Freight Capacity for the 21st Century Special Report 271 (2003) / Chapter Skim
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CONCLUSIONS Prospects for Freight Capacity The committee examined aggregate trends in traffic, performance, cap ital expenditures, and capital stock for the freight modes; developments related to congestion at freight terminals, at border crossings, and in urban areas, especially on facilities shared by passengers and freight; and underlying trends in productivity, finance, and technology. Taken together, developments in these areas have indicated to many observers 1
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For highways, recent addi tions more often take the forms of widening, alignment improvements, improved traffic management systems, and intersection improvements than construction of new routes. Overall, highway capital stock is being added faster than it is wearing out (although this circumstance does not demonstrate that the rate of growth is optimal)
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The growth of international trade may exacerbate the bottleneck problem by concentrating freight traffic at a small number of nodes, including certain ports and border crossings. Productivity growth in freight transportation has historically been impelled by a series of breakthroughs, both technological and institu tional.
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The case studies did not document systematic misallocation in gov ernment investment decisions in favor of projects primarily serving pas sengers over projects of particular importance to freight because the project evaluation methods governments used in the cases did not com pare returns from the freight-related projects selected for funding with returns from alternative transportation uses of the funds. The cases do illustrate that freight capacity problems in those parts of the transporta tion system for which government is responsible often are simultane ously passenger transport capacity problems.
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The Comprehensive Policy Agenda Freight transportation is a joint venture of government and the private sector. Therefore, the performance of the system and the adequacy of freight capacity in the next decades will reflect the outcomes of govern ment decisions on numerous spending, regulatory, and operational questions.
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Controversy is especially likely when proposals are made for chang ing existing practices regarding user fees or funding sources (e.g., insti tuting user charges on previously uncharged public facilities) and when particular industries or local interests argue that a project's national signif
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The recom mendations are grouped under three headings: federal infrastructure pro grams, decision-making processes and planning, and regulatory issues. Federal Freight Infrastructure Programs: Capital Expenditures, Finance, and Operations SURFACE TRANSPORTATION ACT REAUTHORIZATION Because trucking accounts for the majority of U.S.
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Measures that Congress can take to improve the system of federal highway finance include the following: · Making adjustments to more closely align average user fee pay ments for vehicles with estimates of cost responsibility in DOT's most recent federal highway cost allocation study. Better matching of fees to costs could provide incentives for shippers to make logistics decisions and for carriers to make equipment and operating decisions that reduce the costs of truck transportation and permit better utilization of existing capacity.
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New Systems Congress should direct DOT, in cooperation with the states and the private sector, to study the costs and market potential of exclusive truck facilities and to examine needs for additional ancillary highway facil ities for trucks to reduce truckcar conflicts, such as rest areas and parking and staging areas. Such facilities should be paid for by user fees.
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In its authorizations and appropriations for Corps Civil Works activities, Congress should begin to rely on revenues from user fees to fund inland waterways operation and maintenance as well as capital expenditures. Increased reliance on segment-specific user fees would tend to discourage expenditures on little-used waterway segments.
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Decision-Making Processes and Planning DOT DATA AND ANALYSIS PROGRAMS Congress should give continued support to the development of DOT capa bilities for economic analysis of the federal-aid highway program and fed eral highway user fees and to the application of this analysis in support of decisions. Congress should provide for joint statefederal efforts to trans fer and adapt these federally developed policy guidance tools to state and local needs.
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Regulatory Issues REDUCING PROJECT DELIVERY TIME Infrastructure providers see curtailing the growth of project delivery times as essential to controlling the costs of capacity expansion. Legally required environmental reviews of infrastructure projects serve an essential function but also have costs and can add to completion time and uncertainty.
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· Congress should consider allowing federal agencies reviewing highway projects to accept funds from nonfederal public agency applicants to pay administrative costs in order to speed project review. · Congress should direct DOT to conduct, in cooperation with the states and the federal environmental agencies, the following studies: An assessment of the effects of required environmental reviews of trans portation projects, including impacts of reviews on project delivery times and on final project design.
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