The Road Pricing Summit will return to the USA from a new host city in 2026, with Washington, DC set to stage the event on September 21-22, just days ahead of the federal surface transportation reauthorisation deadline on September 30.
Organisers are positioning the Summit – which forms part of Akabo Media’s global Road User Charging Conference series – as an implementation-led programme for agencies and suppliers working across tolling, managed lanes, ITS, congestion pricing and road user charging (RUC), with a clear emphasis on what must be delivered in the next cycle of funding, rules and policy permissions.
The agenda is framed around a practical “12-month roadmap”, aiming to help public sector leaders and industry partners align policy, grants and procurement decisions for 2026–2028.
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John Thornton, chair of the Road Pricing Summit, said: “The US conversation is shifting from ‘should we?’ to ‘how do we deliver?’ By timing the Summit around reauthorisation and building the programme around operations and delivery, it is designed to help agencies and suppliers map the next 12-18 months with clarity and confidence.”
A central objective for 2026 is to broaden the Summit’s appeal beyond policy audiences and ensure it speaks as directly to the tolling and managed lanes community as it does to road pricing and RUC stakeholders.
As a result, the programme places strong emphasis on the realities of running systems at scale, including interoperability that goes beyond transponders into accounts, payments and clearing, as well as back-office modernisation and cost-to-collect.
Operational performance and programme resilience also feature prominently, with agenda themes spanning enforcement and compliance, evasion and fraud reduction, cybersecurity and continuity, plus the practicalities of procurement, migration, testing and cutover planning.
Case studies are positioned as “real world operations” learning, focusing on transferable lessons from live environments rather than political debate.
Alongside delivery mechanics, the Summit will address the fundamentals that determine whether pricing policies survive, including public trust, equity design and governance.
Content on legitimacy and durability is intended to stay practical, with attention on measurable outcomes, revenue accountability and audit-ready data governance and privacy controls.
Speaker proposals and sponsorship opportunities for Road Pricing Summit 2026 are now open. The Summit is actively seeking operator-led case studies, agency delivery lessons and deployment-focused partner participation aligned to the market’s near-term priorities, from interoperability and back office transformation to enforcement, cybersecurity and cutover readiness. Organisations interested in speaking or sponsoring can request the latest agenda and partnership options from the Summit team.
