The Heartland Institute

Although gasoline taxes have long been the main source of funding for building, maintaining, and operating America’s network of highways, roads, and streets, the tax is at best an imperfect user fee. As such, Congress and the states should take action to transition from gas taxes to more efficient vehicle-mile fees. One of ...

With transportation coffers barely able to maintain highways, let alone adding new capacity to relieve congestion, many transportation economists and urban planners have concluded that the best solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement variable pricing on all congested freeways. At the same time, many political scientists ...

Highway congestion occurs when a vehicle causes delay to other vehicles on the road, resulting in longer and less reliable travel times, the use of additional fuel, and other costs to the economy. According to one widely cited study, in 2005 highway congestion resulted in 4.2 billion hours of delay and 2.9 billion gallons ...

States and local jurisdictions are increasingly discussing congestion pricing as a strategy for improving transportation system performance. In fact, many transportation experts believe that congestion pricing offers promising opportunities to costeffectively reduce traffic congestion, improve the reliability of highway system performance ...

Growing congestion in the U.S. transportation network poses a substantial threat to the U.S. economy and to the quality of life of millions of Americans. According to the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), in 2003, congestion in the top 85 U.S. urban areas caused 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and 2.3 billions gallons ...