What Do Road Impact Fees Have to Do With It? Resolving Transportation Problems in Palm Beach County, Florida

This thesis examined the road impact fee realities of 11 of Palm Beach County’s public and private sector land development stakeholders. To learn more about how the county’s road impact fee ordinance works in practice, in 2021, 11 stakeholders were interviewed about their experiences with the county’s road impact fee program. Transportation impact fee programs may help relieve development-driven traffic externalities and cost burdens, so long as suitable methodologies are applied (Burge & Ihlanfeldt, 2013; Stahl, 2021). In 2021, Palm Beach County’s road impact fee ordinance required all county development applicants to pay a specified road impact fee dollar amount, regardless of the proposed project’s location and traffic impact, with exceptions (Moore, 2021b; Salour, 2021). Key arguments for and against the county’s road impact fees touch on differences between travel needs, land use patterns, and transit potential in the county’s urban and rural/suburban communities (Clemente, 2021; Hernandez, 2021; Salour, 2021).