The AT-Mobimeter

How it began

When the new century began, around the year 2000, Dr. Reinier Jan Scheele, a cousin of my mother and a close friend of my father, retired from Utrecht University and returned to his hometown of Terneuzen. At the same time, I was living with my parents in Retranchement, only a short drive away. What began as a family ritual, meeting every weekend for lunch, soon became the seedbed for ideas that were far ahead of their time.

Around the table sat the three of us: Reinier Jan, my father Horst, and myself. Over cake and coffee, our conversations flowed from family matters into long, animated debates about technology, policy, and the future of mobility. Each of us brought something different: Reinier Jan with his deep academic and policy expertise, Horst with his background as an economist working for the German government, and myself with my systems and technology experience. Together, we explored how economic fairness, behavioral incentives, and technical feasibility could come together in a single concept.

The Netherlands was at a crossroads. Policymakers were searching for a system to fund road maintenance that people would accept as fair. The principle was simple: those who drove more should pay more. Flat vehicle taxes were blunt and unpopular, while toll booths caused congestion and were expensive to operate. The ambition was clear: “meer rijden = meer betalen” — more rides should mean more pay, but implemented in a way that citizens could understand and trust.

At that very moment, the Dutch Ministry of Transport under Minister Tineke Netelenbos was working on Rekeningrijden. It was an ambitious attempt to combine a spitsheffing (rush-hour charge) with a kilometerheffing (per-kilometer charge). Some 200 million gulden were spent on developing the technology, running trials, and preparing for rollout, before the project was ultimately shelved in 2001 amid political resistance and public distrust. A small share of that investment flowed into our little group, supporting the work Reinier Jan, my father, and I were doing around the AT-mobimeter concept.

Rein was invited to contribute ideas to Rekeningrijden, and with good reason: he was a recognized specialist in transport policy and economics, with decades of academic work behind him. His role was to help the ministry think through how a kilometer-based system could be structured, how incentives might be designed, and how road pricing could move beyond flat taxes.

What we began to outline was not just another toll system, but a comprehensive concept for fair and transparent mobility pricing: a device that sat in every car, tied to both the driver and the vehicle, automatically calculating road charges that varied by time, place, road type, and even vehicle characteristics. It would eliminate the blunt unfairness of flat taxes, avoid the inefficiency of toll booths, and offer drivers a clear sense of control through prepaid credit and visible balances.

That was the true origin of the AT-mobimeter, not just a technical fix, but a vision born from the cross-fertilization of policy, economics, and technology, nurtured in the informal but fertile setting of weekend lunches in Zeeland.

The AT-Mobimeter Concept: Paying Fairly for Driving

At the heart of our idea was a simple but powerful principle: driving should be paid for in a way that is fair. Not every kilometer is equal, and not every driver imposes the same cost on society. A short off-peak ride on a quiet rural road is not comparable to a rush-hour commute on a crowded highway in a heavy SUV. One barely strains the infrastructure, the other contributes directly to road wear, congestion, and emissions. Treating both the same was precisely the problem the AT-mobimeter set out to solve.

Fairness in our view meant that the price of a trip should reflect its true impact: on the roads, on the environment, and on society. The mobimeter achieved this by linking road charges to time, place, vehicle type, and ecological footprint.

• Behavior-based charging: Trips during rush hour or in congested city centers cost more, while off-peak countryside driving was cheaper. Highways, with their higher maintenance costs, were priced above landelijke wegen. Heavy, space-consuming or polluting vehicles paid more than small, efficient cars. In this way, the system both ensured fairness and encouraged better behavior — spreading travel across the day, rewarding cleaner vehicles, and easing pressure on the busiest roads.
• The mobicard: prepaid mobility: To make this fair system practical and transparent, we built it around a chipcard, the mobicard. It doubled as proof of registration and a prepaid wallet for road use. Without a valid card, the car simply would not start. Credit could be topped up at ATMs or fuel stations, making payment as simple as filling a tank. Drivers always knew their balance and what they were paying for, turning road pricing into a visible, daily act of responsibility instead of a hidden tax.
• Reliability through redundancy: Trust depended on accuracy. We designed the system to use Galileo as the primary positioning system, GPS as fallback, and local transmitters for roadworks or temporary detours. This layered approach ensured every trip was measured correctly, reinforcing public confidence.
• Fraud prevention: True fairness meant closing the loopholes. The mobimeter tied charges to both the driver and the vehicle, using electronic IDs, license-plate checks, and even validation at fuel stations. We went as far as to envision remote immobilization of stolen or fraudulent vehicles, a bold idea for its time.
• A platform for services: We never saw the mobimeter as merely a toll device. It could also deliver traffic updates, weather forecasts, emergency alerts, and navigation guidance through telecom providers. In this way, drivers wouldn’t see it only as a cost but as a source of value — a small box in the car that made travel smarter.
• Privacy by design: Finally, we knew that Dutch citizens would only accept such a system if it respected their privacy. That is why we proposed end-to-end encryption, strict separation of financial flows, and the principle that only aggregated data would ever reach the Treasury. The government would receive the road-maintenance funds it needed, but no one would be tracking individual trips.

In short, the AT-mobimeter transformed paying for road use from an opaque, resented tax into a direct, transparent, and behavior-sensitive exchange. The more burden a driver placed on the system, the more they paid. The less they drove, or the more responsibly they drove, the more they saved. It was not just a tool for collecting revenue, but a mechanism for shaping mobility itself — aligning personal choices with societal needs, while offering visible fairness and value in return.

