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US Elevation Map and Hillshade. US County Map. US National Park Map. Satellite Map of USA. Physical Map of the United States. Route 21 U. Route 30 U. Route 31 and 14 more Interstate 89 Interstate 91 Interstate Route 86 Interstate 1 Interstate 21 Interstate Route 86 U. Route U. Explore Wikis Community Central. Register Don't have an account? Assuring adequate funding to maintain the NHS as a first-class transportation network should be a priority of surface transportation program reauthorization legislation.
ARTBA encourages Congress to significantly increase federal funding for bridge repair and replacement and continue discretionary funding for high-cost bridge projects. Proper investment should be made on individual projects to ensure that the highest quality materials and state-of-the-art technologies are used on federal-aid bridges. ARTBA believes the federal government should establish uniform bridge inspection standards so that bridge funding priorities can be established. The choice between whether to rehabilitate or replace a structurally deficient bridge should be based on careful inspections and detailed cost comparisons that consider safety, future maintenance, environmental and social impact, and operational costs.
Such studies, design services and bridge inspections should utilize professionally qualified engineers. We also encourage the federal government to take the lead in developing and coordinating a national information system that would catalogue and share technical experiences and expertise in the areas of bridge repair and rehabilitation. Actions or strategies that prevent, delay or reduce deterioration of bridges or bridge elements, restore the function of existing bridges, keep bridges in good condition and extend their life.
Preservation actions may be preventive or condition-driven. While the focus of the federal program should be providing adequate resources to maintain a first-class NHS, ARTBA also supports a strong federal commitment to helping meet non-NHS highway and bridge needs.
Greater financial support for these highways is necessary to meet identified capital needs. Upgrading these routes must remain a priority to help reduce urban congestion and improve rural mobility. The FAST Act of renamed this program the Surface Transportation Block Grant Program and continued the trend of post program reauthorizations of increasing state flexibility in the use of these funds.
We support and encourage efforts to improve highway access to ports, airports, rail lines and terminals. ARTBA believes state and local governments should be given the flexibility to allocate their share of federal funding within the framework of the Federal-aid Highway Program as they see fit, providing that national highway needs within their state are met.
Providing flexibility to transfer highway program funds to non-highway activities, however, raises concern. Shifting limited highway funds to other purposes delays needed highway and bridge capital improvements.
With the U. In carrying out these responsibilities, it is essential that states continue to be allowed to streamline federal program requirements, particularly in the area of project oversight where certification is required. Deploying innovation, technology and process improvements to deliver transportation projects in a safer, less costly, and faster manner has been a major U.
Department of Transportation priority for more than 20 years. In contrast to these well intentioned goal, a decades-old regulation 23 CFR Since many new technologies — particularly those that mark a significant advance in safety, quality, performance, or durability — incorporate intellectual property protected by patents or proprietary processes, 23 CFR While the regulation does provide several avenues for limited exceptions to the general prohibition, a number of logistical and human factors stemming from this regulation continue to unnecessarily obstruct product innovations that could enhance the safety and efficiency of the U.
As such, this regulation should be repealed or dramatically reformed to ensure the latest technological and operational advances are deployed to improve public safety, enhance durability and preserve limited financial resources in the delivery of highway and bridge projects. ISTEA created new responsibilities in the areas of project selection and funding. Implementation has affected significant shifts in the decision-making roles of state and local governments.
Congress should examine where the process has worked and where difficulties have been encountered and make appropriate adjustments. States and metropolitan planning organizations MPOs should be permitted a reasonable level of over-programming to assure that all available federal funding is utilized. MPO plans should define workable solutions to projected needs and be used to define funding needs, regardless of current revenues.
ARTBA supports efforts to reduce regulatory delay in the surface transportation project review and approval process. ARTBA has championed measures aimed at streamlining the process that maintain existing environmental protections in multiple surface transportation reauthorization bills.
While these efforts have contributed to positive changes in the process, such as time limits on specific regulatory decisions and deadlines for filling lawsuits opposing projects, there is still much work to be done. Specific examples where further progress can be made include:. Also ARTBA opposes increased regulatory burdens in other areas which could hinder the progress made in reducing delay in the transportation review and approval process.
ARTBA believes the partnering process should be implemented on all highway projects-from conception through construction. The Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century—or MAP—surface transportation program reauthorization law established a comprehensive performance management process designed to direct federal highway funds to specific national goals.
ARTBA supports this important reform and believes this process should—as directed by MAP—focus on outcomes related to the physical conditions and system performance of the National Highway System as opposed to externalities such as greenhouse gas emissions, livability and land-use planning.
System performance standards should: reflect the causes and consequences of traffic congestion; be data driven; incorporate the economic costs of congestion; reflect the impact of infrastructure conditions on roadway safety; and be integrated with national freight policy.
Furthermore, any pavement condition standards should attempt to balance both pavement smoothness and an assessment of subsurface conditions and foundations. Furthermore, given the primacy of safety in the list of national goals in Section b , the minimum conditions for the Interstate System should not be limited to pavement conditions, but should include safety measures, including maintenance of shoulders and right of way, pavement markings, guardrails, signage and other elements affecting safe travel.
