, ‘Charging for Road Use’ discusses how a national pay-as-you-drive scheme is becoming thinkable as a policy option for the UK – but political opposition means there are significant barriers to it being adopted in the short term.

In response the paper argues that transportation professionals need to focus on developing proposals that are built on three foundations: policy rationale, practical deliverability, and political acceptability. This means that anyone proposing a new charging scheme must be able to answer three interlinked groups of questions.

• Policy: what is the rationale for introducing charges for road use, what problems is it intended to help solve, and what other policies need to be in place to achieve these goals?
• Practical: how will the scheme be designed, under what kind of business model will it operate, what technology options flow from these choices, what data will be needed, and how will it be collected and managed?
• Political: what will make the proposal viable in its specific political and legal context, and what communications and public engagement requirements flow from this analysis?

Through this report, CIHT plan to bring together a group of stakeholders to develop new thinking on issues that are standing in the way of the full range of charging options being available to help improve the transport system.

About this report

This White Paper has been produced by the Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation (CIHT) with support from Bentley Systems.

It is based on a literature review, practitioner interviews, and an expert roundtable held at CIHT in London in November 2023.

• Part 1- presents our high-level conclusions and calls on colleagues across the transportation profession and beyond to collaborate on new ideas for tackling shared questions that can help unlock the power of charging for road use as part of the transport professional toolbox.
• Part 2 - presents highlights from our supporting evidence. This material provides insight on recent international developments in the field of charging for road use and summarises the consensus position emerging from a series of recent publications from UK think tanks and research organisations.

Find out more about the report here