- Congestion is back, for trucks as well as cars
- Addressing diversion from toll roads and bridges
- Study analyzes NEPA permitting delays
- The electric vehicle debacle
- Federal automated vehicle outlook
- The evolution of Bestpass
- News Notes
Congestion Is Back, for Trucks as Well as Cars
Two reports have crossed my screen in recent months, both quantifying U.S. traffic congestion. The first, from several months ago, is the “2023 Urban Mobility Report” from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI). The second is the American Transportation Research Institute’s “Cost of Congestion to the Trucking Industry, 2024 Update.” Because of the delays in the availability of detailed congestion data, both of these 2024 reports cover U.S. congestion in 2022. The message of both studies is that traffic congestion is back, but not quite to the level of 2019.
The TTI report covers 494 U.S. urban areas, far more than in some of its earlier editions. The most detailed data are from 101 “intensively studied urban areas.” From the entire data set, the average annual delay per auto commuter was 54 hours in 2022, equaling the pre-pandemic delay from 2019. Most of the other 2022 data elements from this largest set of urban areas were 5-8% lower in 2022 than in 2019. Also, in this larger set, total travel volume (billions of miles traveled) was 5% lower in 2022 than in 2019. The only large increase was in urban truck congestion cost, which was 16% higher in 2022 than in 2019.
Turning to the 101 larger urban areas, in 2019 only five of them had less than 30 hours of delay per commuter, but in 2020 that number increased to 73; by 2022 only five urban areas had that little delay, the same as in 2019. In a table tracking key parameters for every year since 1982, the only figure that reached a new high in 2022 was the total cost of congestion, at $224 billion compared with $217 billion in 2019.
The American Transportation Research Institute (ATRI) report on trucking congestion is not solely focused on urban areas, although that is where the most severe truck congestion occurs. It relies on a very large truck GPS database that records truck miles and speed, among other parameters from more than a million commercial trucks. Truck vehicle miles of travel (VMT) are obtained from the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) Highway Statistics tables that can be segmented by state, region, and metro area. To calculate truck congestion cost, ATRI draws on data on the operational cost per hour of Class 7 and Class 8 tractor-trailer combination trucks, which are the focus of this study. ATRI updates those costs every year.
The findings on truck delays and congestion costs are somewhat different than TTI’s overall findings. For example, annual average truck speed in “bottleneck” locations was on a downward trend from 2016 through 2019. Not surprisingly, with far fewer vehicles on the roads in 2020, average truck speed increased. As personal travel began to return, truck speeds declined slightly in 2021 but increased again in 2022. So trucks were going faster in 2022 than in 2019, unlike cars.
But that’s not the end of the story. Truck VMT increased significantly in 2022 as they were operating in less congested conditions. But due to the rising cost of fuel and labor, their cost of congestion continued to increase, making their overall cost of congestion reach a new high in 2022, even though their hours of congested travel declined. Table 1 in the report shows that trucks’ cost of congestion in 2022 was 15% greater than in 2021, at nearly $109 billion.
The states with the highest truck congestion costs in 2022 were Texas, followed by California, Florida, New York, and Georgia. And the states with the largest percentage increases in truck congestion cost were Hawaii (up 92%), followed by Vermont, Minnesota, Kentucky, and Alaska. An indication that post-pandemic economic recovery is somewhat uneven is that 25 states had decreases in truck congestion in 2022 compared with 2021. The largest decreases were in Louisiana (almost 13% less), with smaller decreases in New Mexico, Maryland, California, and Ohio.
Needless to say, very large metro areas still had large percentage increases in truck congestion cost in 2022, with New York leading the pack at 21.6% increase and by far the highest cost ($6.7 billion), followed by Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas.
For auto commuters, the highest delay (person-hours) in 2022 was once again in Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco/Oakland, New York/Newark, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta. Almost the same ranking appears for annual congestion cost per commuter: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Atlanta, and San Diego, with Washington this time in 6th place.
We can see that for both commuters and truckers, the cost of congestion was higher in 2022 than in 2021. But for commuters in large metro areas, the extent of congestion was greater in 2022 than in 2021, while the opposite was true for truckers. I suspect that when we get the comparable data for 2023, both the extent of congestion and its cost will increase for both commuters and trucking.
