The Highway Revenue Assessment Tool, built in Microsoft Excel, gives users insights into how the road network is funded by motor fuel taxes and how that revenue will change with new market conditions. The tool also allows users to explore scenarios to change motor fuel taxes and fees on electric vehicles to address revenue shortfalls.

All highway revenue data is state-based and from the Federal Highway Administration’s Highway Statistics Series. All projections for changes in the market, including inflation, vehicle stock, fuel economy, and vehicle miles traveled are from the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2019 Annual Energy Outlook. Users can easily customize assumptions derived from these sources to conduct tailored analyses that may better reflect real-world conditions.

To accompany the tool, a dashboard tool is provided that conveys the results of more than 470,000 scenarios for all states under various conditions. The dashboard allows users to explore the effects of different market and policy factors on highway revenue. All results shown were attained directly from the Excel tool.

Dashboard Tool

User Guide

Release Notes

Found what’s new and download previous versions of the tool.

Version	Date	Author	Organization	Revisions
1.5	11/10/2021	Nick Nigro	Atlas Public Policy	Changed default gasoline tax accuracy to four significant digits for better rounding. Changed name to gasoline vehicle stock in output to be more accurate. Subtracted EV revenue change from gasoline vehicle stock change to isolate effects of change in these two variables and correct issue in presenting these revenue changes in a stacked bar chart. Added interaction of VMT, fuel economy, and gasoline vehicle stock to outputs to improve accuracy of the source of revenue change. Updated FHWA data to 2019. Changed how baseline revenue is calculated. Use Highway Statistics Series SF-1 as baseline state motor fuel tax revenue used for highways. Multiply that figure by the estimated share of revenue from gasoline taxes, which is calculated as a gasoline share of the tax rate times the fuel consumed for gasoline and diesel taxes.
1.4	3/29/2021	Nick Nigro	Atlas Public Policy	Updated data sources to new baseline year (2019). Updated data with latest information from Federal Highway Statistics Series and U.S. Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook for 2020.
1.3	6/11/2020	Josh Rosenberg	Atlas Public Policy	Fixed bug related to an improper calculation of gasoline vehicle stock when indexing fuel use to inflation. Resolved issue with an incorrect calculation of future gasoline tax when indexing to fuel use. Fixed incorrect reference to base year for summary stats.
1.2	6/2/2020	Josh Rosenberg	Atlas Public Policy	Fixed bug introduced in version 1.1 relating to how Gasoline Vehicles Stock Proxy, an estimate of the number of vehicles on the road in the first year, is calculated.
1.1	5/20/2020	Josh Rosenberg	Atlas Public Policy	Fixed bug related to updating default inputs in the optional revenue settings. Added average annual % change to outputs.
1.0	4/30/2020	Nick Nigro	Atlas Public Policy	Initial Release. Since Beta release, completed bug fixing. Added multivariate scenario analysis support (undocumented feature). Added Custom Scenarios feature.
0.1	12/24/2019	Nick Nigro	Atlas Public Policy	Beta release of tool