-Caveat Lector- CERTIFIED WIDE AREA ROAD USE MONITORING AUTHOR: DANIEL F. MALICK US FHWA REPRESENTATIVE TO RUSSIA, MOSCOW NOTE: The ideas and opinions contained in this paper are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the policy of the United States Federal Highway Administration. CERTIFIED WIDE AREA ROAD USE MONITORING "confidential road use transparency" EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Certified Wide Area Road Use Monitoring (C-WARUM) is a 100% private sector, global application of intelligent transportation system (ITS) technologies, principally directed at improving travel safety, the administrative efficiency of regulatory programs, and the operating productivity of the highway transport sector. Such improvements would be achieved through an open marketplace of confidential information services based on the individual's monitoring of his/her own road use. C-WARUM is fundamentally a new institutional model, relying exclusively on competing private concessionaires for the design, funding, deployment and operation of wide area road use monitoring systems. This model departs from current practice where road owners, most often governments, fund and manage everything with public resources. The now emerging Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite digital communication systems operate cost effectively over large areas and are encouraging private investors to develop and market services responsive to the myriad of laws and regulations affecting a road user traveling over a large network in multiple jurisdictions. It is a challenge to all road owners to adapt to these changes. The C-WARUM concept provides a major new tool to road and vehicle owners by offering subscribers "confidential road use transparency"; the reporting of a vehicle's characteristics and use of the road, at all times and all places, in a secure non-governmental system. Vehicles with C-WARUM subscriptions are able to have their road use monitored for a wide variety of private and public, mandatory and voluntary, purposes. The marketing to road users of their own independently authenticated data on road use and vehicle characteristics has, and will continue to dramatically increase the productivity of the transport sector for both roads and vehicles, through more responsive and evasion-free road pricing, the distribution of customized travel information and services, and the tighter command and control of commercial vehicle fleets. CONCEPT DESCRIPTION Background The idea of C-WARUM is not new, the basic scheme was documented and investigated over 10 years ago as part of America's first ITS demonstration project, the HELP or Crescent Project, across America's Pacific and Southwestern states, as a "satellite option" during early project planning studies. At that time, using satellites for Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and Automatic Vehicle Identification (AVI) was judged ahead of it time due to the absence of inexpensive wide area 2-way satellite data communication systems. In fact the satellite option was estimated to be ten years ahead of its time, and ultimately HELP implementation went for a fully terrestrial system; developed, operated and financed by the road owners, though later released for user-fee supported private management. However, now ten years later, low cost satellite communications services are coming to market as a direct result of the now deploying commercial Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite systems.[1] <#fn0> It is this recent technology and price innovation that has given rebirth to the "satellite option", and will as a natural consequence, provide the transport sector a magnitude of productivity improvement in the form of globally available C-WARUM services. Many nations are currently experiencing a roadway congestion/safety/security/financial crisis, primarily driven by the road owner's difficulty to equitably and cost effectively raise sufficient funds to support not only needed roadway improvements, but also to operate the most basic safety and demand management programs. Additionally, the mega-cities of the world are succumbing to persistent congestion, a problem that is unaffected by a road construction solutions, requiring demand management through the application of road pricing economics.