Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

inbound

pay as you go

Would you pay to keep your trucks charging down the nation's highways, delivering freight to your customers instead of spending hours idling in traffic jams? Would you pay for the opportunity to commute to work each morning without riding the brake pedal for upwards of an hour? It's something to ponder because you may soon have the option of paying for the privilege of traffic-free motoring.

Called congestion pricing, the proposition is to price road use the same way utilities, housing and airline tickets are already priced—by supply and demand. The practice is already picking up speed in some parts of the world, although pricing schemes vary somewhat. In some locations, users are charged fees to use roads at peak times (typically daylight hours) but may cruise them for free during off hours. In others, motorists can elect to travel on toll roads that run parallel to free roads or choose faster-moving toll lanes that run alongside free lanes on the very same roadway.


Though the idea of charging people to use what many consider to be public infrastructure may raise some eyebrows, no one denies that road congestion presents a mounting problem in the industrialized world. "In many cities, the average speeds of road travel aren't much greater today than they were in the days of the horse-drawn vehicle," say the authors of a study published last month by Deloitte Research. That study, Combating Gridlock: How Road User Pricing Can Ease Congestion, warns that the number of road users and motor vehicles is increasing faster than new roads are being developed and congestion is destined to increase significantly in the next 10 years. Costs related to congestion include unpredictable travel times, environmental damage, property damage, delays and lost production. In the United States alone, the cost of congestion is estimated at about $150 billion, or 1.5 percent of GDP.

The study's authors see congestion pricing as a much more workable solution than previous attempts to address the congestion problem: building more roads, trying to change land use patterns, and encouraging people to use public transportation. "Road pricing has the potential to provide tremendous economic, time-saving and safety benefits for road users whether they're commercial drivers … or commuters who travel to work," says Greg Pellegrino, global consulting leader of Deloitte's public-sector practice. "A road user pricing program can prevent the overload of the road and damaging breakdowns in traffic flow, allowing businesses to move goods more efficiently, and workers to arrive at the office on time. This is a process that will greatly reduce the enormous costs associated with congestion, which everyone pays for."

The Latest

More Stories

Trucking industry experiences record-high congestion costs

Trucking industry experiences record-high congestion costs

Congestion on U.S. highways is costing the trucking industry big, according to research from the American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI), released today.

The group found that traffic congestion on U.S. highways added $108.8 billion in costs to the trucking industry in 2022, a record high. The information comes from ATRI’s Cost of Congestion study, which is part of the organization’s ongoing highway performance measurement research.

Keep ReadingShow less

Featured

new technologies illustration with lightbulbs
Artificial Intelligence

Supply chain startups get creative

From pingpong diplomacy to supply chain diplomacy?

There’s a photo from 1971 that John Kent, professor of supply chain management at the University of Arkansas, likes to show. It’s of a shaggy-haired 18-year-old named Glenn Cowan grinning at three-time world table tennis champion Zhuang Zedong, while holding a silk tapestry Zhuang had just given him. Cowan was a member of the U.S. table tennis team who participated in the 1971 World Table Tennis Championships in Nagoya, Japan. Story has it that one morning, he overslept and missed his bus to the tournament and had to hitch a ride with the Chinese national team and met and connected with Zhuang.

Cowan and Zhuang’s interaction led to an invitation for the U.S. team to visit China. At the time, the two countries were just beginning to emerge from a 20-year period of decidedly frosty relations, strict travel bans, and trade restrictions. The highly publicized trip signaled a willingness on both sides to renew relations and launched the term “pingpong diplomacy.”

Keep ReadingShow less
forklift driving through warehouse

Hyster-Yale to expand domestic manufacturing

Hyster-Yale Materials Handling today announced its plans to fulfill the domestic manufacturing requirements of the Build America, Buy America (BABA) Act for certain portions of its lineup of forklift trucks and container handling equipment.

That means the Greenville, North Carolina-based company now plans to expand its existing American manufacturing with a targeted set of high-capacity models, including electric options, that align with the needs of infrastructure projects subject to BABA requirements. The company’s plans include determining the optimal production location in the United States, strategically expanding sourcing agreements to meet local material requirements, and further developing electric power options for high-capacity equipment.

Keep ReadingShow less
map of truck routes in US

California moves a step closer to requiring EV sales only by 2035

Federal regulators today gave California a green light to tackle the remaining steps to finalize its plan to gradually shift new car sales in the state by 2035 to only zero-emissions models — meaning battery-electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and plug-in hybrid cars — known as the Advanced Clean Cars II Rule.

In a separate move, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also gave its approval for the state to advance its Heavy-Duty Omnibus Rule, which is crafted to significantly reduce smog-forming nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions from new heavy-duty, diesel-powered trucks.

Keep ReadingShow less
chart of global trade forecast

Tariff threat pours cold water on global trade forecast

Global trade will see a moderate rebound in 2025, likely growing by 3.6% in volume terms, helped by companies restocking and households renewing purchases of durable goods while reducing spending on services, according to a forecast from trade credit insurer Allianz Trade.

The end of the year for 2024 will also likely be supported by companies rushing to ship goods in anticipation of the higher tariffs likely to be imposed by the coming Trump administration, and other potential disruptions in the coming quarters, the report said.

Keep ReadingShow less