Title
The Full Cost of Intercity Highway Transportation
Abstract
In this paper we review the theoretical and empirical literature on the cost structure of the provision of intercity highway transportation and specify and estimate our own cost functions . We develop a full cost model which identifies the key cost components and then estimate costs component by component: user costs, infrastructure costs, time and congestion costs, noise costs, accident costs, and pollution costs. The total long run average cost is $0.34 per vehicle kilometer traveled. The single largest cost category is freeflow travel time. While the marginal cost of infrastructure is higher than its average cost, indicating that new construction is increasingly expensive, the marginal cost of driving (user fixed and variable costs) is less than the average cost, indicating that by increasing travel the user can spread his fixed cost of a vehicle over more trips without penalty.
Identifiers
doi: 10.1016/S1361-9209(97)00037-0
Previously Published Citation
Levinson, David, and David Gillen (1998) The Full Cost of Intercity Highway Transportation. Transportation Research part D 3(4) 207-223.
Funding information
California Department of Transportation,
California High Speed Rail Commission,
Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley
Suggested Citation
Levinson, David M; Gillen, David.
(1998).
The Full Cost of Intercity Highway Transportation.
Pergamon.
Retrieved from the University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy,
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/179857.