Resources

Mining Recovery Act Data for Opportunities to Improve the State of Practice for Overall Economic Impact Analysis of Transportation Investments

Friday, January 20, 2012

Practitioners and stakeholders often cite the creation of short-term jobs as an important justification for new transportation investments. However, credible information about the short-term economic impacts is frequently missing from important transportation decision-making processes (such as long-range transportation plans and programming of projects, to mention a few) due to the lack of access to reliable economic data.

Under the Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), states, MPOs, transit agencies, and other agencies are collecting and reporting a wealth of data on the short-term jobs impacts of ARRA-funded transportation projects. This creates a unique opportunity to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of jobs data in describing the stimulative economic impacts of transportation investments. This research assesses the process for reporting short-term job data, reviews previous reports and findings, discusses data limitations, and conducts an analysis of the short-term direct job impact of ARRA spending at the national level and for four individual states. It should be noted that the focus of this research is on direct short-term jobs, thus it does not include an evaluation of indirect or induced jobs. Furthermore, the research says nothing about the long-term impacts of transportation investment on economic competitiveness and performance which are likely to be much more significant than the short-term impacts.