Surface Transportation News: How to replace gas taxes with mileage-based user fees

In this issue:

• How to jump-start U.S. mileage-based user fees
• Assessing U.S. transportation’s impact on GHG emissions
• California’s dubious road user charge plan
• NTSB rips Maryland over Key Bridge collapse
• An obscure federal rule may delay driverless trucks
• Rethinking the federal role, continued
• News Notes
• Quotable Quotes

How to Jump-Start U.S. Mileage-Based User Fees

The need to shift highway funding from fuel taxes to per-mile charges is widely acknowledged in transportation policy circles. Seventeen states have carried out pilot projects to test the idea with volunteer motorists, and three pilot projects have involved trucking firms, covering numerous states. Yet, there are serious roadblocks to actually implementing road user charges that apply to all motor vehicles.

In the most recent reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program (the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, 2021), Congress authorized a national pilot program intended to test multi-state per-mile charges. The Department of Transportation (DOT), in a long-delayed process, appointed an advisory board staffed with knowledgeable people, but the Biden administration waited until its last days in office before announcing its members.

Thus far, the new Trump administration has been mum on this subject, and many expect it will not pursue this project. Congress intended that the results of this national pilot project would be available in time to enable provisions in the 2026 reauthorization bill for the next steps for nationwide MBUF/RUC implementation. Given the moribund state of this project, there will be no such results in time for the 2026 bill.

There is an alternative way to begin a serious national transition to per-mile charging, which Congress could authorize in the 2026 legislation. As explained in a new Reason Foundation policy paper, the key idea would be to start the transition not with a type of vehicle (e.g., electric cars) but with a type of roadway. The obvious candidate is limited-access highways, which is why the title of the policy paper is “Interstates First: Why Road User Charges Should Begin with Limited-Access Highways.”

This proposal seeks to address several concerns that seem to be holding back large-scale adoption of per-mile charges. One is privacy—many people fear that with per-mile charges, all their trips will be tracked by the government (“Big Brother in your car”). However, mileage charges on limited-access highways would be based solely on the miles driven from on-ramp to off-ramp. Where each trip actually begins or ends would be known only to the vehicle’s driver.

A second concern is “double taxation”—that politicians would add a road user charge in addition to existing fuel taxes. That fear is genuine in California, where several such proposals have been made by regional governments and the state government. (See Baruch Feigenbaum’s article in this issue.) Therefore, any state that plans to implement a per-mile charge system must provide refunds of the state fuel tax for the miles driven on any highway converted to the new per-mile charge. Presumably, a state adopting this approach would implement it one Interstate (or other limited-access highway) at a time, so its state fuel tax would remain in effect for all other roadways. It’s important to know that two states already offer refunds of some state highway user taxes on toll roads: Massachusetts on the Massachusetts Turnpike and New York on the New York Thruway have long offered such refunds. Truck fleets that subscribe to the services of Fleetworthy (formerly Bestpass) have their refunds processed as part of that company’s array of services. The data come from the electronic tolling systems on those two toll roads.

Perhaps the most important drawback to near-term implementation is the cost of collection. As the trucking industry often reminds us, the cost of collecting fuel taxes is about two percent of the revenue collected. By contrast, per a recent study by consulting firm WSP, a hypothetical per-mile charging system using an in-vehicle device and a new state office (staff, software, etc.) would likely have a per-vehicle cost of collection of $9.65 per month in a low-volume state and $4.25 per month in a high-volume state. For gasoline, the monthly cost of collection is about 42 cents per month for the average motorist. Thus far, no one in the road user charge technology community has come up with a lower-cost approach than WSP’s estimates.

At some point in the future, perhaps when all vehicles are equipped with some form of telematics that can add up miles driven on each category of road, there may be a monthly collection cost somewhere in the vicinity of the fuel-tax collection cost. But until that technology exists and is ubiquitous, charging for all miles traveled will not be feasible.

