Oklahoma State Senate

December 1998

Roads, continued

Trucks doing the most damage per VMT are not the most common truck, the 5-axle combination unit, but the 3- and 4-axle single unit trucks such as dump trucks and cement trucks. These vehicles are primarily loaded with highly dense materials and have a weight per axle average far above that of any other vehicle. These trucks represent a small percentage of VMT (0.4%), but their cost responsibility for new pavement improvements, from 0.66 to 1.58 cents per mile, is as much as thirty-two times that of cars, pickups and vans (0.05 cents/mile).

All single-unit trucks, including the less damaging two-axle units, will comprise about 3% of VMT in 2000. Cost responsibility for these trucks will approach 12%, with payments equaling 10 per cent.

Cost responsibility for FY2000 federal new pavement improvements averages 5/100 of a cent per mile for passenger vehicles including cars, pickups and vans, and buses. The average cost responsibility for new pavements for single unit trucks is 31/100 of a cent per mile and 66/100 cents per mile for combination trucks. Within those two truck categories average costs vary from about 20/100 cents per mile for light single units to almost 3 cents per mile for the heaviest combinations.

The table at left shows the absolute overpayment or underpayment of highway cost responsibility by different vehicle classes. While both single unit trucks and combination trucks each contain subclasses that overpay their cost responsibility, each class as a whole underpays. Pickups and vans make up the cost responsibility underpayments for all classes.

The chart on page 1 shows the discrepancy between costs paid and new pavement costs for which a particular class is responsible.

Combination trucks, while comprising less than one percent of total vehicles on the road, total over 4% of vehicle miles traveled. Each combination truck averages 6 times as many miles each year as each car, pickup or van. QM

Sources:

Office of Highway Information Management
Federal Highway Administration, Federal Highway Cost Allocation Study (1997)

Oklahoma's population will grow 24% in the next quarter century according to U.S. Census Bureau Population Projections. The U.S. as whole is projected to grow 27.5% in the next 25 years. Oklahoma's population has grown more than 5% during the decade of the 1990s compared with a 7.3% growth nationally.

Up until 2025 Oklahoma will grow faster than the neighboring states of:
Arkansas (23%)
Kansas (21.2%)
Louisiana (18.2%)
Missouri (17.4%)

See Demographics, page 4

Population Projections, U.S. versus Oklahoma

Click on the graph to view at full size