Preliminary research addresses the question of whether highway departments allocate their limited funds consistent with maintenance and congestion demands. The approach uses a model explaining a state's highway budget allocation to the various counties within the state. Explanatory variables are volume of usage, congestion, and road deterioration in each county. The coefficients of the estimated modelenable an interpretation of the influences underlying state roadwaypolicy. The state used for this research is florida. The model was estimated twice, once with interstate highway data for each county, and once with state highway data, not including interstates. Resultsfor both estimations were similar, although stronger for the interstate estimation. The number of urban lane-miles that a county has explains the size of highway budgets more than any of the other variables does. This result runs counter to the expectation that more congestion would induce greater construction and operational spending torelieve it. The results also suggest that truck-caused damage is being insufficiently addressed. Results are preliminary and more experience is needed with this approach before its veracity can be judged. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1305, Finance, planning, programming, economic analysis, and land development1991.
Abstract