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The Economic Benefits of Public Investment in Transportation

A Review of Recent Literature

Matthew P. Drennan

This article reviews the recent literature on the long-term economic benefits of public investments in transportation. It organizes the literature into six groups according to the type of benefit being measured, namely, output; productivity; production costs; income, property values, employment, and real wages; rate of return; and noncommercial travel time. The central question addressed by the papers reviewed is whether public investments in transportation yield long-term economic benefits. While the different studies arrive at different numerical answers, most of them do indicate a positive and statistically significant relationship between such investments and economic benefit measures. Transportation planners engaged in the effort to win funding for the best of competing projects would gain by an awareness of that economic benefit literature and by applying the methods to measuring benefits of their projects.

Key Words: transportation • infrastructure • public investment • economic impact

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