[2] <#fn1> This crisis can be documented by insufficient levels of highway construction, escalating congestion, increased traffic accidents and deaths, expanding security risks for a nation's commercial shippers, environmental decline, and a general stifling of economic growth and opportunities. This paper postulates that the key to solving these problems is "confidential road use transparency"; the private, unbiased, accurate and ubiquitous self-monitoring of one's own road use. The availability of this information to a road user has a wide variety of uses, both public and private. Road use data gathering services have already been developed and marketed by numerous private firms to the trucking industry with growing acceptance,[3] <#fn2> though to date road owners have not been able to harness these services for public road administration, barred mainly by political, price and coverage issues. Without this transparency in road pricing schemes, users can reasonably fear the evasion of regulations and fees by their competitors, the uneven application of laws, and a economic disadvantage to the law abiding highway user. Before the LEO systems, the monitoring of all vehicles at all times over a large road network has been administratively impossible, or cost prohibitive, or both. LEO systems will provide a communication infrastructure that lowers some of these barriers. Since the mid eighties, many countries have invested hundreds of millions of dollars (US) annually to develop, test and demonstrate a wide variety of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) technologies. Many of these investments have been directed at toll and road pricing systems, often commenting on the attractiveness of LEO based applications, but never venturing to propose a demo or to outline its tremendous potential. This paper, written at the dawn of the first commercially available LEO, will attempt to set the stage for LEO utilization in the transport sector. Institutional Features The following graphic depicts the various institutional features in a C-WARUM system: FIGURE 1: Institutional relationships involved in the C-WARUM concept. There are seven institutional features of the C-WARUM concept that are innovative: The responsibility for road use monitoring rests with the individual, not the road owner. The road owner's role would be limited to the performance certification of a new breed of private road use monitoring concessionaires, with little to no road owner investment or control in the pricing, marketing, technology and operation of their monitoring systems. Road owners could require that C-WARUM subscriptions be mandatory, or a voluntary alternative to other monitoring schemes, for all or a selected class of vehicles operating within their jurisdiction. Each subscribing vehicle would be fitted with an electronic licenseplate/modem supporting two way digital communications, geo-location, and road side data transfers. Depending upon the road owner's regulations and pricing structures, reports on road use and regulation compliance would be electronically transmitted by the independent C-WARUM concessionaires to all appropriate road owners on behalf of each subscriber, such reports aggregating and condensing the individual road user's history to preserve their privacy. Certification of the concessionaire replaces the road owner's need to audit individual reports. In the instances where the collection of fees for road use is involved, private concessionaires can monitor use, calculate the fees owed, and process the billing and payment transactions between the users' and the road owners' accounts to provide a real-time and seamless electronic road pricing solution. Such fee systems could be route specific (toll roads), cover an urban area (area licensing), vary with traffic (congestion pricing), or be national/multinational (highway fund financing). The road owner's certification process concentrates on the performance of the system and not on how that performance is produced, what technology is employed, or which firm won a competition for a road owner's contract. The performance standards can be satisfied by a wide variety of existing and yet to be invented technologies, thus protecting the C-WARUM concept from obsolescence by maintaining open entry for competitors into a mass consumer market. C-WARUM concessionaires can add new services and offer multiple service packages to meet special market niche needs, (eg. vehicle navigation, congestion pricing, weight distance tax administration, toll road management, fleet management, etc.). The current and evolving information needs of both private vehicle operators and road owner administrators can be met within a single global information services market, without holes and gaps in time and space. All the currently envisioned ITS services demonstrated in the US and abroad can be accommodated within the C-WARUM concept. Under the C-WARUM concept, road owners are not the investor, developer, or operator of "big brother" monitoring systems, but instead catalyze the emergence of an ITS services market by mandating or encouraging road users to self-monitor their road use and to authorize selective reporting to road owners.