Addressing Diversion from Toll Roads and Bridges
By Baruch Feigenbaum
The number of vehicles that avoid toll roads by diverting to non-toll roads has long been a knotty topic. Several studies have attempted to address the question, but due to the large number of variable factors, there was no consensus. Recently, Robert Bain and Deny Sullivan of CSRB Group released a study titled “The Traffic Impact of Road Pricing“, in which they combined both a literature review and their own research to determine a true diversion rate.
The authors examine the increased interest in tolling due to greater regulatory permission, a need for more highway funding, accelerated project construction, blended funding, and advances in technology. Bain and Sullivan studied fixed-rate toll systems only. They did not analyze priced managed lanes or highways using dynamic pricing.
In the United States, the authors cite several other studies in their literature reviews. The first is Nichols and Belfield’s study of the Midtown and Downtown Tunnels in Hampton Roads, Virginia as well as the State Route 520 bridge in Washington state. In Virginia, after tolling began, traffic decreased 8% on the Midtown tunnels and 20% on the Downtown Tunnel. In Washington state, traffic declined by 30%. Breaking down the traffic volumes by day of week and time of day, the studies found that diversion was a bigger problem during off-peak hours than peak periods. A separate meta analysis of nine tolled facilities in North America shows that facilities had 10-36% less traffic after tolling.
A Minnesota Department of Transportation (DOT) study that relied on modeling examined different types of roadways. Urban Interstates were found to have a 15% diversion rate, rural Interstates 20%, urban freeways 20%, and rural freeways 25%. Frontage roads increase diversion by 5%; competing roads within 10 miles increase diversion by 10%.
Bain and Sullivan combined these studies with those in their database for a total sample size of 83 tolled highways. They used research reports, academic papers, media reports, toll operator data, and transportation department websites. Many were not true academic research papers, as they did not undergo double-blind peer reviews, but they do provide useful information. The U.S. had by far the most toll highways with Portugal, Australia, the U.K., and Canada rounding out the top five. There were 35 road and 20 bridge projects, the two most common types of tolled infrastructure.
Using all those papers, Bain and Sullivan calculated the median diversion impact of tolling as -25%. In other words, for every four people who used the infrastructure before tolling, only three used it after tolling. But the spread was 4% to -85%, indicating local conditions are paramount. Further, there were no clear patterns among urban or rural roads.
The one exception is toll bridges with no realistic alternatives. They had a lower diversion rate— -15% —than other highways. Given the lack of alternatives, drivers may have no other option than a boat.
While the Bain study has the largest sample size, its results did not differ from the other studies that found a diversion rate of 20-25%.
Using the results, Bain created a predictive model to explain which toll roads will have the highest diversion rates. The model examines alternative routes and alternative modes and uses a decision tree (chose one of several options in multiple steps) instead of a mathematical model. The study found that 84% of impacts lie within the range, which would be similar to having an r-squared value of 0.8, if this were a mathematical model.
Overall, the paper presents the best model so far for toll diversions. The model captures most of the diversion and the predictive model is helpful in explaining what types of roadways will have higher diversion rates. But I’m most interested in how we can reduce toll road diversions. We need to address problems including traffic congestion, high costs, user behavior, and status-quo thinking.
One option would be to focus on reducing congestion, but that might not always be cost-effective, especially on urban freeways with limited right-of-way. While they weren’t in the study, I have encountered congestion on the New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania Turnpikes in urban areas. On rural tollways, adding new lanes will reduce congestion.
For the trips that are taken on roads without significant congestion, we could reduce the diversion problem by using carrots or sticks. I recommend carrots.
Why not sticks? The study shows that one factor impacting diversion is the lack of parallel routes. The stick approach would be to pull new non-tolled highways out of regional transportation improvement plans and long-range transportation plans or to tear-down existing roads, similar to what USDOT has tried to do with some urban freeways. Technically, this would end diversion, but even if it survives court challenges and potential riots, it has a few problems. It would harm economic development. That method would imperil emergency services. And it would make congestion so bad that drivers might choose to stay home or move to a different region.
A carrot-based approach would be to create a win-win for roadway operators and drivers alike. One approach would provide a frequent traveler discount or reward, the way that many airlines already do. The provider might lower a driver’s tolls, if she used the roadway five or more times per week. New drivers could be incentivized to try the toll road by paying a lower toll rate for the first 30 days. The provider might work with employers to see if their office could begin flexible scheduling or telework. Either would decrease the cost of using the toll road. Finally, the provider might add additional exits or motor services to make the toll road more convenient.
