BACKGROUND

New mobility options for people and goods have been introduced and deployed globally and throughout the United States, including car-sharing, bike-sharing, ride-hailing, scooters, various other micro-mobility services, drones, urban air mobility, and many package and food delivery services. Other new options, such as connected and automated vehicles, are emerging. While different in many respects, these new mobility options are all technology-enabled. Novel business models challenge state and local revenue collection and related regulatory practices. 

Federal, state, and local transportation agencies in the United States employ well-established strategies (e.g., taxes and fees) to generate funds from traditional automobiles and trucks to help pay for the construction, operations, and maintenance of the transportation system. However, it is presently unclear what revenue-related strategies may be appropriate for new mobility options.

New mobility options present opportunities and challenges.  For example:

• Opportunities. New mobility options may enhance policy objectives regarding mobility, equity, sustainability, and economic development. They may reduce vehicle miles traveled per capita, provide alternative travel options, have environmental benefits like carbon emission reduction, enhance travel safety, improve health, save time and money, increase access to goods and services, and more efficiently use public rights-of-way.
• Challenges. New mobility options may initially confuse travelers and regulators about how the new options function and behave within a built environment, increase congestion and travel-time delay, burden the physical infrastructure (i.e., wear and tear), reduce sidewalk and roadway safety, create conflicts within the existing curb space and sidewalks, exclude disadvantaged populations, and may require unanticipated modifications and increased costs to the transportation system.

New mobility options offer the potential for innovative revenue-related strategies. Revenue-related strategies can help shape the new mobility options for transporting people and goods and can influence communal benefits and costs. The strategies may include (1) generating funds from individual travelers and commercial entities and (2) distributing subsidies to service providers, communities, and individuals. 

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this research is to develop a toolkit for transportation agencies that addresses how revenue-related strategies (e.g., taxes, fees, and subsidies) support policy objectives and shape the deployment of new mobility options. The toolkit should assist agencies to develop, evaluate, implement, and administer revenue-related strategies for new mobility options that transport people and goods.

 At a minimum, the research should include:

• New and evolving transportation options for people and goods that interact with the existing built environment and travel throughout an area;
• Incentives and disincentives that result from revenue-related strategies; 
• Policy implications of revenue-related strategies for new mobility options including revenue potential, mobility, travel demand, safety, equity, environment, economic development, infrastructure design, operations, and maintenance;
• Mechanisms for revenue collection and distribution for different mobility options in different scenarios;
• The ease and difficulty of implementing and enforcing different revenue-related strategies for new mobility options; and
• Potential roles and responsibilities of governmental organizations and private entities.   

RESEARCH PLAN

The research plan will describe appropriate deliverables that include the following (which also represent key project milestones):

1. An Amplified Research Plan that responds to comments provided by the project panel at the contractor selection meeting.
2. An interim report and panel meeting. The interim report should include the analyses and results of completed tasks, an update of the remaining tasks, and a detailed outline of the final research product(s). The panel meeting will take place after the panel review of the interim report. The interim report and panel meeting should occur after the expenditure of no more than 40 percent of the project budget.
3. Final deliverables that present the entire research product with an executive summary that will be useful to practitioners and stakeholders.
4. A technical memorandum titled “Implementation of Research Findings and Products”.
5. Webinar that presents the research findings and conclusions.

STATUS: Proposals have been received in response to the RFP.  The project panel will meet to select a contractor to perform the work.