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Local Government Wheel Tax for Road Infrastructure Improvements

Date and Time: Wednesday, July 26: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Grand Ballroom A

 

Lead Presenter: Sam Owusu-Ababio

Professor, University of Wisconsin-Platteville

Speaker Biography

Sam Owusu-Ababio is a Professor in the Civil & Environmental Engineering Dept at University of Wisconsin-Platteville (UW-Platteville) with specialties in Pavement Analysis & Design, Traffic Engineering, and Geographic Information Systems. He is a registered professional engineer in Wisconsin and serves on the Wisconsin DOT Rigid Pavement Technical Oversight Committee. He is a member of ASCE and the Transportation & Development Institute and a past recipient of the Wisconsin Section ASCE Engineer in Education Award. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in civil engineering from the University of Science and Technology in Ghana and his Master’s & Ph.D. degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Prior to joining UW-Platteville, he worked for the Connecticut Dept of Transportation in Rocky Hill, CT and for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission in Springfield, Massachusetts.

He serves as the advisor to the student chapter of Engineers without Borders at UW-Platteville where he has led student teams to design and build small scale infrastructure projects for underserved communities in Ghana, West Africa. Major projects completed by Professor Owusu-Ababio and his team of students and professional mentors include two schools that currently enroll 930 students, a pedestrian bridge that provides communities access to health facilities and economic activity centers, and two erosion control and waterway improvement projects. He and his team will be heading back to Ghana next week to begin the construction of a third school to accommodate 200 children.

Co-Authors 

Presentation Description/Paper Summary

While labor, fringe, and material costs have increased substantially in the past two decades, state and local government budget allocations for road infrastructure have not been commensurate with these cost trends. Consequently, maintenance deferral and backlog are becoming common practice with adverse impacts on road users and infrastructure performance. These challenges demand innovative funding methods to address the maintenance backlog and needed improvements. Two innovative funding methods that have gained attention in recent years include special assessment fees and the wheel tax. The special assessment fee is levied on private developers to meet the cost of local government improvements that augment the developer’s property value. The wheel tax is a fee imposed by local governments per codified law on vehicles with a prescribed weight limit or weight and wheel combination. This paper examined the impact of the wheel tax on road infrastructure funding for Iowa county in Wisconsin. Per Wisconsin statute, local governments can impose a flat annual registration fee on certain vehicle types kept under their jurisdiction. Iowa county implemented a wheel tax of $20 in 2015. Within 5 years of its implementation, the county collected $2.1 million. This provided the required matching funds for larger state and federal grant money for the construction and rehabilitation of 14.13 miles of roads and three bridges at a cost of $6.93 million. The county's experience suggests that the wheel tax is an option to raise additional funds for clearing backlog of road improvements and meet matching fund requirements for external grants.

Presentation File

Poster