Toll diversion is not anywhere close to the biggest problem toll providers face, but it is still a problem. It is not easy to solve, and a small number of drivers will always take another route to avoid tolls. But where we can, we should encourage new toll paying customers to use the toll road by making the experience better and not worse.
Study Analyzes NEPA Permitting Delays
The process that major infrastructure projects must go through to obtain federal permission to build is increasingly costly and time-consuming, as I’ve previously discussed in this newsletter and analyzed in a 2024 policy study. A recent empirical study sheds some light on what factors affect project approval under the legal framework that has evolved since the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1970. The paper is “A Hazard Analysis of Federal Permitting Under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970,” by Michael Bennon, Daniel De La Hormaza, and R. Richard Geddes, published in the Journal of Regulatory Economics.
The authors relied on data from the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) regarding 1,269 Environmental Impact Statements (EISs). A key variable was the duration from the Notice of Intent to file to the eventual Record of Decision (ROD). They used a statistical technique called a Cox proportional hazard model to estimate the impact of a number of factors on the duration of the permitting process.
One of the interesting findings was that projects proposed as privately financed public-private partnerships (P3s) completed the EIS process faster than others. The authors speculate that the typical team proposing such projects may have a better understanding of the process, enabling a faster review than would otherwise be possible. They also speculate that faster permitting for energy projects may be due to the volume of such projects, leading to analysts’ greater familiarity with their impacts.
The authors also compared project permitting durations for projects located in states with restrictive environmental laws. Those projects did take longer to reach the ROD, but this was not due to the state restrictions, per se. They hypothesize that opposition groups may be stronger in those states, leading to more public opposition and threats of litigation.
Another finding concerned projects that were designated for inclusion in the federal permitting “dashboard.” These projects had longer durations, which seems contrary to the intent of the dashboard, but the authors speculate that projects designated for the dashboard are likely to be larger and more complex, leading to a longer permitting process. Higher EIS page counts have longer durations in getting to a final EIS, but they also have a longer duration between the final EIS and the ROD.
One other interesting finding concerns permitting of projects connected with a federal economic stimulus program such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. They hypothesize that because elected leaders and administrators desire quick impact from stimulus projects, they tend to focus on “shovel-ready” projects that have already completed the NEPA process. But they point out that “This may lead to the allocation of stimulus funds to projects with lower expected returns on investment.”
The last six months have been dismal for those hoping for a U.S. electric vehicle (EV) future. Here is a small sample of news articles from this period.
- “Auto Industry’s Retreat from EVs Hastens,” Mike Colias and Christopher Otts, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 23, 2024
- “Electric Vehicle Sales Are Stumbling: Here’s Why,” Joshua Gallu, Bloomberg, Sept. 29, 2024
- “Low Used-EV Prices Pinch Dealers, Owners,” Sean McLain, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2024
- “Dream of Cheap U.S. Electric Car Fades,” Tim Higgins, The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 18, 2024
- “Things Get Worse for EV Startups,” Amrith Ramkumar and Shane Shifflett, The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 2, 2024.
The last of these articles includes graphs showing the shrinking cash balances among EV startups and the dismal share prices of those (such as Fisker, Lucid, and Rivian) that are publicly traded. The declining sales of electric vehicles have led to setbacks for plans to build huge EV battery plants, not only here but also in EV-friendly Europe. Volvo has put on hold plans to build a large plant to make batteries for its electric trucks. And the very ambitious startup Swedish EV battery company Northvolt filed for bankruptcy soon after.
Those failures were warning signs to our federal and state governments that large-scale subsidies to build battery plants would not be a wise move. Several state governments have provided state aid for EV battery plants, but the most enormous subsidies have come from the federal government. The latest was announced in November with great fanfare by the Biden Department of Energy: a $6.6 billion loan to nearly-bankrupt Rivian for an EV factory in Georgia. If built, it would have the capacity to produce 400,000 SUVs and crossovers per year. Rivian has lost about $4 billion on the 37,396 vehicles it sold in the first nine months of 2024, and it has $1.25 billion in debt. The Department of Energy recently finalized an even larger $9.6 billion loan for a Ford EV battery plant in Tennessee. Ford has also been losing tons of money on its poorly selling EVs.
