-------------------------Indexing Terms------------------------- 
REPORTNUM:   GAO-05-423SPHIG						        

TITLE:     HIGHLIGHTS OF AN EXPERT PANEL: The Benefits and 
Costs of Highway and Transit Investments

DATE:   05/06/2005 
				                                                                         
----------------------------------------------------------------- 

******************************************************************
** This file contains an ASCII representation of the text of a  **
** GAO Product.                                                 **
**                                                              **
** No attempt has been made to display graphic images, although **
** figure captions are reproduced.  Tables are included, but    **
** may not resemble those in the printed version.               **
**                                                              **
** Please see the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, when     **
** available, for a complete electronic file of the printed     **
** document's contents.                                         **
**                                                              **
******************************************************************
GAO-05-423SPHIG

May 06, 2005

HIGHLIGHTS OF AN EXPERT PANEL

           The Benefits and Costs of Highway and Transit Investments

[IMG]

What Participants Said

GAO asked expert panel participants to discuss how to conceptualize,
measure, improve, and use information about the benefits and costs of
highway and transit investments. The expert panel was not designed to
reach a consensus on these issues, but several themes emerged from the
panel's discussion, including the following:

o  Benefit-cost analysis can be a useful tool to inform transportation
investment decisions.

o  Requiring benefit-cost analysis can be useful if it is fully integrated
into the decision making process and not seen as a compliance checklist.

o  Transportation investments seldom are compared across modes.

o  Better analytic tools are needed to evaluate land use and
distributional impacts of investments.

o  Quality of state and local transportation data needs to be improved so
that travel models can accurately predict patterns, trends, and needs.

                 United States Government Accountability Office
*** End of document. ***