The kinematical parameters of the local field RR Lyrae populationand the zero-point of the log $P-\langle M_K\rangle$
relation for thesevariables are inferred by applying the statistical parallax(maximum-likeli-hood) technique to a sample of 182 RR Lyraes withknown periods, radial-velocities, metallicities, K-bandphotometry, and absolute proper motions on the ICRS system.Hipparcos, Tycho-2, SPM, UCAC, NPM1, and the Four-Million StarCatalog (Volchkov et al. 1992) were used asthe sources of proper motions; the proper motions of the last twocatalogs are reduced to the Hipparcos (ICRS) system (Dambis &Rastorguev 2001). The K-band magnitudes were adopted fromthe list of Fernley et al. (1998) andsupplemented by the data of the 2MASS Second Incremental DataRelease. The parameters of the velocity distribution are found tobe: ($U_0 = -10 \pm 10$
, $V_0 = -51 \pm 8$
, $W_0 = -14 \pm5)$
km s-1; ($\sigma_U = 62 \pm 10$
, $\sigma_V = 45 \pm 8$
,$\sigma_W = 28 \pm 6$
) km s-1: and ($U_0 = -23 \pm 13$
, $V_0 = -213 \pm 12$
, $W_0 = -5 \pm 8$
) km s-1; ($\sigma_U = 157 \pm 12$
, $\sigma_V = 98 \pm 8$
, $\sigma_W = 91 \pm 7$
) km s-1 for the thick-disk (41 stars) andhalo (141 stars) objects, respectively. The zero-point of theinfrared PL relation of Jones et al. (1992)(based on the results obtained using the Baade-Wesselink method)is confirmed: we find $\langle M_K\rangle= -2.33 \cdot \log P_{\rm F}-0.82 \pm0.12$
compared to $\langle M_K\rangle= -2.33 \cdot \log P_{\rm F}-0.88$
asinferred by Jones et al. (1992). A conversion ofthe resulting log $P-\langle M_K\rangle $
relation to V-band luminositiesyields the metallicity-luminosity relation $\langle M_V\rangle= +1.04 + 0.14\cdot [$
Fe/H$] \pm 0.11$
. Our results imply a solar Galactocentric distance of $R_0 = 7.6 \pm 0.4$
kpc and an LMC distance modulus of $DM_{\rm LMC} = 18.18 \pm 0.12$
(cluster RR Lyraes) or $DM_{\rm LMC} = 18.11 \pm 0.12$
(field RR Lyraes), thereby favoringthe so-called short distance scale.
