The Toll Index is constructed using German MAUT data and was first proposed in IZA DP5522 as a short term leading indicator of the business cycle in Germany. The four measurements make up what we call the Toll Index (TI) and express kilometers (km), trips made (trips) and number of in- and out-bound long vehicles over 12 tons. We scaled our TI measurements to equal the German Production Index on the first date they are jointly available (January 2007 = 103.3).

The data is available at the Data Repository of the IDSC – Research Data Center of IZA. The paper we first studied the properties of these data is published at the Journal of Forecasting.

The Toll Index has been widely covered in national and international press (selection):

• Focus Magazin,
• Tim Harford – The undercover economist,
• Financial Times,
• MoneyWeek,
• WirtschaftsWoche,
• CNN International,
• DRS3 Swiss public radio,
• Deutsche Welle.

The German statistical office, in cooperation with the Bundesamt für Güterverkehr,  has taken the MAUT data in its portfolio of data products and their efforts can be found here. The Destatis document describing the data is here and here is their publication calendar for 2019.

The Bundesamt für Güterverkehr is at the moment (April 17 2019) and since July 2018 unable to publish the monthly reports timely. The last currently published report is for November 2019 (it should have been February 2019).