On the other hand, a 2012 study by a team of electronic tolling experts estimated that an all-electronic tolling approach designed for limited access highways could have a collection cost as low as 5% of the revenue collected. That estimate was based on personal vehicles. Since the actual cost of collection is the same for heavy trucks and cars, and since heavy trucks typically pay four times as much as cars, the cost of collection for a heavy truck is one-fourth that of cars. So if it is 5% for cars, it would be 1.25% for heavy trucks.

A per-mile collection cost for cars that amounted to 5% of the revenue would be 2.5 times the cost of collection for fuel taxes, so instead of being 42 cents/month, it would be a bit over $1 per month—far less than the estimated $4.25 to $9.65 per month for a hypothetical all-roads user charge.

In the 2026 reauthorization, Congress could jump-start the implementation of “Interstates first” road user charging. There is a never-used pilot program called the Interstate System Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Pilot Program (ISRRPP) that, in its current form, authorizes up to three states to each select one of its Interstates to rebuild with toll financing. ISRRPP could be opened to all states and all of each state’s Interstates. Two additional changes would be that the new tolls be charged electronically on a per-mile basis and that the state would provide refunds of state fuel taxes for all miles driven on newly tolled Interstates.

Over the past 15 years, nine states have commissioned feasibility studies of converting their Interstates to toll finance in order to rebuild and modernize them. But doing this for only one Interstate is politically unviable. With a much broader ISRRPP, one or more of those nine states are likely to take advantage of the new opportunity. And those pioneers will blaze the trail for other states to follow.

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Assessing U.S. Transportation’s Impact on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

With the advent of the Trump administration, changes in federal environmental policy have been taking place, mostly via executive orders. Congress has yet to weigh in on these changes. At this critical point in U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) policy, it makes sense to take a careful look at the best data on the effect of U.S transportation on GHG emissions. Reason Foundation just released the first of three reports on this topic, “Transportation and Climate Change: Travel Trends and GHG Emissions.” The author is Prof. Steven Polzin of the University of Arizona, whose PhD and prior education is in civil engineering. Polzin was also a senior advisor for research and technology at U.S. DOT in the past decade.

This initial report provides basic data on GHG emission trends, some of which are quite surprising. For example, the U.S. share of global CO2-equivalent emissions between 1800 and 2016 peaked near the end of World War II at about 55% and was down to 14.5% by 2016. And, as of 2014, the U.S. share of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel consumption and related industries was 15%, compared with 30% for China and 29% for Europe. (Sources for all figures and tables are provided in the report.) And U.S. CO2 emissions from energy use peaked at 6 billion metric tons in 2007 and were down to 4.5 billion metric tons in 2019.

The study next turns to GHG emissions from transportation, with an emphasis on U.S. transportation. As of 2019, transportation accounted for 28.6% of the U.S. total. The largest contributors are personal vehicles (40.4%), light-duty trucks (17.1%), and medium/heavy trucks (23.5%). That personal vehicle percentage is 11.55% of total U.S. GHG emissions. Polzin goes on to look into changes in vehicle miles of travel (VMT) between 2009 and 2017. Many may be surprised that household VMT’s share shrank due to the substitution of utility and commercial household-services travel, a trend which is likely ongoing today.

How much personal travel is potentially shiftable from personal vehicles to other modes? Polzin’s detailed analysis of Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) travel volume trends first identifies 44.5% of passenger miles as largely unsuitable targets due to being too long and involving locations where there is little or no transit available. In urbanized areas, work trips are the most likely candidate for such shifts. Pre-pandemic, those trips accounted for 29.4% of household VMT, but with 15% telecommuting, that share would decrease to 26.1%.

Part 5 of the study discusses evolving U.S. travel trends. Besides the growth in telecommuting, another ongoing trend is travel that shifts from households themselves to commercial service providers (e.g., pool maintenance, lawn services, house-cleaning services, meal delivery, package delivery, etc.). Another post-pandemic change is the growth of recreational travel, including social recreational travel. Yet another factor is travel changes resulting from households increasingly relocating from central cities to suburbs and exurbs—driven in part by telecommuting and the other factors noted in this section. Transit is much less viable in suburbia and is essentially non-existent in exurbia.

