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A Framework for Determining Highway Truck-Freight Benefits and Economic Impacts

Effective truck-freight transportation is critical to both national and local economic competitiveness. Given limited institutional funding, a rational investment prioritization framework is needed for decision makers that supports allocating funding to the most effective projects. However, there is no known nationally-accepted framework for analyzing the full range and full impact of freight related projects. In light of this, this paper proposes a method for not only calculating the direct freight benefits, but also the larger economic impacts of transportation projects. Measurable and critical freight related benefits resulting from transportation investments are developed from a review of the literature, as well as technical input from collaborative meetings with stakeholder groups in Washington State. The identified direct transportation benefits included in the methodology are travel time savings, operating cost savings, and environmental impacts. These are estimated using regional transportation demand models, and additional factors. Economic impacts are estimated using a regional Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model. The total project impacts are estimated combining the outputs of the transportation model and an economic model. A Washington State highway widening project is used as a case study to demonstrate the method. The proposed method is transparent, and can be used to identify total freight specific benefits and generated impacts. This framework will ultimately be used to enhance Washington State’s infrastructure investment prioritization process.