Linear Roadway Mile Pricing is 4M’s primary way of measuring project usage.* 4M calculates usage based on the total length of roads within your project boundary, rather than the total land area.
*Note: Reference your current contract to see if your organization is using Linear Mile Pricing. If not, you can learn more about Project Segment Consumption here.
What Is a Linear Roadway Mile?
A Linear Roadway Mile is the total length of eligible roadway segments contained within a customer-defined project boundary.
When you create a project in 4M, the platform automatically identifies all qualifying roads inside the boundary and sums their total length. That total is what counts toward your project usage.
Why Pricing Is Based on Roadway Miles
Most infrastructure and utility projects are concentrated along roads and transportation corridors—not empty land.
Roadway-based pricing reflects actual project scope and data density, provides more predictable costs, and avoids charging for unused or irrelevant land area.
How Roadway Miles Are Calculated
4M calculates roadway miles using trusted public roadway datasets:
Primary source: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line Shapefiles (2025)
Supplemental source: OpenStreetMap (OSM), used when official data is missing or outdated
Only eligible road types within your project boundary are included in the calculation.
What Types of Roads Are Included?
Most public roadways are included, such as:
Highways
Primary and secondary roads
Residential and service roads
The following are excluded:
Pedestrian walkways and trails
Railways
Water features
Parking lot roads
Pricing & Usage Rules
To ensure consistency and predictable billing, Linear Roadway Mile Pricing follows these rules:
Minimum charge: Each project has a minimum charge of 1 linear mile, even if the total roadway length is less than 1 mile. This ensures consistent data processing and quality for every project.
Rounding: Roadway mileage is rounded up to one decimal place. Example: 1.21 miles → billed as 1.3 miles
Project with few or no roads: Projects with minimal or no roadway coverage are still billed 1 linear mile to reflect baseline processing effort.
Special Scenarios & Edge Cases
No roads inside the boundary: billed as 1 linear mile
Corridor or multi-segment projects: all eligible roadway segments are summed
Spot projects: roadway lengths across all spots are added together
Projects crossing multiple states: roadway miles are calculated seamlessly across state boundaries
Imagery vs. data mismatch: billing is based on official roadway reference layers, not map imagery
Seeing Your Usage
You can view how roadway miles are calculated directly in your 4M project. Project details clearly show:
Roadway miles used
How the total was calculated
The data sources applied
This information is visible when creating a project boundary, before you generate a project with utility lines. To view the total consumption of linear roadway miles across your organization, you may visit the Admin Dashboard.
How Does This Affect My Contract?
If your current contract is based on acreage or another pricing model, nothing changes unless your contract is updated or renewed under Linear Roadway Mile Pricing.
Need Help?
If you have questions about your usage, pricing, or how roadway miles were calculated for a specific project, contact your Customer Success Manager or Sales representative for assistance.