The goals of the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise DBE program should be to attract certifiable DBE firms, to enable and assist them to grow and develop within the safe harbor of the DBE program, and to graduate them into the broader, unsheltered market as financially viable and technically proficient construction companies.
The DBE program should use the rate at which DBE firms successfully graduate into the unsheltered construction market as its primary metric. The periodic re-justification for the compelling need for DBE programs does not justify the lack of a time limit on how long a DBE firm may remain certified.
Long-standing programmatic issues should be fixed. ARTBA opposes mandatory hiring preferences — such as those based on residence or income level — for federal-aid highway and transit projects. This can lead to displacement of existing employees and cost increases as contractors take on the risk of inexperienced or superfluous labor.
As the steward of the federal-aid highway and transit programs, the U. Department of Transportation should pursue policies that maximize competition for these projects. Accordingly, the department should prohibit use of these hiring mandates, as was its long-standing policy before This will also ensure that local, sometimes inflammatory political priorities do not have an outsized effect on federal-aid project funding and delivery. On many projects around the country, contractors have successfully worked with public agencies to conduct voluntary, targeted hiring programs.
That is the preferred approach. This practice rewards contractors who utilize good management practices and innovative techniques and technologies to deliver contracted work prior to deadline.
It also reduces inconvenience to the highway user caused by construction activity. Policy makers must understand, however, that the Federal-aid Highway System is owned and operated by public agencies on behalf of the taxpayer. Final payment to a contractor for work conducted is not made until the public owner agency has inspected and certified that the project has been built to the specifications that it set forth. Further, highway contractors do not have control over the myriad elements that affect the durability of a highway project i.
For these reasons, ARTBA believes it is unreasonable for government to require a contractor to warrant or guarantee a highway project and will oppose such initiatives. ARTBA opposes contractor ratings systems, such as the one implemented by the New Mexico Department of Transportation in , which can alter the procurement process by changing bid prices.
The New Mexico program includes ratings metrics that are subjective, and may also dissuade contractors from pursuing legitimate claims because it may harm their future ratings and negatively affect their bids. In contrast, the low-bid contracting system should be completely objective and transparent, without the uncertainties of a New Mexico-style program. To maximize the federal investment, Federally-aided highways and bridges must be adequately maintained.
Experience has shown that contracting out highway and bridge maintenance activities to private-sector firms can save tax dollars and improve efficiency. Surface transportation law should encourage greater use of contracting out for the maintenance of these structures.
Every effort must be made to ensure that highway users receive maximum benefit from every dollar invested in highway capital improvements. To help achieve this goal, greater emphasis must be placed on public and private highway research and development programs and technology transfer activities that can bring new products, techniques and ideas quickly into the field.
As a result, the public received little information that could be used to evaluate the benefits received from the motor fuel and other taxes paid into the federal Highway Trust Fund. Department of Transportation should replicate for the core highway and public transportation programs the commitment it applied to telling the American public how it was benefiting from transportation funds provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The department has sufficient project data that this goal can be achieved without imposing any new state reporting requirements.
The more information taxpayers have on the purposes and benefits of highway and bridge and transit improvement projects, the better will be their ability to evaluate these programs. The model for this should be the format used by the Department to report on the obligation and use of highway and public transportation funds provided under the stimulus bill, but expanded to include information on the goal or goals each project is intended to achieve and what the project did achieve when completed.
Federal surface transportation law should encourage, but not mandate, the use of recycled materials in federal-aid highway projects when it is economical and technologically feasible and applied research has provided adequate assurance that human health, safety, the environment and pavement quality are not compromised. Design criteria should not be lowered to allow the use of recycled materials. To accelerate the introduction of better materials and more efficient designs, equipment and technologies into transportation development, states should be given the latitude to test new and innovative technologies on Federal-aid highway projects without prior approval from the FHWA.
The accommodation of heavy truck traffic results in greater costs to maintain existing facilities and the need to provide increased structural strength on new and rehabilitated roads and bridges. There is a need to complete the necessary research on effective methods to reduce the damaging effect of heavy truck traffic on the highway system and to better utilize the greater capacity of our modern highways and bridges.
ARTBA encourages the use of highway right-of-way for public transportation purposes as long as such use does not limit highway use. Highways must be designed and constructed in ways that assure the maximum safety and efficiency possible for all highway users, recognizing the vast differences that exist in the size and weight of motor vehicles that must share the road.
Provisions must also be made on roads and streets for pedestrians, bicycles, mopeds and motorcycles, buses and other high-occupancy vehicles. The concept seeks to tie payment to contractors for work already performed to specification to, among other things, the durability over time of highway pavements-something contractors have little control over. ARTBA believes this concept would inject subjective judgments into the open competitive bidding process and cause contractors serious financial problems.
When a contractual claim on a federal-aid surface transportation project is found in favor of the private-sector architect, engineer, or contractor, the owner agency should be required to pay them prejudgment interest on damages, or otherwise provide an equitable adjustment for costs incurred as a result of the claim or change order. And what would you guess the average American road looks like? You might not be surprised to know that most of the 4.
More so than asphalt, gravel and dirt roads have to be regularly maintained. Somewhere between three and five times per year, gravel roads need to be graded, which evens out their surface and prevents rutting and erosion. That comes out to between five and six million miles of grading annually. Quite the project.
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