Salt & Winter Roadway Safety: For Roadway Maintainers (Snowfighters)

Since US highway funding is tied directly to a per-gallon fee that exempts non-petroleum fuels like ethanol, receipts in the Highway Trust Fund are not increasing fast enough to cover the escalating costs of maintaining the nation's highway infrastructure, much less reduce the congestion that is choking economic competitiveness.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) has produced a valuable deskbook reference with some of the key facts that will be useful as the debate heats up on how to pay for highway construction and maintenance when the Trust Fund goes into deficit in 2009. Future Needs of the U.S. Surface Transportation System is worth keeping handy.

Just a few facts to whet your appetite:

In 2005, the US invested $75 billion in construction and rehabilitation ($33 billion federal; $42 billion state/local).

To improve highways will require an additional $118.9 billion ($155.5 billion if you include bridges).

Trucks carry 79% of freight tonnage. Today only 30 miles of Interstate highways carry 50,000 trucks per day per mile; by 2035, increased freight volume will increase this to 2,500 miles.

Several blue ribbon commissions are studying the future of highway finance.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 10:00 AM | Permalink

The Federal Highway Administration has just released its 2006 Conditions and Performance Report with bad news about increased congestion. In urban areas, more than 30% of traffic now occurs on congested highways. This ranges from 16.6% in rural areas to 40.7% in large urban centers -- and it's getting worse. In the past decade, congestion in these larger centers has increased from 34.4% -- a 20% increase in ten years. Looked at another way, in these larger centers, "rush hour" was 5.9 hours a day in 1995 and is now 6.6 hours. (see Chapter 4)

Predictable (recurring) congestion imposes huge costs, but worse is "non-recurring congestion" as occurs, say, during winter storms. Half of all congestion is "non-recurring" and here we have operations strategies that can significantly reduce travel time waste and improve roadway safety -- as in providing effective winter maintenance and timely application of salt to roadways to prevent snow and ice from bonding to the pavement. (See chapter 15)

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 08:20 AM | Permalink