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Starting the Transition to Per‐Mile Charging

Most transportation professionals are persuaded that paying for America’s highways via per-gallon fuel taxes is not sustainable much longer. While the transition to electric vehicles has slowed somewhat, hybrids increasingly contribute to lower fuel-tax revenues, and federal new-car mpg requirements are now the largest factor in projected decreases in gas-tax revenues. Over the past nine […]

Opening the U.S. Market for Airport P3 Leases

P3-focused global companies have long been frustrated that there seems to be no U.S. market for airport privatization. Worldwide, the last three decades have seen numerous large and medium-size airports either sold or P3-leased. Airports Council International (ACI) keeps a database which shows that in Europe 75% of passengers use privatized airports. In Latin America […]

Priorities for 2026 Surface Transportation Reauthorization

As Director of Transportation Policy for Reason Foundation, I’ve been writing this monthly column in Public Works Financing for more than 25 years. For readers who don’t know much about this think tank, you can get some perspective by perusing our website (https://reason.org). We are a nonprofit public policy organization, with a journalism division and […]

Indiana Takes the Lead on Interstate Tolling

Given the advanced age of most of America’s Interstate highways, it was inevitable that one state would eventually volunteer to be the first-mover on toll-financed Interstate reconstruction. Indiana has now stepped forward. Legislation authorizing the state DOT to use toll financing to rebuild all six of the state’s long-distance Interstates passed via a large, bipartisan […]

The Troubling Decline of Users-Pay/Users-Benefit

Some large-scale infrastructure has traditionally been paid for by taxpayers. But since World War II, commercial aviation infrastructure (airports and air traffic control) and highways have been largely paid for via user taxes. Customers (airlines, trucking companies, and motorists) understood that this infrastructure is costly, and they expected to pay for its use. The last […]

Expanding Congested Highways: Revisiting “Induced Demand”

I get tired of major media repeatedly publishing feature articles claiming that it’s futile to add capacity to urban expressways. Yet they keep appearing, not just in niche publications but in major media such as: – “Widening Highways Doesn’t Fix Traffic. So Why Do We Keep Doing It?” New York Times, January 6, 2023 – […]

A Fiscally Responsible Highways Reauthorization Bill

The U.S. government’s fiscal situation is going from bad to worse. Neither the White House nor Congress has proposed any measures toward anything like a balanced budget, leading to increasing concerns about our government’s fiscal solvency. – In December, former Comptroller General David Walker told Congress that he sees a 70% chance of a serious […]

Farewell to New York’s Cordon Charge System?

My first exposure to the idea of congestion pricing was in the 1970s, when future Nobel economics laureate William Vickrey and the Urban Institute were studying cordon charging for big cities such as New York. But a practical way of collecting cordon tolls without toll booths stymied progress for decades (until the advent of all-electronic […]

Sustaining Transportation Infrastructure When the Free Money Runs Out

My July Public Works Financing column on preparing transportation infrastructure for federal insolvency led to my chairing a panel at the early-December Government P3 conference in Washington, DC. ARTBA government affairs chief Dean Franks, Fitch Ratings’ Scott Monroe, and I had a lively discussion plus Q&A, with good attendance despite it being the last session […]

Time to Expand Private Activity Bonds for P3s

These are boom times for revenue-risk DBFOM P3 highway and bridge projects. The current pipeline includes three huge projects being offered by Georgia DOT in Atlanta, a planned $2 billion bridge across the Mississippi River planned by Louisiana DOTD, North Carolina DOT’s $3.1 billion I-77South express toll lanes project, and four express toll lane projects […]