Alternate Financing Sources for Alabama Highways: The Heavy Truck Road User Fee

The mobility and safety of the traveling public, as well as the nation’s economy greatly depend on the ability to build and maintain transportation facilities that serve well the local and regional transportation needs. Aging infrastructure and continuing increase in vehicle miles traveled, coupled with increased construction and maintenance costs, place added burdens to already strained transportation funding resources. To make things worse, declining transportation funding is a reality that is faced by most states across the country and is a concern of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). To address such issues this study evaluated the heavy truck road user fee (HTRUF) as a potential funding source for transportation financing. The state of Alabama was used as a case study. The assessment was based on HTRUF’s revenue potential, equity, efficiency, and political acceptability to the tax payers and decision makers in Alabama. The study confirms that this innovative revenue source is an excellent way to generate income for transportation investments. It is recommended that design of the technologies and software needed should begin in the near future, and a pilot program should be implemented to demonstrate benefits and identify needs for future development. In the meantime, a method of collecting the fees manually, using the detailed records already kept by the fleet owners, could give a better indication of the revenue-generating potential of the HTRUF.