The implications of these trends will be addressed in more detail in the forthcoming Parts 2 and 3. You can read part 1 here.

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California’s Dubious Road User Charge Plan
By Baruch Feigenbaum

California legislators are preparing to draft a bill to create a permanent road usage charge program. While the legislation is unlikely to pass until 2026 or 2027, the general concepts will be fleshed out in the next six months.

Normally, Reason Foundation would cheer a new road usage charge (RUC) program. California would join the likes of Hawaii, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and possibly Washington state with a permanent, sustainable alternative way to pay for highways. The fuel tax will cease to be a viable option in about 10 years, and leaders need to start testing a viable alternative now. However, nothing is ever simple in California, and the bill looks to have one major problem

The current bill, Senate Bill 1421, introduced in 2025, would extend the authority of the existing Road Usage Charge executive committee until 2035. However, it does not actually implement a program. That is left to successor bills that are likely to be passed in the next few years.

But the current proposed legislation, as well as details provided by the Democratic majority, and the lack of communication between Democrats on the transportation and finance committees with Democrats and other Republicans suggest a problem.

Many California lawmakers and proponents are treating a RUC as a supplement, not a replacement, for the fuel tax. In all other states as well as RUC educational efforts, two multistate groups (The Eastern Transportation Coalition and Road Usage Charge America), and legislative groups, the RUC is a replacement, not a supplement. There are three major reasons why RUC must be a replacement.

The first reason is political. RUCs need to be supported by both Democrats and Republicans. And if RUC is seen as a backdoor tax increase, which is what it would be in California, it will lose support among Republicans and many moderate Democrats. Already, Democratic governors in Maryland and Pennsylvania have slowed RUC rollouts over this fear. The public hates paying higher fees and taxes, especially when they feel they have been duped.

And this is not a hypothetical argument, as California lawmakers should know based on an experience in San Diego, discussed three years ago in this newsletter. The Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) San Diego Association of Governments tried and failed to implement a RUC. The RUC would have been added onto a fuel tax and two half-cent regional sales taxes. The RUC would have started at 3.3 cents per mile in 2030. After anti-tax activist Carl DeMaio started having town hall meetings about the proposed layers of taxes, drivers across the political spectrum complained, a number of city officials changed their minds, and the plan was killed. Yet, some in California think the biggest mistake of the campaign was bad marketing.

Second, RUCs as a supplement may distort or break all five technical advantages of a users-pay system: fairness, proportionality, self-limiting, predictability, and investment signal. Special interest groups, including rail transit boosters, recreational trails enthusiasts, environmental remediation experts, and even non-transportation project boosters such as education building lobbyists and health funding lobbyists, are lining up at the trough of transportation revenue sources that could be more easily tapped for other uses. Highway users paying for health care costs is definitely not fair, proportional, or self-limiting. It’s challenging to see two revenue sources as serving as an investment signal. And given that the rates would adjust at different levels, they are not especially predictable. Having multiple highway funding sources complicates more than it helps if the revenue isn’t funding highways.

Third, it’s not as if California needs extra revenue. If the state is able to double-tax drivers, it sets a bad precedent for other states. California has by far the highest state per capita transportation funding in the country. The state has the highest fuel tax in the nation, at almost 60 cents a gallon. It has one of the highest registration fees in the nation, often more than $800 every year. The most populated counties have a 0.5 to 1.5 cent sales tax to pay for transit and other transportation improvements. And other taxes, such as the income tax, are some of the highest in the country.

And it is not as if those taxes are generating outstanding roads. Our recent Annual Highway Report found that overall California ranked second to last of all states in overall performance and cost-effectiveness, in part because it ranked in the bottom ten of per-mile spending in three of the four disbursement categories, the bottom 10 in pavement quality in all four pavement categories, the bottom 10 in traffic congestion, and a fatality rate that is significantly higher than the national average. Basically, the state’s high spending is not translating to better roadways in any categorical group. And more spending will exacerbate, not cure, that problem.