It turns out that the $6.6 billion loan to Rivian is “conditional” on the company meeting certain technical, legal, environmental, and financial conditions. A Wall Street Journal editorial (Dec. 26) explained that these conditions include pro-union policies that Rivian has been resisting at its vehicle factory in Illinois. But Ford recently agreed to a neutrality agreement with the United Auto Workers for its Tennessee EV battery plant.
I can’t imagine any private investor making such loans and expecting them to be repaid. And in the federal government’s nearly insolvent condition, giving away tens of billions of dollars is the last thing it should be doing. Fortunately, with a new administration and new Congress, these policies can be changed.
Federal AV Policy Review and Outlook
By Marc Scribner
There will be many fundamental policy differences between the outgoing Biden administration and incoming Trump 47 administration. One area to watch is automated vehicle (AV) policy. The Biden administration departed from the AV enthusiasm of the previous Trump and Obama administrations. The new Trump administration is expected to pick up where the first Trump administration left off on AV policy. On balance, the Trump administration is likely to be friendlier to AV technology development and deployment than the Biden administration. But the scrambled populist politics of our time introduce some sizeable uncertainty.
While most of its actions did not actively undermine AV technology development and deployment, the Biden administration was content to mostly do nothing on AVs. The Biden administration’s stance on AVs was modulated by its close ties to organized labor. Fearing competition from robots, unions have emerged as the primary opponents of advanced automation technologies in the transportation sector. The official Teamsters union position, for instance, is a national ban on driverless commercial vehicles. Given this political environment, inaction on federal AV policy may have been the best attainable outcome from the self-described “most pro-union, pro-worker President in history.”
The most significant AV policy action by the Biden administration was the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Standing General Order (SGO) on mandatory crash reporting, which was issued in 2021 and revised in 2023. Under the SGO, poorly defined reporting parameters coupled with aggressive compliance requirements led AV companies, out of an abundance of caution, to submit a lot of incident data that have little bearing on safety. In July 2024, NHTSA announced it would propose a rule to reform and codify the SGO’s incident reporting requirements by the end of the year, although this has since been delayed until at least May 2025.
Aside from the SGO, the most notable action on AVs taken by the Biden administration was the finalization of a rule that revised occupant protection safety standards to account for future vehicles that lack manual driving controls. The Biden NHTSA deserves praise for promulgating this rule in March 2022, although not too much credit because this rule was fully baked and ready for publication at the end of the Trump administration in Jan. 2021.
Much less praiseworthy was the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s last-minute decision on Dec. 27 to deny an exemption petition submitted by two AV truck developers, in which the companies proposed to use special cab-mounted hazard lights in lieu of placing warning triangles outside a disabled truck on the side of the road. The placement of warning devices around stopped commercial vehicles is a legacy federal requirement with which it is impossible to comply if there is no driver in the vehicle. The supposed basis for denial was insufficient information submitted in the exemption application, but it should not have taken 23 months to review a 15-page document for the claimed basic deficiencies.
But AV policy under the Biden administration didn’t end completely on a sour note. Just before Christmas, NHTSA announced it was releasing its long-promised proposed AV STEP voluntary national framework. The goal of AV STEP is to leverage existing authorities to give AV developers greater latitude to produce and deploy their vehicle technologies in exchange for submitting more information to regulators. However, the final decision on what—if anything—comes from the AV STEP proposal will be made by the incoming Trump administration.
The new Trump administration’s likely emphasis will be on the geopolitical strategic importance of advancing AV technology in the United States—which is to say, “winning the AV race with China.” This means enthusiasm for AV policymaking is likely to return to federal agencies and could bode well for the industry.
However, there is concern that China hawks may disrupt supply chains and limit international market access. The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security in September proposed restrictions on transactions involving Chinese or Russian firms that affect AVs. The current Biden proposal preserves AV developer access to most global markets and limits damage to supply chains, but a final rule that is less cautious could do serious damage. The Trump administration should understand that needlessly aggressive trade restrictions on AV technologies could undermine their goal of strategic global AV dominance.