[4] <#fn3> The self monitoring of road use through certified independent private concessionaires enables automated road pricing and fee transaction processing, creates a self-funded and confidential system, and offers seamless road financing and management solutions globally to all road owners and users. Equipment Components The equipment components that comprise the entire C-WARUM system are not mandated. Only the performance characteristics of specific reports are mandated in order for these reports to be acceptable to specific road owner's. Road users are free to subscribe to any level of service and install on their vehicles any number and design of components they feel serve their needs and are justified by their price. Any concessionaire can offer to the market any technology and mix of components, but cannot claim to support the reporting needs of specific road owner's unless certified. The following graphic depicts a mix of components that would be necessary for the most challenging of all applications, national road pricing. [<comps3.jpg>] FIGURE 2: system components involved in the C-WARUM concept. A typical set of components would look as follows: On the vehicle a GPS receiver to produce a stream of data on the vehicle's position history, operating on either or both the US GPS or the Russian GLONASS constellations, a 2-way data communications modem to "bursty" wide area communication systems, most likely an LEO, though conceivably some forms of terrestrial systems may also serve, an on-board computer to store and forward information "bursts" a keyboard and display for driver communications an active and encrypted electronic ID chip (an electronic licenseplate) a short range RF data transfer antenna to communicate with standardized roadside devices various sensors to the vehicle and its load depending on the type of applications the vehicle owner wishes support with (eg. tire pressure, axle load, container temperature, oil pressure etc.) In space the GPS/GLONASS satellite systems, transmitting signals for geolocation LEO data communications systems, relaying digital information between ground stations and the vehicle On the ground LEO system ground stations, relaying digital communications over terrestrial lines to C-WARUM concessionaires, C-WARUM concessionaire data processing centers, where the subscribers road use data is stored and processed and from which authorized reports are issued, telecommunications systems for the transfer of data and reports to subscribers, to road agencies, and to other private commercial support institutions (e.g. banks) On the roadway electronic sensors, licenseplate interrogators and video enforcement cameras for the road owner's automated registration and regulation compliance assurance weigh-in-motion scales for equivalent axle load (EAL) measurements and vehicle classification RF antennas supporting standardized 2 way data transfers with moving vehicles, other roadway counters/sensors for traffic data collection and automatic condition reporting, a 2-way data communications modem supported by a wide area communication system, (NOTE: The above roadway components would be co-located and serve as primary traffic data collection sites for road owner planning purposes; the C-WARUM components "coat tailing" on this existing road owner investment and program with minimized incremental cost.) The responsibility for integrating all these components into a single seamless system would rest with competing C-WARUM concessionaires, not the road owners. Road users would select the concessionaire of their choice based on price and service. C-WARUM concessionaires would provide their subscribers with access to compatible in-vehicle equipment with similar commercial arrangements commonly used in the cellular phone industry. C-WARUM as a vehicle information system... Today there are numerous applications privately marketed and deployed using many of the components outlined for the C-WARUM concept. Trucking companies are already purchasing on board computers and displays, satellite tracking and communications devices, and contracting with information processing services to aid them in their commercial vehicle operations for a competitive edge. Car rental companies are installing navigation devices to improve their service to customers. Individuals are installing tracking devices to protect their vehicle and improve recovery in case of theft or accident. A variety of operational and economic trends have combined to increase the pressure on transport companies to create a new supply system. As customer service becomes more and more important, companies are increasingly coordinating the point-to-point distribution of specific products for specific customers within the constraints of just-in-time delivery windows. At the same time, the number of distribution centers is declining as controlling costs are becoming a business necessity. The result is that transportation companies are being forced to enact increasingly complex logistical strategies. As companies' logistics decisions begin to involve greater emphasis on cost efficiency and increased focus on core competencies, many companies are reevaluating their transportation operation from all sides. Many of these companies are finding it advantageous to outsource all or part of their logistics management as the most efficient way to manage the entire supply chain. As a result, information systems are critical to reducing costs and increasing efficiencies across the entire transport network, a network which in the US represents 5% of GNP. These systems must be capable of managing the flow of information and providing commercial road users instant access to transport