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NTSB Rips Maryland Over Key Bridge Collapse

The March 20 report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) strongly criticized the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) for not having performed a risk assessment that would have found the bridge highly vulnerable to a collision with a large vessel. As I pointed out in the April 2024 issue of this newsletter, the 1980 collapse of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge near Tampa led to a major study of bridge vulnerability to such collisions. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) in 1990 released guidelines for major bridges over waterways with major cargo shipping traffic. It recommended “dolphins” and other safety measures. As NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy noted, Maryland had been part of that effort. Yet Maryland officials did nothing to reduce the Key Bridge’s vulnerability, despite repeated warnings from the Baltimore Harbor Safety and Coordination Committee, as I also reported in the April 2024 issue.

At the news conference, Homendy said Maryland authorities should have known that the risk of collapse due to collision was 30 times above the accepted threshold. “What’s frustrating is not only did MDTA fail to conduct the assessment on the Key Bridge, nor did they provide the NTSB with the data used to conduct an assessment. We asked them for that data; they didn’t have it.”

MDTA’s negligence and denial of any responsibility for the bridge collapse should have undercut its case for all U.S. taxpayers to pay the estimated $1.9 billion cost of replacing the bridge, especially when the state itself has a $350 million insurance policy on the bridge, and the global shipping industry has about a dozen ship insurance pools, with up to $3.1 billion available per ship disaster. By requiring U.S. taxpayers to pay for the replacement, Congress essentially sanctioned the state’s negligence.

This newsletter has also documented the large number of major U.S. bridges with fracture-critical designs and those lacking protections such as dolphins. The NTSB’s preliminary report included a list of major bridges that are at risk and need assessing for protection or replacement. The list includes seven in California, three in Delaware, two in Florida, one in Georgia, one in Illinois, seven in Louisiana, two in Maryland, one in Michigan, one in New Hampshire, two in New Jersey, 11 in New York, six in Ohio, two in Oregon, four in Pennsylvania, one in Rhode Island, six in Texas, and one each in Washington and Wisconsin.

These are not rinky-dink bridges. They include the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the Coronado Bridge in San Diego, the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Florida, the Huey Long and Hale Boggs Bridges in Louisiana, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in Maryland, the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan, the Verrazzano Narrows and George Washington Bridges in New York, the Walt Whitman Bridge in Philadelphia, and the Buffalo Bayou Toll Bridge in Texas. Many were financed by toll revenues, but in a dismaying number of cases, the tolls were removed once the initial bonds were paid off. In those cases, the implicit assumption was that the bridge would be there forever and not need additional investment or replacement.

A number of these bridges are also on a list resulting from an analysis performed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. They found that the Francis Scott Key Bridge, were it still standing, would have been in the top 10 most-vulnerable U.S. bridges. For each bridge in their study, the Johns Hopkins researchers estimated the number of years until a major collision. For example, the Crescent City Connection in New Orleans was estimated to have such a collision once every 34 years. Their report is estimated to be completed by late summer.

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An Obscure Federal Rule May Delay Driverless Trucks
By Marc Scribner

After years of work, automated heavy-duty trucks without drivers onboard are finally coming to Texas public roadways. Aurora Innovation, a leading truck automation developer, is expected to introduce 10 of its outfitted Class 8 trucks in the first half of 2025 on a route between Dallas and Houston. This will mark the first time driverless semi-trucks have carried goods on public roads in regular commercial service. The company plans to expand across state lines later in 2025 via a route from El Paso to Phoenix. However, an obscure federal regulation may delay interstate expansion.

Since 1972, federal regulations have required that whenever a truck is stopped on a highway, including the shoulder, reflective warning triangles or road flares must be placed around the truck to alert passing motorists of the potential hazard. Specifically, 49 C.F.R. § 392.22(b) requires that within 10 minutes of stopping, the operator must exit the vehicle cab and set three warning devices on the roadway: one on the side of traffic placed approximately 10 feet from the truck, one 100 feet in front of the vehicle, and one 100 feet behind the vehicle.

