FEDERAL HIGHWAY COST ALLOCATION STUDY

Abstract

The U.S. Department of Transportation completed and sent to Congress the 1997 Federal Highway Cost Allocation Study. An important objective of the study was to evaluate the equity and economic efficiency of the federal highway user-fee structure. The study also examined how changes in the composition of federal highway program costs, the user fees that support that program, and other factors have affected the equity and efficiency of highway user fees paid by different classes of vehicles since 1982. Highway-user fees paid into the Federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF) by different vehicle classes were compared with HTF expenditures for pavement, bridge, and other highway-related improvements attributable to each vehicle class. Marginal costs of highway use by different vehicle classes were compared with the user fees they paid to evaluate the efficiency of the highway user-fee structure. In general, it was found that the overall equity of highway user fees has improved since 1982. However, improvements within and among vehicle classes could be realized with changes to the current user-fee structure.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 64 citations exist upstream.