data. The C-WARUM concept is an expansion of this already developing market in a number of inevitable directions: the commercial service offerings would be expanded to include assistance to road users in the preparation of road owner mandated reporting (e.g. preaudited weight distance tax reports, fuel tax reports, etc.), and the service offerings would be globally available over LEO systems with no holes, gaps, or evasion possibilities, and the service offerings are seamlessly and continuously expandable, covering all current and future reporting needs of both road owners and vehicle operators, and as more road owners recognize the savings by utilizing C-WARUM in meeting their road pricing and regulation compliance needs, market penetration of these service offerings will expand, resulting in lower subscription prices, reduced road owner program costs, a more level economic playing field for commercial road users, and higher operating productivity throughout the transport sector. The C-WARUM concept is road owner "coat tailing" on an idea already proven in the market, expanding its usefulness and lowering its costs for the public good. As the number and breadth of uses to the road user increase, the proportion of the road-using population subscribing to it will increase in a natural progression, paced by market forces. As prices drop and service offerings expand, the benefits of all ITS applications, private and public, will naturally diffuse throughout the sector. C-WARUM as a safety and security system... Safety and security are two interrelated roadway issues, both served by communication and monitoring systems. Safety programs need to be both preventative and responsive. Preventative assistance can be provided to road users through the full range of in-vehicle reporting systems on traffic, weather, recommended routing and advising on dangerous road conditions. Responsive assistance can be provided by C-WARUM `s real-time position and 2-way communication capabilities, reporting accidents and directing emergency responses. Many of these ITS services are being demonstrated today in many nations around the world and any of these applications are capable of operating within the C-WARUM concept. Security often concerns itself with theft, assault and vehicle failures. Here also, C-WARUM can both prevent and respond. With real-time remote monitoring of vehicle position and condition, hijackings and load tampering are instantly reported and responded to, thus providing a great disincentive to the would-be thief. However, should such a breach of security occur, enforcement officers can be readily directed to the scene for appropriate handling of the situation. Currently available commercial systems operating within selected urban areas have proven to be the most effective means of combating vehicle theft and load hijacking. C-WARUM would allow concessionaires to offer these services globally, even in remote and undeveloped areas. In both security and safety applications, concessionaires would be free to enter these markets where there is demand and provide safety prevention and response services within their subscription packages. C-WARUM as a user fee administration system.. Funding for highways in many countries is a major problem where a fraction of the needed investment is raised. Some users are paying a small fraction of the true cost of their use, and tax evasion is commonplace. Congestion in most urban areas demands road pricing solutions. New construction is no longer a viable alternative.[5] <#fn4> Toll road developers are constantly challenged with administering fee collection while maintaining interoperability with other systems. The practical aspects of collecting and accounting for highway user fees has always been the soft underbelly of what otherwise would appear to be a very logical and equitable form of highway financing.[6] <#fn5> For compact, high volume projects like a strategic bridge, toll booths can be an effective solution. But in many locations, where volumes are low and the road projects long, the construction, staffing, and maintenance of user fee collection and enforcement facilities on the ground would be uneconomic, highly subject to corruption and evasion, and ultimately unfair and ineffective at raising funds. A cost effective and practical road pricing solution on a national scale, could revolutionize highway finance and demand management.