The warning device rule poses a unique challenge for driverless operations of automated commercial vehicles because it implicitly assumes an operator will be seated in the vehicle and able to immediately exit the cab to deploy warning devices. This rule was never intended to apply to driverless commercial motor vehicles, which had not yet been conceived when the warning device requirement was promulgated more than 50 years ago.

In Jan. 2023, automated vehicle developers Aurora and Waymo petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for an exemption from the warning device requirement. To ensure that the broader safety intent was preserved, the petitioners proposed that driverless, autonomous commercial vehicles would, in lieu of placing warning devices, be equipped with cab-mounted warning beacons.

The warning-beacon system Aurora and Waymo proposed would consist of at least one rearward-facing light mounted on each side of the cab and at least one forward-facing light mounted on the front of the cab. The warning beacons would be installed between the upper edge of the sideview mirrors and the top of the cab for both forward- and rear-facing lights. The companies provided two studies—one from Aurora and another from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute prepared for Waymo—that they argued had demonstrated that cab-mounted warning beacons would achieve a level of safety at least equivalent to the warning-device requirement.

After nearly two years of waiting, FMCSA denied the exemption petition at the end of Dec. 2024, citing a lack of data on the safety equivalence of cab-mounted warning beacons. This justification was especially odd because the agency has conceded it has never conducted any research on the effectiveness of its warning-device requirement in enhancing safety. The suggestion from FMCSA seems to be that there is no official safety baseline by which to compare alternatives to warning devices, which thereby renders the agency unable to consider alternatives—even those that offer superior safety.

On Jan. 8, 2025, FMCSA announced it was planning to study the effectiveness of warning devices on traffic safety, admitting that federal regulators have “never conducted experimental research on the impact of using warning devices.” Clearly not content to wait years for regulators to determine whether or not their rules have any value, Aurora filed suit two days later on Jan. 10 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, asking the court to overturn FMCSA’s December denial “because it is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and otherwise not in accordance with the law.”

FMCSA could cure this policy defect by reconsidering and reversing its denial of the Aurora/Waymo exemption petition, which would provide immediate clarity for the industry’s near-term efforts to deploy driverless automated trucks on public highways. But it shouldn’t stop there. FMCSA should initiate a rulemaking proceeding to modernize its warning-device regulations to allow alternatives such as the cab-mounted warning beacons proposed by Aurora and Waymo.

To ensure the agency acts, Congress should explicitly direct FMCSA to conduct this needed rulemaking. As part of a forthcoming memo to congressional authorizers, Reason Foundation has drafted model legislative text for Congress to consider including in the surface transportation reauthorization bill due in 2026.

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Rethinking the Federal Role in Surface Transportation, continued

In response to my article on this subject in the Feb. 2025 issue, which suggested devolving surface transportation funding from the federal level to the states that actually own and operate highways and transit, I received a thoughtful commentary from a transportation consultant I have known for many years. When I asked him if I could print an abridged version of it, he agreed, on condition that I not disclose his name. The scope of his more than 30 years of consulting includes HOT/managed lanes, congestion pricing, mobility as a service, VMT-related policy, and various ITS disciplines. Here is an abridged version of what he wrote.

I agree with much of what you wrote in that article. We need to copy what other first-world countries do and make the U.S. DOT a policy-making entity and FHWA an R&D and experimental entity to assist DOT in determining the impact of policies (rather than a funding source for the operation of transportation infrastructure owned and operated at state and local levels). For example, how should we address the transition of technology into our national networks? How can road charging, tolling, HOT/express lanes, and public-private partnerships (P3s) exist harmoniously? I can even see a DARPA-like entity advancing the state of the art. The new FHWA could run computer simulations for network capacity, a national cost-allocation model, and an overall pricing model to evaluate the impact of all vehicle costs and human behavioral impacts. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has a place in FHWA for safety analysis and crash analysis. In short, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) would be focused on ground transportation and mobility services.

I may see grants differently from you. Under the above system, I could see grants and pilot tests as part of our national concept development. I would suggest “concept development programs” with specific funding for R&D into specific mobility concepts. This would be a national investment to improve mobility services, integrate ground transport and safety, and provide the states and the market with the fruits of that investment.

