There is a need to fundamentally rethink public roads as service markets such as for phone, electricity, airlines, or restaurant to provide advance booking and reservation for travel at assured speeds on selected time and routes; value plans suited to road usage levels and access privileges;travel advisory to optimize time, cost, comfort and convenience; emergency services and multiple payment options etc. Innovative use of technologies in Intelligent Transport Systems can enable these public road services. The real challenge is to detach public roads system from general tax collection and other fixed duties and charges. Simplistic and piecemeal road user charging schemes fail to tie the ends and have been rightly rejected in various referendums. With their multiplying effect through the transport-land use system on our time, health and our disposition and on efficiencies in goods movement, a well-evolved public road services market createsnet savings for road users along with indirect social and ecological benefits.
Abstract