[7] <#fn6> C-WARUM would provide four new capabilities to road pricing systems: C-WARUM would support both point pricing and continuous pricing configurations. Continuous pricing would allow fees to vary by weight and distance and thus tie the road user's cost closely to the road owner's cost. In microeconomic terms, the marginal revenue to the system would be set equal to the system's marginal cost, thus providing a direct incentive for the most cost effective balancing of road use with cost. Very quickly, road users would seek the vehicle design, loading and time of transit that minimizes their cost to the total sector, not just to their operations, and thereby provide one the greatest national productivity gains promised by any ITS technology application. C-WARUM could apply, track and report the collection of fees by route or area thereby greatly aiding the subsequent allocation of these funds to road improvements on routes experiencing the greatest demands and costs of use. In addition, a whole new class of revenue bonding could be employed utilizing the revenue streams from selected routes to secure commercial debt for improvements on those routes, without the complexities inherent with more tradition toll road schemes. C-WARUM can handle multiple road owners and jurisdictions, applying the appropriate rates and schemes when the vehicle is determined to be operating on the appropriate route or within the appropriate area. As a vehicle moves from one jurisdiction to another, the system will seamlessly apply the road pricing scheme promulgated by the road owner in the new area or route. More importantly, when the vehicle is operating off a route, like within private property or on a construction site, no rates would be applied and no fees paid. Independently operating road owners, both public and private, need only electronically publish their rate schedules and schemes. C-WARUM can administer dynamic road pricing schemes by both altering the rates for road use in real time as well as providing the road user in-vehicle information concerning changing prices. Road owners monitor their traffic densities and electronically post dynamic prices that are then picked up by the concessionaires they have certified. The display of prices can be location sensitive, appearing in the vehicle only when road users are approaching the route. How a typical C-WARUM application would work C-WARUM would require all subscribing road users using a road priced route (state, local, national, urban cordon, area licensing, etc.) to have an active electronic license. Vehicles failing to subscribe would be stopped and fined as unregistered vehicles by local enforcement officials or would be allowed to operate under another administrative system. Local enforcement officials could interrogate the electronic license plate at highway speeds from the roadside to check for activation with handheld or gantry devices. The electronic licenseplate would continuously accumulate lat/lon positions on its route of travel and periodically transmit these positions to the concessionaire for processing via burst transmissions to the LEO satellites. The C-WARUM concessionaire's central data processing center would reduce the string of lat/lon positions received from the road user into the distance traveled along each of the routes in its geographical information database. Road user fee rates would be set and electronically published by the individual road agencies (may differ by route or time of travel) and would be used by the concessionaire in their calculation of fees owed. The road agency is assured the concessionaire's independent assessment, based on their certification of the concessionaire, without the need to subsequently audit each road user. The concessionaire might send a "fee due notice" to a subscriber, who would then pay the road agency directly, or might fully automate the transaction. Like in many electronic transactions today, user fees could be automatically charged to the road user's consumer credit card so that payment would be instantaneous and collection would be handled in the normal course of a credit card banking operations. Delinquent road users could remotely have their electronic license plates inactivated by the concessionaire on the order of the road agency for a specific route, thus making the road user subject to local enforcement action. The concessionaire could charge any amount, in any way they feel is economic, for providing this service. Where the road owner decides to offer road users multiple methods of fee collection (eg. smart cards, toll booths etc.), the fee for C-WARUM monitored road use could be reduced to compensate the road users for their investments in the subscription services. The fee reduction would be equal to road owner savings in auditing and managing user fee transactions compared to the other methods, further giving the market a fair incentive to move to C-WARUM handling. Thus, conversion to a fully automated, use based fee for a state or national highway could happen incrementally, not be in conflict with other existing systems, would involve minimal road owner investment, would not rely on proprietary systems, would be fully managed within a competing private sector, and would be first cost neutral to the road user. Technologically, due to the global nature of LEO systems, any information and monitoring capability provided at one location would simultaneously be technically available at any other spot on the globe. Any road agency wishing to implement electronic road pricing need only legislate road pricing, publish the rates, and certify applying C-WARUM concessionaires. Not only would their highway financing approach a more economically sound and efficient method, but they would also open up their economy for a wide variety of benefits to be provided to road users by these information service providers. Once deployed, it would be difficult for these services to be withdrawn due to the increasing dependence of motor transport on real-time traffic, weather, road pricing, and fleet management information. PRIVACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS The automatic monitoring of road use has often been challenged as an invasion of privacy, or when in the wrong hands, a high technology tool for repression.