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This document is a summary of the 23^rd edition of the Status of the Nation's Highway, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance Report to Congress (C&P Report). The C&P Report is intended to provide decision makers with an objective appraisal of the physical conditions, operational performance, and financing mechanisms of highways, bridges, and transit systems based on both their current state and their projected future state under a set of alternative future investment scenarios. The report offers a comprehensive, data-driven background context to support the development and evaluation of legislative, program, and budget options at all levels of government. It also serves as a primary source of information for national and international news media, transportation associations, and industry.

The main body of the report is organized into four major sections and draws primarily on 2014 data. Part I, Moving a Nation, contains the core retrospective analyses of the report and includes chapters on infrastructure assets, revenue sources and expenditure patterns, personal travel, mobility and access, safety, and physical conditions.

Part II, Investing in the Future, contains the core prospective analyses of the report, including 20-year future capital investment scenarios. Chapters in this section relate a set of select capital investment scenarios to current levels of capital investments; provide supplemental analysis relating to primary investment scenarios and compare the findings of the future investment scenarios to findings in previous reports; discuss scenario implications; explain how changing some underlying technical assumptions would affect future highway and transit investment scenarios; and project the potential impacts of additional alternative technical levels of future capital investment on the future performance of various components of the system.

The highway investment scenarios are developed in part from the Highway Economic Requirements System (HERS), which models highway investment using benefit-cost analysis. The HERS model quantifies user, agency, and societal costs for various types and combinations of capital improvements. HERS considers costs associated with travel time, vehicle operation, safety, routine maintenance, and emissions, including greenhouse gases. Bridge investment scenario estimates are developed from the National Bridge Investment Analysis System (NBIAS) model. Unlike earlier bridge models (and similar to HERS), NBIAS incorporates benefit-cost analysis into the bridge investment/performance evaluation. The transit investment analysis is based on the Transit Economic Requirements Model (TERM). TERM consolidates older engineering-based evaluation tools and uses a benefit-cost analysis to ensure that investment benefits exceed investment costs. TERM identifies the investments needed to replace and rehabilitate existing assets, improve operating performance, and expand transit systems to address the growth in travel demand.

Part III, Highway Freight Transportation Conditions and Performance, explores issues pertaining specifically to freight movement, including those focused on the National Highway System (NHS) and the conditions and performance of the National Highway Freight Network. Part IV, Recommendations for HPMS Changes, provides information on the status and planned direction of the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS). The C&P Report also contains three technical appendices that describe the investment/performance methodologies used in the report for highways, bridges, and transit. A fourth appendix describes an ongoing research effort for Reimagining the C&P Report in a Performance Management-Based World.

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