Salt & Winter Roadway Safety: For Highway Users

The Washington Post carries stories of lots of apologies, many of them, unfortunately, from erring "public servants." And many of those aren't apologies at all, deep down. They often lament the pain, humiliation and embarrassment their errant behavior inflicts on others without displaying the authentic repentence most of us are taught each Sabbath.

Now comes the Virginia Department of Transportation which confessed in Friday's Post that it "bungled" the response to a February 12 ice storm that put thousands at risk and hundreds, at least, stranded in their cars on the elevated bridges of the "Mixing Bowl" in Springfield. A disastrous storm, we'd agree and the disaster compounded by VDOT's mistakes.

Congratulations, however, to VDOT for manfully stepping up and doing the right thing. Expressions of regret, even sincere and painfully public expressions, are important -- and expected. What the public should expect -- and, in this case, received -- is some evidence that things will be different next time.

We expect that VDOT does post-storm and post-season analysis of its snowfighting response efforts. That's the only way agencies can improve their performance of this life-saving service. VDOT's report, the Post summarized, identified specific failures, including that "anti-icing equipment sat unused, electronic warning signs remained dark and a motorist alert system was not updated for hours." As taxpayers and roadway users, we applaud VDOT Commissioner David Ekern's confession because it so clearly points the way forward to addressing identified shortcomings:

"We got overwhelmed," VDOT Commissioner David S. Ekern said yesterday in a telephone news conference. "We weren't prepared for the size and magnitude."

Ekern released a frank review of the agency's response to the storm, identifying errors, misjudgments and communication gaffes by VDOT workers.

"The events of February 12 were clearly unacceptable in terms of our performance," Ekern said at the news conference. "We'll learn from this, and we'll move forward."

The ice storm, which occurred at the beginning of the rush hour, closed one of the East Coast's largest highway interchanges, which was completed last year at a cost of $676 million. There were 331 traffic incidents, including 108 at the Springfield interchange between 3 p.m. and midnight, when the last ramp was reopened. About 50 injuries were reported in the region from accidents caused by the quarter-inch-thick coating of ice.

Ekern outlined a series of agency reforms and procedural changes, including developing a formal action plan for an ice storm -- VDOT does not have one -- and clarifying the chain of command. Of the more than 1,300 pieces of equipment available to the Northern Virginia VDOT district, only five are capable of anti-icing, and they are owned by contractors.

We were struck by the noted cost of this huge highway project and reminded of another multi-million number -- $205 million -- which is the DAILY COST of inadequate snowfighting in Virginia as modeled by the economic consulting firm Global Insight, Inc. These costs of failure include lost wages, lost retail sales and lost federal, state and local tax revenues payable on that economic activity. Just in terms of reducing crashes during snowstorms, applying salt to winter highways pays for itself in the first half hour after it's applied. Not a lot of government programs deliver that much bang for the buck.

Of course, we'd prefer to offer congratulations to our heroic snowfighters for their success in keeping roadways open and operating safely, but this was the next-best thing: the realistic likelihood that next winter a similiar storm will be handled with greater efficiency. Thanks for caring, VDOT.

Now, if we could only get our politicians to be such stand-up models of what to do when "mistakes were made."

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 01:10 AM | Permalink

Significant impacts on U.S. transportation planning are forecast in a new report about to be released by the Transportation Research Board, an arm of the National Academies of Science. TRB Special Report 290: Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation concedes that "Little consensus exists among transportation professionals that climate change is occurring or warrants action now." But the report identifies "plausible future scenarios" which represent "significant challenges for transportation professionals." The committee "finds compelling scientific evidence that climate change is occurring, and that it will trigger new, extreme weather events."

Special Report 290 identifies "five climate changes of particular importance to transportation and estimatedsthe probability of their occurrence during the twenty-first century." Included, as #4, is "Increases in intense precipitation events. It is highly likely (greater than 90 percent probability of occurrence) that intense precipitation events will continue to become more frequent in widespread areas of the United States."

Louisiana being America's largest salt-producing state, the salt industry will be particularly interested in the report's prediction of increased coastal flooding, particularly of the Gulf coast and drier conditions in the upper Midwest "resulting in lower water levels and reduced capactiy to ship agricultural and other bulk commodities."

Among the adaptive operational responses, the first example identified is "Snow and ice control accounts for about 40 percent of annual highway operating budgets in the northern U.S. states" and "operational responses are likely to become more routine and proactive than today's approach of treating severe weather on an ad hoc emergency basis." Roadway designers are encouraged to recognize the likelihood of more freeze-thaw cycles. In this, of course, snowfighting professionals are already well advanced in their "adaptation." The committee speculates that there will be "benefits for safety and reduced interruptions if frozen precipitation shifts to rainfall."

Canadian discussions and studies are more advanced than in the U.S. and also predict impacts on use of road salt for winter maintenance. In "Climate Change and Ontarios's Winter Roads: Trends and Impacts on Ontario Winter Road Maintainence Ops" and "Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation: A Canadian Perspective," experts agreed that salt usage in southern and western Ontario would be unchanged by global warming, but that salt usage would increase in northern and eastern parts of the province.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 11:08 AM | Permalink

The American Automobile Association last week released The AAA Crashes vs. Congestion Report arguing that societal costs from traffic fatalities and injuries is more than double the costs of congestion. Good reminder. We object only to the "versus" separating the twin concerns. We must insist on roads that are safe and congestion-free.