To advance continued U.S. leadership in AV innovation, the Trump administration should focus on modernizing NHTSA’s federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) so AVs can be incorporated into the national auto safety regulatory ecosystem. This would have the effect of preempting many state regulations and preventing an unworkable compliance patchwork. It would also obviate the need for Congress to act because the primary justification for congressional AV action over the past decade has been to increase the statutory cap on and duration of temporary FMVSS exemptions. But if NHTSA promulgates revisions to FMVSS and thereby allows AVs to self-certify to FMVSS just like other vehicles, there is no need for temporary exemptions.
The Trump administration has a golden opportunity to reinvigorate AV policy in the United States. To do so, it must stay focused on systematically identifying and addressing safety regulatory barriers and gaps. But the Trump administration may face challenges from within related to trade, national security, and even labor that could undermine its AV policy goals.
Unless you are part of the U.S. trucking industry, you’ve probably never heard of Bestpass. I’ve been a fan for many years, when I learned that it offers service to the over-the-road trucking industry, including weigh-station bypass services and management of their company toll accounts. Bestpass was launched in 2001 by people from the Trucking Association of New York. It came to my attention when I learned that, among its toll management services, it assisted subscribing truck fleets in taking advantages of refunds from certain state highway user charges for those using the New York State Thruway and the Massachusetts Turnpike. I’ve gotten to know Bestpass people at various transportation conferences such as those of the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association.
Over the past decade, Bestpass has acquired several other companies that serve the trucking industry. In 2023 it acquired Fleetworthy, self-described as a fleet compliance, safety, and risk management solutions provider. Fleetworthy came with a platform called CPSuite, which as part of Bestpass provides what CEO Tom Fogarty told FleetOwner serves as “a single pane of glass for fleet executives to be able to view what’s working and what’s not in their overall operation.” As a result, Bestpass was rebranded as Fleetworthy.
But that was not all. Last year Fleetworthy acquired Drivewyze, a firm with a long track record in dealing with weigh station bypass (and possessing the largest share of that market). The two companies had already agreed on a partnership in 2023, but this progressed to a merger in 2024. Fogarty told FleetOwner that this merger simplifies many things that are not trucking companies’ mission. “Their core mission is safety and keeping the fleets operating on the roads, but being able to do that in a much simpler way is something they strive for.”
Recently Fleetworthy announced an agreement with data provider Geotab, to interface with that company’s telematics ecosystem. Bestpass customers can use the MyGeotab interface to match Geotab vehicle data and GPS locations with charges reported by Bestpass.
Long-term readers of this newsletter may guess why I’m especially interested in these developments. Sooner or later the United States will need to shift from per-gallon fuel taxes to per-mile charges. Keeping track of who owes what as this transition takes place will be complicated. It strikes me that for the long-haul trucking industry, service providers such as Fleetworthy will be well-positioned to play a key role in this future.
Maryland Extends I-95 Express Toll Lanes
Last month the Maryland DOT opened a 6.5-mile extension of the ETLs on I-95, extending them to MD 152. Current plans call for further northward extensions to MD 24 by the end of 2027. The lanes charge fixed toll rates for peak, off-peak, and night, with rates also based on the number of axles (up to six or more). The lowest rates are for E-ZPass customers, with somewhat higher rates for Pay-by Plate and Video Toll customers.
New Zealand Planning $5.8 Billion Tollway P3
According to Infralogic (Dec. 6), New Zealand’s relatively new National Party-led coalition government “has rolled out the red carpet to private infrastructure investors.” The project currently entering procurement is the $5.8 billion Northland Expressway, to be built in three sections heading north from Auckland. Expressions of interest from potential public-private partnership (P3) consortiums are being sought, with a request for proposals (RFP) likely to be released in second-quarter 2025. Up to five consortia appear to be organizing to submit proposals once the RFP is issued.
Thailand Plans $1.4 Billion P3 Expressway
The Thai cabinet in December OK’d a plan to use a long-term P3 to finance, develop, and operate the $1.4 billion M9 Motorway linking Bangkok with Nonthaburi. The government plans a 30-year P3 concession for the project. The current schedule calls for developing procurement documents for a tender to be launched near the end of 2025, with the P3 deal reaching financial close in the second half of 2026.
