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Many transportation organizations seem to be assuming that the federal funding levels of the IIJA legislation will be the new baseline in the 2026 reauthorization of the Highway Trust Fund. For example, the American Society of Civil Engineers recently put out a report claiming that not renewing IIJA would cost the U.S. economy $637 billion […]

Despite (or perhaps because of) the ongoing increase in tolled U.S. lane-miles, tolling is under new political attacks in 2024. Here are four disturbing developments during the first half of 2024: – After Oregon DOT had gained approval from FHWA to implement variable tolls on a stretch of I-5 in Portland, Gov. Tina Kotek abruptly […]

Much-needed congestion-reduction projects in California are at risk of being cancelled, due to a little-noticed change that was legislated in 2013 but has taken about a decade to be fully implemented. SB 473 requires highway policy to no longer focus on its traditional goal of improving level of service (LOS), which often leads to widening […]

The collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge has dominated transportation news in recent weeks. Americans have learned a lot about the enormous size of container ships and the potential vulnerability of major bridges. But some important lessons from this disaster are not yet widely understood.

For some reason, transportation scholars in Europe and Latin America consider long-term DBFOM P3s as risky endeavors that don’t offer the benefits that advocates of U.S. P3s offer to policymakers, such as significant risk transfer from taxpayers to investors and an operating culture that seeks to satisfy customers on a long-term basis.

Toll roads constitute 8.2% of U.S. limited-access highway lane-miles (25.5 thousand ln-mi out of 312 thousand). That relatively small fraction includes some of the highest-volume major highways, such as Florida’s Turnpike, the Indiana Toll Road, Illinois Tollway, New Jersey Turnpike, New York Thruway, Ohio Turnpike, and Pennsylvania Turnpike. Adding HOT lanes and express toll lanes […]

Last month I discussed the House Transportation Committee’s October hearing on the looming insolvency of the federal Highway Trust Fund. I reviewed three questions posed by Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation: 1. Should the users-pay/users-benefit principle be continued? 2. If the federal government retains that principle, what transportation functions should be covered? […]

On October 18th, the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee’s highways and transit subcommittee held a hearing on the future of the federal Highway Trust Fund. It was bad news all around, with expert testimony from Congressional Budget Office analyst Chad Shirley, Eno Transportation Weekly’s Jeff Davis, and officials from the Oregon and Washington State DOTs. […]