TRB Report Discusses Equity in Transportation Funding, Finance Options

With declining transportation funding resources, transportation experts are increasingly considering a variety of innovative financing options such as congestion pricing, open road tolling, and public-private partnerships. A newly published Transportation Research Board report emphasizes the need for additional research into how the new funding tools might affect equity.The report, “Equity of Evolving Transportation Finance Mechanisms,” was developed by a committee established in 2008 to review the equity of alternatives to current transportation finance mechanisms — primarily those based on tolling and road pricing.

The committee’s report — which considers equity as synonymous with fairness — concludes that the fairness of a given type of finance mechanism depends on how it is structured, what transportation alternatives are offered to users, and which aspects of equity are deemed most important.

The report, which includes four papers commissioned by the committee, says that policy makers should insist on “well-designed studies of transportation finance that yield reliable information about the likely distribution of burdens and benefits, and that facilitate comparison of a given finance strategy with alternatives.” The report also says that constituents and other stakeholders should be consulted early and often when policy makers consider the use of new or unfamiliar transportation finance mechanisms.

The report says that researchers need to explore in more detail how people change their travel behaviors in response to changes in transportation prices. The report also recommends the development of a handbook for state and local governments describing procedures for conducting equity analyses of transportation finance policies.

The report is available online at bit.ly/trbequityrpt.