Washington State Developing Port Tollway
To improve access to the Seattle/Tacoma seaports, Washington state DOT is under way on the SR 167 Completion Project. The plan calls for extending SR 167 westward to the Port of Tacoma by means of a four-lane tollway. The new tollway will facilitate access to the port by trucks (which currently congest local streets). It will also provide faster, uncongested trips for motorists, including those who use the express toll lanes on the existing SR 167. The new corridor appears to be a combination of truck tollway and express toll lanes for motorists. The second of four phases is now under construction, with last phase to be completed by 2030.
Supreme Court Considering Challenge to California Emissions Mandate
A legal challenge to California’s permission to exceed federal vehicle emission regulations was rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court, which ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of that ruling. If the case is sent back to the circuit court, it will have to analyze whether, under existing law, California can use its long-standing permission to impose tougher regulations on tailpipe smog precursors to also regulate CO2 emissions (which have no impact on smog).
Committee Chair Not Supportive of Federal MBUF
Politico reported (Dec. 16) that Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), incoming chair of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, is not supportive of replacing federal motor fuels taxes with mileage-based user fees (MBUFs). He suggested that a better way to ensure that the growing population of electric vehicles (EVs) pay their way would be a tax of some kind on EV drivers. He told Politico that he plans to discuss this subject with House Budget Committee chair Jodey Arrington (R-TX). The federal Highway Trust Fund increasingly generates far less than the amount of federal highway and transit spending, and getting EV users to pay their share would help address this problem.
Schneider Battery Electric Trucks Top Six Million Miles
A December news release from trucking company Schneider announced that its fleet of 100 Freightliner eCascadia battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) has surpassed six million “zero emission miles.” The release added that this is a reduction of 20 million pounds of CO2 emissions—which sounds like a lot, but the usual unit of measurement is tons, which amounts to only 20,000 tons of CO2. Truck producer Daimler says the eCascadia has a range of 250 miles and can be recharged up to 80% of capacity in 90 minutes, which is a lot more time than refueling a diesel rig.
Louisiana Mississippi River Crossing Location: Decision This Year
Joe Donahue, Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development, announced that the final site for the planned $2 billion toll bridge across the Mississippi River will be announced in 2025. After several years of study and gathering public input, the alternatives have been narrowed down to three. The bridge is needed to address serious congestion on I-10 in the vicinity of Baton Rouge, the state capital. The plan calls for the new bridge to be south of Baton Rouge, with connections to I-10 via a new southern loop on both sides of the river. Current plans assume toll finance and a long-term P3 procurement model, similar to what is in use for the replacement of the I-10 bridge across Louisiana’s Calcasieu River.
San Francisco P3 Bus Yard Decision This Spring
Infralogic reported last month that the planned 30-year P3 project to modernize the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) bus yard needs two important votes this spring: one by the SFMTA board and the other by the San Francisco Board of Examiners. SFMTA has a provisional agreement with a Plenary-led consortium for a 30-year availability-payment design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3 concession. Construction cost is estimated at $560 million and the annual availability payments are to be $42.2 million per year.
Arizona Plans Another Stretch of New I-11
Thanks to a $26 million federal grant, Arizona DOT plans to upgrade 4.5 miles of US 93 to prepare it for becoming part of the long-planned I-11 between Phoenix and Las Vegas. Over the last several years, ADOT has spent nearly $500 million on upgrades to US 93, which is planned to be the primary component of I-11 in Arizona. Nevada DOT has built about 45 miles of I-11 southeast of Las Vegas since 2018.
Pennsylvania Turnpike Revamps Tolling Policy
In addition to shifting the Pennsylvania Turnpike to all-electronic tolling as of this month, the agency has implemented two changes in its toll rates. All toll charges will now reflect consistent per-mile charges across the system; this is a step toward eventually charging per mile traveled on all American highways. Second, truck tolls will no longer be based on gross weight; instead they will be based on axle-weight, which more accurately reflects the extent of pavement damage from heavy vehicles. Kudos to the turnpike for these sensible changes.
Mixed Results on Bridge Condition
There’s good news and bad news in the Better Roads Bridge Inventory, compiled by Equipment World from FHWA data. Between 2020 and 2024, the number of bridges in “good” condition declined from 278,000 to 274,000, a decline of 1.3%. On the other hand, the number in only “fair” condition increased by 3.8%, from 293,000 to 305,000. The worst category—bridges in “poor” condition—were down 0.9% and account for only 6.72% of all bridges. So it would appear that the increase in fair-condition bridges came largely from more good bridges declining to fair condition. The states with the lowest percentage of poor-condition bridges are Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Delaware, and Georgia. On the other end of the scale, state with the highest extent of poor-condition bridges, in order, are Iowa (19.6% poor), West Virginia, South Dakota, Maine, and Rhode Island. States with the highest percentage of bridges in good condition are Georgia, Arizona, Ohio, Florida, and Nevada. And those with the lowest percentage in good condition are Utah, Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, and West Virginia.
