NATIONAL LEVEL HIGHWAY INVESTMENT ANALYSIS: FOCUSING ON HIGHWAY USER IMPACTS

In 1989 the Chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Public Works and Transportation called for the Department of Transportation (DOT) to accelerate its efforts to examine the costs, benefits and national economic implications associated with a broad array of [highway] investment The recently developed Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS) will provide DOT with the capability to incorporate a highway user impact dimension into its evaluation of alternative national-level highway investment policy options. The HERS uses incremental life-cycle benefit/cost analysis to define the near-optimal cost effective set of appropriate improvement options given user defined policy scenarios. Traditional highway investment analysis asks the question: What impact do system condition and performance have on highway users? The Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) investment analysis model has been used to support Congressional development of highway programs and policies since 1980. While the HPMS is a highly regarded analytical tool, it relies heavily on engineering criteria in both its deficiency identification and improvement selection procedures. The HPMS is not particularly sensitive to the user cost consequences of alternative improvement options. In contrast, the HERS model is designed to select improvements that will reduce the total cost incurred by highway users and agencies while ensuring an acceptable economic return on the investment of public funds. The model recognizes reductions in direct user costs (travel-time, incidents and vehicle operating costs) as highway user benefits. Also considered as benefits are reductions in maintenance costs and the residual value of an improvement. This paper explores the unique features of the HERS modeling procedure, distinguishing them from the HPMS. Initial HERS results are presented and compared to comparable HPMS derived conclusions.