Smart Transportation Tip of the Week
November 19, 2008 — Smart Transportation Theme 1: Money Counts
The transportation world is currently experiencing a “perfect storm” of events that are creating a hugely challenging financial environment.
Cost inflation has been rampant, perhaps beyond anything we have ever seen before, due largely to demand from developing countries such as China. Since 2003, for instance, the cost of fabricated structural steel has risen by 156% and hot mix asphalt by 88%, sharply eroding PennDOT’s purchasing power.
Meanwhile, during this past summer, gas and diesel prices were higher than ever. This year, for the first time since the 1970s, vehicle miles traveled (VMT) has decreased from the previous year. While this trend has positive impacts on congestion and the environment, it also results in less gas tax revenue at the federal, state, and local levels. Additionally, other sources of revenue are constrained, especially given the current economic climate.
Finally, as a large state with a long history, Pennsylvania has an incredible amount of transportation facilities. Simply maintaining this infrastructure consumes a huge portion of our resources—to say nothing of enhancing these facilities or building new ones.
All DOTs across the nation are experiencing difficult financial challenges. Smart Transportation provides us with a new way to approach these challenges so that we can continue providing great service to the Commonwealth’s residents.
November 12, 2008 — A New Generation of Transportation Challenges
In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower issued a call for the nation to dedicate itself to what many thought would be an impossible task: building a vast network of freeways that would span the world’s third largest country.
The President wrote, “We are pushing ahead with a great road program, a road program that will take this Nation out of its antiquated shackles of secondary roads… the expanding horizon is one that staggers the imagination.” We responded to this challenge successfully and only 50 years later, we had built 210,895 lane miles of interstate highways, a system unrivalled anywhere in the world.
We now have a similar generational challenge before us: creating a transportation system that is safe, efficient, and sustainable in an era of limited revenues, soaring materials and energy costs, and rising concern about climate change. This new financial, political, environmental, and social context is drastically changing the needs and demands of our transportation system.
We’ve had impossible tasks laid at our feet before, and we’ve achieved them. Smart Transportation is the Interstate Highway System of the 21st Century, and we will—yet again—succeed in tackling this challenge.