[8] <#fn10> LEO based monitoring services will provide the technical capability for the tracking of movements and behavior on an unprecedented scale and should be seriously looked at from a human rights perspective. The C-WARUM model provides some protections for human rights by having the ownership and control of the systems in private hands and all the monitored data is the property of the one being monitored by virtue of his/her subscription to the service. Release of the data requires the positive authorizing action of the one being monitored and the concessionaire can be held liable for its unauthorized release and use. Concessionaires should adopt an international code of practice and stand together when refusing the certification of questionable services from jurisdictions whose purposes threaten human rights and privacy. Road users exercising their choice in the marketplace, can further ensure human rights protection by only subscribing to those services where they feel their privacy is best protected and the human rights record of the concessionaire's certifications are most in line with their world view. CURRENT PRACTICE Electronic pricing of road applications is being implemented at an ever increasing frequency around the world. There are a number of good WORLD WIDE WEB sites that follow these developments, one of the most focused is the site "ETTM on the Web" (Electronic Toll Collection and Traffic Management), a component of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) at http://www.ettm.com/ <http://www.ettm.com/>. A review of the status of electronic road pricing systems indicates the following: toll road administration proposals are dominated by the transponder "smartcard" for anonymous monitoring and billing a road owner selects a single system and contractor and usually funds its deployment and operation from within the road owner's funding sources the systems are single purpose to meet the toll collection needs on a particular stretch of roadway, though states are requiring interoperability with other applications within their state the systems monitor a vehicle at a limited number of fixed locations, usually under a gantry over the roadway These systems are suitable for individual stretches of road where a typical road user might encounter one or two systems during average usage, but what if road pricing expands over entire networks, across many road owners, across international boundaries? Quickly the cost of many fixed sited gantries and the windshield crowded with smartcards, not to mention the constant monitoring and replenishment of their cash balances, begins to create an unworkable system. Current smartcard and gantry applications are not very extendable to wider area applications, such as state or national road user pricing schemes. This is when the C-WARUM concept becomes an attractive alternative. The C-WARUM concept depends on the deployment of geolocation and two-way digital communications systems over the entire road network. There are a variety of existing and planned systems that can partially meet the requirements. However, the only systems that can provide seamless global coverage, and therefore will have the greatest international impact, will be those that are satellite based. The well known GPS, and its Russian equivalent, GLONASS, fulfill the geolocation needs while a number of major investment consortiums active in the construction and launching of low earth satellite constellations will provide the 2 way digital communications. These systems have and will evolve, regardless of the C-WARUM services outlined here, since there are many commercial uses for the technology, not just to meet road owner needs. Thus, it is a major thesis of this paper, that the institutional model of C-WARUM will evolve as a result of advancing technology and investments, and not the other way around. Odyssey ICO Globalstar ORBCOMM Iridium Tele desic Ellipso Web Reference http://www.trw.com/ seg/sats/ODY.html <http://www.trw.com/seg/sats/ODY.html> http://www. ico.com/ <http://www.ico.com/> http://www. globalstar.com/ <http://www.globalstar.com/> http://www. orbcomm.com <http://www.orbcomm.net/> http://www. iridium.com/ <http://www.iridium.com/> http://www. teledesic.com/ <http://www.teledesic.com/> http://www. ellipso.com/ <http://www.ellipso.com/> Service types Voice, data, fax, paging, messaging Voice, data,fax, paging, messaging, position Voice, data, fax, paging, video, position data, fax, position Voice, data, fax, paging, video