The Federal Role in Highway Research and Technology Special Report 261 (2001) / Chapter Skim
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Executive Summary
Executive Summary
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The highway industry -- the joint publicprivate enterprise responsible for the highway system -- is highly decentralized. More than 35,000 government units manage the highway system, and tens of thousands of private contractors, material 1
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These include the Superpave® pavement design system, which reduces costs and extends pavement life relative to traditional designs; an automated data-collection system for commercial truckers, based on intelligent transportation system technologies, that reduces the cost of regulatory compliance for both truckers and state highway officials; use of composite materials to strengthen concrete bridge structures and reduce seismic-induced damage; and improved roadside safety devices that minimize the loss of life and property when vehicles run off the road.
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These challenges arise from the demandcapacity imbalance noted above, as well as from highway user preferences; from legislation, including the 1991 and 1998 federal-aid highway program reauthorization bills; and from the need to sustain a well-functioning highway system as an integral part of the nations' overall transportation system. These challenges include increasing traffic congestion, complex repair and rehabilitation needs, concerns about highway safety, environmental and energy issues, the need for improved planning and decision-making tools, and the need to assess the role of highways in the nations' transportation system.
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The program addresses a wide range of topics and includes many related activities in support of other highway R&T programs. The majority of the program is aimed at incremental improvements leading to lower construction and maintenance costs, better system performance, added highway capacity, reduced highway fatalities and injuries, reduced adverse environmental impacts, and a variety of user benefits (such as improved travel times and fewer hazards)
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Assessment of Federal Highway R&T Program In examining the role of federal highway R&T, the Research and Technology Coordinating Committee recognized four contextual features of the highway industry and highway innovation that are important for understanding the federal role in highway R&T in terms of what it is and what it could be: · Many stakeholders -- Federal highway R&T has many external and internal stakeholders. External stakeholders include highway users, the highway industry, and people and communities served and affected by highways.
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those that are tailored to the specific context in which the program operates. Drawing on both types, the committee identified eight characteristics as key to the success and effectiveness of the federal highway R&T program: · Clear mission with well-defined goals that complement other R&T programs, · Significant opportunities for technological progress and innovation, · Early and sustained external stakeholder involvement, · Provisions for open competition and merit review to safeguard the federal R&T investment, · Mechanisms for information management and dissemination, · Rigorous program evaluation, · Adequate resources, and · Appropriate leadership of national highway R&T activities.
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For example, fundamental research aimed at improving understanding of the properties of pavement materials at the molecular level could lead to better asphalt and concrete pavements by improving the predictability of the life-cycle performance of different pavement designs. Similarly, fundamental research on individual travel behavior, lifestyle choices, and household activity patterns could lead to the development of better predictive models of regional travel demand to replace current descriptive models calibrated with aggregate data.
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These stakeholders include the federal, state, and local government agencies that construct, maintain, and administer the nations' public highways; the private companies that supply materials, equipment, and services used by these agencies; and a wide array of highway users, communities, and public interest groups. FHWAs' recent solicitation of highway research needs through the National Highway R&T Partnership Forum activity is a noteworthy first step toward obtaining broad stakeholder input.
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Although the amount of funding made available to individuals is quite modest, such funds are vital for attracting and supporting some of the nations' best young minds to highway and transportation research and thereby play an important role in graduate education. University transportation research funded under the UTC program should be subject to the same guidelines as FHWAs' R&T program -- open competition, merit review, stakeholder involvement, and continuing as sessment of outcomes -- to ensure maximum return on the funds invested.
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F-SHRP is aimed at making substantial progress toward four critical research goals: · Developing a consistent, systematic approach to performing highway renewal that is rapid, causes minimum disruption, and produces long-lived facilities; · Preventing or reducing the severity of highway crashes through more accurate knowledge of crash factors and of the cost-effectiveness of selected countermeasures in addressing these factors; · Providing highway users with reliable travel times by preventing and reducing the impact of nonrecurring incidents; and · Developing approaches and tools for systematically integrating environmental, economic, and community requirements into the analysis, planning, and design of new highway capacity. It is important that the proposed funding for the F-SHRP research -- derived from federal-aid highway program allocations to the states that would other
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Therefore, if Congress agrees with the committees' recommendations for an improved federal highway R&T program, it should provide FHWA with the funding and funding flexibility needed to undertake the recommended changes. Without such changes in its R&T funding and funding flexibility, FHWA will be unable to reform its R&T pro gram as the committee has recommended.
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2001. Special Report 260: Strategic Highway Research: Saving Lives, Reducing Congestion, Improving Quality of Life.
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