Regarding road charging, MBUF, tolling, HOT/express lane charges, and parking fees, I could imagine a small (1-2%) federal tax on the revenues. While states would be responsible for collecting these “mobility taxes,” they would forward the federal portion to the DOT and a new Highway Trust Fund (HTF) supporting R&D, etc. as discussed above. This would be the funding source for that new HTF, with the new FHWA constrained to spend no more than the amount it receives from this source.

As Buckminster Fuller once said, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

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News Notes

Interstate Tolling Bill in Indiana Legislature
House Bill 1461, from Rep. Jim Pressel (R-Rolling Prairie) aims to have tolling on all the state’s Interstate highways. Specifically, it would allow the Indiana DOT to ask FHWA for a waiver to permit such tolling. If granted, the legislature would then enable the Indiana Finance Authority to take action on tolling. The bill was discussed by a state senate committee the third week in March. A 2018 study for InDOT by HNTB laid out a Statewide Interstate Tolling Strategic Plan. That study stated that FHWA had confirmed that a state could use federal permission to toll existing Interstate bridges as the basis for tolling the state’s long-distance Interstates. That plan included significant toll-financed investment to upgrade those Interstates.

U.S. Vehicle Miles of Travel Up One Percent in 2024
In the December issue of FHWA’s Traffic Volume Trends, the data show that U.S. VMT increased by 1.0% in 2024. We drove 3.279 trillion miles last year, an increase of 32.3 billion miles. As Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation pointed out, this increase is part of a post-Covid reversion back to historical trends. The 2024 total finally exceeded the 2019 total. However, U.S. per-capita VMT peaked in 2004 at 10,117 miles, compared with 2024’s 9,641 miles.

Ownership Changes for Canada’s Highway 407 ETR
Two of the shareholders in Canada’s first long-term P3 toll road—the 407 ETR—are selling their stakes in the tollway. CPP Investments and Atkins Realis made the announcement on March 13th. PSP Investments will acquire a 7.51% stake valued at $1.65 billion (US). Primary shareholder Ferrovial will buy up to a 5.06% stake from Atkins Realis for $1.44 billion (US). Closing these transactions is expected in the second quarter of 2025. The 407 Express Toll Route is the 108 km all-electronic toll road in the Toronto metro area.

California Truck Electrification Hits a Roadblock
Politico reported that the Golden State’s ambitious plan to mandate heavy truck electrification is jeopardized by Trump administration policy changes. A week before Trump’s inauguration, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) withdrew its request for a federal waiver to implement its clean-truck purchasing mandate. Shortly thereafter, the Trump administration issued an executive order to pause the disbursement of funds from both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, holding off billions of federal dollars for truck charging infrastructure. The trucking industry had already filed suit over the state’s requirement to phase out diesel truck purchases by 2045.

Tampa’s New Howard Frankland Bridge Opens
Last month saw the opening of most of the replacement of the 1960s-era Howard Frankland Bridge between Tampa and St. Petersburg. Construction of the $865 million project began in 2020. The replacement bridge includes four lanes each way, two of which in each direction are express toll lanes. The oldest portion of the original bridge will be demolished in 2026.

Express Toll Lanes in Dallas Upgraded to BBB+
Fitch Ratings has increased the rating on the private activity bonds (PABs) and TIFIA loan for the express toll lanes on the LBJ Freeway (I-635) from BBB to BBB+. The rating increase was based on those lanes’ high traffic, strong revenue, and a lifetime debt service coverage ratio of 3.9X. These express lanes were developed and are operated and maintained by Cintra, under a long-term design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3 agreement. Despite the congestion relief and self-funding inherent in such projects, for more than a decade, the Texas Legislature has refused to approve TxDOT entering any new agreements of this kind, despite many cases where they would be a good fit. A prime case in point is I-35 through downtown Austin. In a multi-billion-dollar project soon to get underway, TxDOT will add capacity to this hugely congested corridor—but wholly at taxpayers’ expense and without the value pricing that would keep new lanes flowing smoothly during peak periods.