Voice, data, fax, paging Voice, data, fax, paging, video, messaging, position Cost per minute $0.65 $1.00 - 2.00 $0.35 - 0.55 $0.35 - 0.55 $3.00 N/A $0.50 User terminal cost $300 "Several Hundred" $750 $500 $2,500 - $3,000 N/A $1,000 Operations scheduled 2000 2000 late 1998 early 1998 12 satellites now active Sept 1998 5 satellites now active 2002 2000 Voice (Kbps) 4.8 4.8 2.4, 4.8, 9.6 N/A 2.4, 4.8 16.0 4.2 Data (Kbps) 9.6 2.4 7.2 2.4 in, 4.8 out 2.4 16.0 - 2,048.0 0.3-9.6 System cost $1.8B $4.6B $2.6B $300M $3.7B $9.0B $910M Satellite lifetime 15 years 15 years 7.5 years 5-8 years 5 years 10 years 5 years Number of satellites 12 + 3 spare 10 + 2 spare 48 + 8 spare 36 66 + 6 spare 288 + spares 17 + 3 spare Multiple access method CDMA CDMA, D-AMPS, PDC CDMA CDMA FDMA, TDMA, TDD TDMA, SDMA, FDMA, ATDMA CDMA Investors TRW, TeleGlobe Inmarsat, Hughes Space Loral Qualcomm, AirTouch, Vodafone, Deutsche Aerospace, Dacom Orbital Sciences, Teleglobe Motorola, Raytheon, Great Wall Industry, Khrunichev Ent., DDI, Lockheed, Kyocera, Mitsui, Mawardi Bill Gates, Craig McCaw Westinghouse, Harris Corp., Israeli Aircraft Industries Clearly there is some very big money betting on the future of global digital communications. These LEO systems will be built and the low cost, location independent service they provide will be available for a variety of new applications. These investors are anxious to realize the promise of this technology by encouraging entrepreneurs to develop markets and applications dependent on these "backbone" communication services. They are betting that saturating the globe with these services will be a "MEGATREND" that will change the way many businesses will be conducted. This paper is outlining this potential to road owners.[9] <#fn7> THE FUTURE Today around the world an ever increasing number of road operators are adopting electronic tolling and pricing systems, most covering short stretches of road or enclosing small urban areas. Most of these systems are single purpose and will have been constructed at a sizable expense to the road owner. As time passes and the number of such systems will increase, road users will be posed with the challenge of conforming to multiple systems and upgrading from obsolete single purpose technologies.[10] <#fn8> This challenge can be met in any number of ways. One alternative is to create an international standard architecture for the communication protocols and data formats, and solicit the compliance of all current and future road owners to this standard when installing their application specific monitoring systems, similar to the current Intelligent Transportation Architecture effort in the US. Another alternative is for road owners to begin allowing a road user's self reporting from independent monitoring concessionaires, as envisioned in the C-WARUM concept. To start, road users can be offered an alternative; accept the single purpose smartcards or transponders of the road operator or, subscribe to a national/international C-WARUM concessionaire and cover all current and future road pricing schemes in a single service, not to mention a host of other information services that can be distributed by the same gear. This is a win-win proposition in that it saves the road operator the cost of handling some toll collections while providing the road user access to a basket of additional road user information services, only one of which is compliance reporting and road pricing. Like travel agents receiving commissions from airlines for their servicing of clients at no cost to the client, road operators could justify reduced fees for road users employing these independent monitoring concessionaires, justifying these reductions by their own savings from their reduced administrative requirements. These savings would help subscribers offset the cost of their concessionaire subscriptions, further incentivizing the rapid utilization of private sector monitoring services. Ultimately, road owners could employ electronic road pricing on any existing road, without the added expense of their own custom monitoring system, simply by mandating road user subscription to any one of a number of competing C-WARUM concessionaires. If done at a national level, electronic road pricing could replace fuel taxes as the foundation for national highway trust funds and bring the promise of improved highway productivity through road pricing to a nation without taxpayer investment into any "big brother" monitoring system. Such direct billing for road use would be far more equitable and insensitive to the changes in fuels that future environmental concerns will unquestionably force onto the transport sector. C-WARUM concessionaires can be required through the certification process to display real time road pricing data into vehicles as they approach congestion priced routes, essential for the road demand behaviors desired in dynamic road pricing schemes. Road users can also use the C-WARUM services to plan the timing and routing of their trips to produce the least cost travel, similar to the numerous internet based travel