Tesla EV Plug Now Standardized
SAE International as of last month was finishing work on an open EV charger standard, J3400, based on the Tesla EV charging connector. Simultaneously, FHWA said it was finalizing a new standard for federally funded EV chargers, based on Tesla’s charging plug. Over the past year and a half, nearly every automaker and charger manufacturer adopted Tesla’s charging standard.
Trucking Industry Loses Rhode Island Truck Tolling Case
Last month a federal appeals court rejected the trucking industry’s case that Rhode Island’s trucks-only toll charges were unconstitutional. Although the court found that daily toll caps are unconstitutional, the overall tolling system, in which the toll revenue is dedicated to bridge improvements, was found to pass muster.
Highway Tolling Discussed Again in Michigan
An article by MLive (Dec. 11) reported on year-end discussions among Michigan legislators and transportation groups about how to pay for upgrading the state’s aging highways. Alternatives discussed included increasing state fuel taxes or vehicle registration fees, using toll revenue to pay for rebuilding/modernizing the state’s Interstate highways and freeways, or replacing fuel taxes with per-mile charges. A major tolling study by HNTB and CDM Smith in 2022 found that modest toll rates could finance the reconstruction and modernization of 545 route-miles of limited access highways, enabling $18.5 billion to be financed based on the toll revenue. (For details, see the lead article in the Feb. 2023 issue of this newsletter.)
MARTA Seeks to Enforce Bus-Only Lanes
Georgia’s MARTA transit agency will soon be opening its first dedicated-lanes bus rapid transit system, a 5-mile round trip route between downtown and Summerhill. MARTA has asked the state legislature for automated traffic cameras so that it can ticket drivers who move into the bus lanes. Since adding lanes to a highway is very costly, “bus-only” makes sense only where the bus person-throughput (per lane per hour) is more than what the lane would handle in mixed-flow traffic. A wiser plan would be for “bus toll lanes” that charge motorists variable pricing to keep the traffic moving smoothly to enable fast and reliable bus service. (See “Enhanced Transit and Managed Arterials: A Win-Win Combination,” Reason Foundation, Oct. 2016.)
Trump Misunderstands Panama Canal Tolls
President-elect Trump mis-spoke when he claimed that “the fees being charged by Panama are ridiculous [and] highly unfair.” In fact, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out in an editorial on Dec. 26, “Every vessel, regardless of its flag, pays the same rate according to tonnage and type. . . . About 75% of the total price is a toll [to pay for capital costs] and 25% is for services like tugboat or locomotive escorts.” The Panama Canal is a business and is far better run than highly subsidized U.S. inland waterways.
Riverside County’s Express Toll Lanes Credit Upgraded
Fitch Ratings last month announced that it has increased the rating on Riverside County Transportation Commission’s SR 91 express toll lanes from BBB+ to A. The upgrade reflects traffic and revenue levels exceeding Fitch’s base case. Until recently, the only express toll lanes with a rating of A or above was the world’s first ETL project, on SR 91 in neighboring Orange County. Most other express toll lane projects financed by their toll revenues have Fitch ratings of BBB or BBB-.
Denmark Shifts to Per-Kilometer Tolling
The Danish government, as of Jan. 1, 2025, shifted its heavy-vehicle tolling system from the Europe-wide Eurovignette (a multi-country electronic tolling system) to per-kilometer charges. The system charges vehicles weighing 12 tonnes or more, except for buses. Instead of a transponder, trucks will have to sign up with UTA Edenrod’s UTA One system. The Danish toll road system comprises 10,900 km of highways.
New Commentary Suggests NEPA Litigation Reform
In a recent Substack post, R. Richard Geddes and Joshua Rauh review the high cost and time of infrastructure projects getting through the current NEPA process, especially the litigation that often follows the release of the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). They offer a menu of changes that could streamline that system.
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