Canada Plans C$90 Billion High-Speed Rail Route
The project would link Toronto and Quebec City, a distance of 621 miles. The top speed is planned to be 186 mph. The cost is estimated at between C60B and C90B ($37B to $56B, with the planning period alone to cost $2.7B). The line would have seven stops, one every 89 miles on average. The project team is to be led by CDPQ Infra, with others including AtkinsRealis, Keolis, Systra, Air Canada, and SNCF Voyageurs. Canada’s Via Rail estimates that the high-speed train will attract 25 million annual passengers, compared with around 4 million on the current slower-speed train in that corridor.

Economic Analysis Concludes New York Congestion Tax Is Working
A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research used economic analysis to assess the impact of New York City’s cordon tax to enter the Manhattan central business district. Compared with a set of control cities (which have no such charge), the eight-member team found that average NYC speeds increased, and travel time decreased by 8%. The modeling is complex, and I’m not in a position to judge its accuracy. Their paper, “The Short-Run Effects of Congestion Pricing in New York City,” is online as NBER Working Paper 33584 on the NBER website.

Florida DOT Dedicates $4 Billion to Highway Improvements
The 2024 project is called Moving Florida Forward. Its focus is to relieve bottlenecks in the state’s major highway system. The projects include adding lanes on I-4 in Polk and Osceola Counties, adding lanes on I-75 near Ocala, redesigning and rebuilding the always-congested Golden Glades interchange in Miami, and adding express toll lanes to I-275 in Pinellas County, near Tampa. The $4 billion was allocated from a general revenue surplus.

Amtrak Seeking Partner for Dallas-Houston High-Speed Rail
Despite the demise of the former Texas Central project, Amtrak is seeking to revive the project by finding a development partner. Recent cost estimates for the project are in the vicinity of $30 billion. The now defunct Texas Central project planned only one intermediate stop—in College Station, where Texas A&M University is located.

V2X Implementation Planned for I-4 in Orlando
A research project from Florida Polytechnic University and FDOT aims to test the impact of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications for reducing accidents. The first phase evaluated potential safety benefits (2020-2023), and the second phase will add 350 roadside units to the I-4 corridor. The benefits, alas, depend on “all vehicles in the corridor being equipped with on-board units.” Few, if any, new cars come equipped, so it’s difficult to predict when safety benefits will actually be achieved.

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Quotable Quotes

“Jenna Bentley, vice president of government affairs for the Indy Chamber, said the organization supports House Bill 1461 [Interstate tolling] because it will increase economic development throughout the state. The chamber ‘strongly supports’ tolling highways, she said. ‘In a transportation system largely funded by user-pay models, it’s critical that out-of-state commuters pay their fair share, and tolling is one mechanism to capture that revenue,’ she said.”
—Alexandra Kukulka, “Indiana Toll Road Bill Heard in Senate Committee, Legislators Voice Support for Tolling,” Post-Tribune, March 20, 2025 

“Considering California’s environmental and economic record since 2006, one can reasonably conclude one of two things: either it is not possible to achieve deep emission reductions without slowing growth and making inequality worse, or California is doing something wrong. The state’s Democratic leaders have long rejected the former possibility. Now, it appears, some elected leaders, if not the state’s unelected regulators, are beginning to recognize just how inequitable the state’s climate policies have been. Extraordinary growth rates in a handful of tech-centric counties have obscured the costs of the state’s climate regime. California’s climate policies have contributed to slow economic growth for most of the state and have disproportionately punished the poor and non-college educated workers. Until the state demonstrates it can cut its emissions equitably, such that working people once more see the Golden State as a land of opportunity rather than fleeing it, California should not be held up as a model of climate governance. Expensive policies, supported by high and keyboard-economy tax revenue, are simply not exportable to the rest of the country, much less the rest of the world.”
—Jennifer Hernandez and Lauren Teixeira, “Time to Reset California’s Climate Leadership,” The Breakthrough Journal, Jan. 6, 2025

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