Why it mattered

Looking back now, it is striking how well the AT-mobimeter anticipated debates that are still alive today. Many of the principles we built into the design remain central to mobility policy discussions across Europe:

• Fairness: The system made a clear connection between usage and payment. Those who drove more, especially under costly or polluting conditions, contributed more. Revenues flowed directly into maintaining the roads, rather than disappearing into the black box of general taxation. For citizens, that link between cause and effect — I pay because I drive, and my payment maintains the infrastructure I use — was essential for trust.
• Congestion management: By varying charges based on time and place, the mobimeter provided natural incentives to avoid rush hours. Instead of static tolls or blunt taxes, it used price signals to smooth traffic across the day, reduce jams, and cut the stop-and-go emissions that plague urban areas. This logic underpins every modern congestion charge zone today.
• Transparency: Drivers could see their balance at all times, because every trip deducted from prepaid credit. There were no hidden charges, no surprise bills months later. In an era when most taxes were buried in annual forms or monthly invoices, this kind of real-time feedback was revolutionary. It gave people a sense of control over what they paid.
• Fraud resistance: The system was designed with multiple layers of security: driver ID, vehicle ID, and external validation points like fuel stations. The aim was not only to protect government revenue, but to safeguard honest citizens from subsidizing those who cheated. In that sense, fairness and enforcement were two sides of the same coin.
• Extensibility: Long before anyone spoke of connected cars, the mobimeter was imagined as a platform. Traffic information, weather updates, emergency services — all could flow through the same device that handled payments. Instead of being just a tax instrument, it was positioned as a service hub, offering value in return for the money collected.

At the time, these ideas were bold, even controversial. They challenged ingrained habits: flat vehicle taxes that bore no relation to use, and the notion that roads were “free” once built. The AT-mobimeter forced society to confront the truth that mobility has a cost, and that cost could be distributed more fairly, more transparently, and more intelligently.

For a brief moment, it seemed as if the Netherlands might embrace such a future. Policymakers were open to experimentation, We were asked to contribute, and the national debate on Rekeningrijden was in full swing. Our proposals were taken seriously, not as science fiction but as a practical next step.

But politics is a fickle environment. When the government changed, priorities shifted overnight. Road pricing became too controversial, too difficult to sell to the electorate. The Rekeningrijden plan was shelved in 2001, and with it, our vision for the AT-mobimeter lost its momentum. What might have been a pioneering Dutch innovation in fair and intelligent mobility faded quietly into the archives.

And yet, long before start ups and venture capital made it fashionable to monetize ideas, the mobimeter made us surprisingly wealthy. My own share I invested — with delicious irony — in a car park in Utrecht. A project born out of a desire to reduce driving and make it fairer ended up financing the storage of even more cars. If nothing else, it was proof that history has a wicked sense of humor.

A personal note

For me, the AT-mobimeter was never just a technical project. It grew out of family weekends in Zeeland, when Reinier Jan, my father Horst, and I would gather around the table for cake, coffee, and long conversations. What began as a simple family ritual became our informal think tank, where policy, economics, and technology were tested against one another in lively debate.

Almost 25 years later, I can see echoes of our ideas in the world around me. London and Stockholm use congestion charging to manage city traffic. Several European countries have deployed GPS-based road pricing for trucks and piloted it for cars. Automakers like Volkswagen and Mercedes now offer in-car payment systems for tolls, charging, and services. Whenever I encounter these developments, I can’t help but smile, because we had already drawn sketches of such concepts at the kitchen table in Zeeland, long before the technology was ready.

And in my office today, I still have three of the five original AT-mobimeter prototypes. I would never discard them. They are more than pieces of obsolete hardware — they are reminders of the good old times in Zeeland with Rein and my parents, when cake, coffee, and conversations gave rise to ideas that, in many ways, were decades ahead of their time.

Both my father and Reinier Jan are long gone now, and I am the only one left of that little circle of dreamers and doers. Their absence still feels heavy, because they were not just companions in debate but extraordinary people in their own right — thoughtful, generous, and endlessly curious. Weekend conversations with them could turn the most ordinary lunch into a journey of ideas, laughter, and discovery.

Yet whenever road pricing debates resurface, or connected cars quietly implement ideas we once argued over, I feel their presence beside me. The AT-mobimeter was never built at scale, but it remains for me much more than a technical vision. It is a reminder of two remarkable men I was privileged to share those moments with, and of what three minds, bound by family, friendship, and curiosity, once dared to imagine.

PS:

The name AT-mobimeter carried a double meaning. It was a nod to our hometowns — Aachen and Terneuzen — but also intentionally hinted at Automatic Tolling, the purpose at its core.

My father Horst never wanted his name on the paper. He always said that Rein and I did all the “real work,” though in truth his economic insight shaped the project just as much as our policy and technical ideas.

One of the most vivid memories I have is wiring a prototype into Horst’s Volvo V70. It was anything but smooth: the system drew so much power that his battery kept going flat. More than once I had to rescue him somewhere in the outskirts of Zeeuws-Vlaanderen with a spare battery in the trunk, just to get him back on the road. Yet even in those moments, with all the frustrations of cables, software quirks, and dead batteries, we laughed. It showed us both the promise and the messiness of innovation: fair mobility might be an elegant idea, but making it work in practice took grit, patience, and more than a little humor.