Introduction

Transports are vital for social and economic development, but also create various types of negative effects, like, for example, emissions of various kinds, congestion, wear and tear of infrastructure, accidents and noise. These effects can be evaluated economically, and regarded as costs. To allow vehicle owners to fully pay these costs is called internalization of external costs. Today's traffic tax system makes it difficult to achieve competitive neutrality between different modes of transport and between carriers from different countries. Road user charging can be one answer to these problems.

ARENA, a Swedish R&D project, is developing a future-oriented road user charging system for heavy goods vehicles, in response to the challenges of today and also establishes a Test Site to demonstrate practical solutions. This work is also the basis for a research environment in the area of e-transactions.

The ARENA project serves as platform for stakeholders within the area of road user charging. The goal is to gather knowledge and skills in science, industry and public sector for opportunities and constraints of road user charging in a complex, international and competitive telematics environment. ARENA is funded by the Swedish Transport Administration, VINNOVA and the European Regional Development Fund.