services which offer computer search engines for low priced published fares over all air carriers. Perhaps the most positive impact C-WARUM can have is the creation of the global availability of sophisticated road management systems for countries where local financial and technical capabilities would be unable to develop and manage such systems by themselves. These systems are just as easy to access in remote areas as they are in modern urban settings. C-WARUM levels the great differences between advanced and developing countries when it comes to implementing a wide range of road services. C-WARUM concessionaires can justify investing large sums in the development of sophisticated systems knowing that their market is global. Small countries with undeveloped economies can implement the most sophisticated systems merely by legislating road users to subscribe and certifying multi-national concessionaires to operate within their borders. CONCLUSIONS Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have received a great deal of financial and academic support in recent years in hopes of finding applications that can solve the ever increasing demands on highway systems, without resorting solely to the construction and expansion of new roads. While individual ITS applications, in selected areas and with specific functions, have proven technically and economically successful, the systemwide productivity gains for which ITS has its greatest promise have yet to evolve. The C-WARUM concept promises network-wide, and even multinational, gains by fully devolving the implementation responsibility for ITS into the private sector. The private sector leads by following a market and responding to consumers and competitors. The C-WARUM concept suggests the public sector needs to define its needs for ITS and translate these needs into market demands, not hardware and bureaucracies. This may require governments to adopt bold new policies with respect to road pricing and regulation compliance enforcement, utilizing the private sector and market forces to provide the mechanisms for their implementation. The challenge for governments is to work with their constituencies in policy debates resulting in the acceptance of "confidential road use transparency" as an essential element in the nation's infrastructure development programs.[11] <#fn9> With this transparency, the public road resource can be managed, regulated, and metered like all other public utilities and, as a natural microeconomic consequence, the nation's transport system will also achieve the same high level of safety and economic efficiency long experienced in the electric, telecommunications and water utilities. FOOTNOTES AND INTERESTING LINKS [1] <#fnB0>The Communications Revolution-Mari Loucks http://weeks.ch.twsu.edu/Fall1997StudentPapers/MariLoucks.htm <http://weeks.ch.twsu.edu/Fall1997StudentPapers/MariLoucks.htm> [2] <#fnB1>WORLD BANK should Incorporate Consideration of Transportation Demand Management-Todd Litman http://www.geei.org/conf/strategy/msg00022.html <http://www.geei.org/conf/strategy/msg00022.html> [3] <#fnB2>XATA CORP -Annual Report (SEC form 10KSB) http://sec.yahoo.com/e/97/12/29/xata.html <http://sec.yahoo.com/e/97/12/29/xata.html> [4] <#fnB3>XATA Introduces Powerful Vehicle Tracking Software for Trucking Industry-Position Plus(TM) Automatically Records Exact Location for All Stops, Border Crossings http://f2.yahoo.com/prnews/97/09/30/an_xata_y_1.html <http://f2.yahoo.com/prnews/97/09/30/an_xata_y_1.html> [5] <#fnB4>Congestion Pricing Homepage- Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs http://www.hhh.umn.edu/Centers/SLP/Conpric/conpric.htm <http://www.hhh.umn.edu/Centers/SLP/Conpric/conpric.htm> [6] <#fnB5>Urban Transportation-MOVING FORWARD: KEY STRATEGIES AND TOOLS-WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE http://www.wri.org/wr-96-97/tp_txt4.html <http://www.wri.org/wr-96-97/tp_txt4.html> [7] <#fnB6>ETTM On The Web-devoted to providing the most accurate and up-to-date information on Electronic Toll Collection and Traffic Management http://www.ettm.com/ <http://www.ettm.com/> [8] <#fnB10>Euro-Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment (STOA) report (Luxembourg), "An Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control," 6 January 1998, by Axel Horns and Ulf Moeller http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm <http://jya.com/stoa-atpc.htm>(295K text + 210K images) [9] <#fnB7>Mobiles and satellites team up to solve traffic chaos -Hans Gusbeth http://www.globalcomms.co.uk/articles/mobiles.htm <http://www.globalcomms.co.uk/articles/mobiles.htm> [10] <#fnB8>NEW ZEALAND ROAD REFORM..The way Forward-Roading Advisory Group http://www.govt.nz/nlts/finalro.pdf <http://www.govt.nz/nlts/finalro.pdf> [11] <#fnB9>ROAD PRICING: THE CASE FOR AND AGAINST-Carsten Rolle http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/econrev/ser/html/road.html <http://www.maths.tcd.ie/pub/econrev/ser/html/road.html> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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