The study by Cambridge Systematics estimates that traffic crashes cost each American $1,051 for a total economic burden on the economy of $164.2 billion. Data from the Texas Transportation Institute put the tab for congestion at $67.6 billion or $430 per person. With Congress readying itself to tackle reauthorization of the federal surface transportation program next year and with the federal Highway Trust Fund approaching insolvency, these measures should be front-and-center in the public policy discussion.

For years, the anti-highway lobby has inveighed against "paving over America" and the highway lobby has foolishly cast the argument in terms of the deteriorating condition of the nation's roads and bridges. Too true. And when the I-35W bridge plunged into the Mississippi, the poignancy of the roadbuilders' lament was manifest. The thought of an aging and inadequate roadway infrastructure contributing to the 42,642 people killed last year on American roads is totally unacceptable. We know most of those deaths are avoidable and now we know the cost of under-funding highway improvments.

The quality of the policy debate, however, would be improved if we move beyond contesting the number of "structurally deficient" bridges or pothole-pocked or rutted roadway surfaces. Nor should we accept the notion that we need to starve investments in congestion relief to pay for safer roads. The two go hand in hand. Non-recurring congestion (the kind not caused by "rush hour") is associated with clearing traffic crashes and combatting weather conditions like snow & ice storms that contribute so much to those crashes. Simply applying salt as part of a professional winter operations program cuts 88.3% of the injury crashes and keeps the roads reliably available for our mobile society. In fact, in most states, the cost of failing to keep winter roads open through winter maintenance operations generally costs more for each day of failure than the annual cost of snowfighting (data by Global Insight, Inc.).

As Congress sets up the debate on highway spending, let's focus attention on the outcomes we can expect our roads to deliver. We shouldn't be building roads to create jobs (or re-elect politicos) nor should we endanger drivers' lives and our national economic competitiveness by short-sightedly opposing transportation improvements due to suspicion over the self-interested motivation of construction companies. Let's measure transportation outcomes -- the service we driver are paying for through our gas taxes -- and invest to reduce the tragic waste of more than 40,000 lives every year and reverse the corrosive erosion of reliable highway mobility caused by congestion.

And let's let the engineers and the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Operations help us define the choices rather than jury-rig our national highway priorities through Congressional earmarks.

It's not AAA versus AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials). Both AAA and AASHTO care deeply about BOTH safety and mobility. Let's not make this mountain tougher to scale than it already is.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 01:26 AM | Permalink

Congressional earmarks for transportation projects are distorting spending priorities and delaying improvments to America's air and surface transportation infrastructure and those delays impose huge costs on national productivity and competitiveness, according to an analysis by Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes in the March issue of The Atlantic, aptly titled "Clogged arteries." Katz and Puentes equate the unfocused investment to thickly-spread peanut butter.

A better approach, they argue would be to allocate the $50 billion in annual surface transportation spending where the probems are. Cities are being shortchanged, they say.

The nation’s 100 largest metropolitan regions generate 75 percent of its economic output. They also handle 75 percent of its foreign sea cargo, 79 percent of its air cargo, and 92 percent of its air-passenger traffic. Yet of the 6,373 earmarked projects that dominate the current federal transportation law, only half are targeted at these metro areas.

And infrastructure investment is critical to jobs creation, they explain:

In the past, strategic investments in the nation’s connective tissue—to develop railroads in the 19th century and the highway system in the 20th—turbocharged growth and transformed the country. But more recently, America’s transportation infrastructure has not kept pace with the growth and evolution of the economy. As earmarks have proliferated, the government’s infrastructure investment has lost focus. A recent academic study shows that public investment in transportation in the 1970s generated a return approaching 20 percent, mostly in the form of higher productivity. Investments in the 1980s generated only a 5 percent return; in the 1990s, the return was just 1 percent.

Check out their interactive map estimating road-traffic congestion in 2010. The cost of congestion, including added freight cost and lost productivity for commuters, reached $78 billion in 2005. Half of that occurred in just 10 metro areas.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 11:09 PM | Permalink

The Kronos Workforce Institute has just released results of a survey this winter showing that, despite heroic efforts by American snowfighters, tardiness and absenteeism are far from unusual in the U.S. snowbelt. Harris Interactive conducted the survey of 2,810 adults, "Extreme Weather Wreaking Havoc on Employee Attendance," January 14-16.

The survey found one-third (33%) of regular commuters have had their commutes affected by severe weather over the past three months. Of that segment, six in ten (61%) reported longer commuting times, nearly a quarter have been late to work (23%), one in six (16%) have had to leave early, 6% couldn't get to work at all and 5% elected to work from home rather than face the elements. Twenty percent reported lost wage income because of weather events.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 10:28 PM | Permalink

Shanghai ended a month of snowstorm-induced energy conservation Leap Year night, turning on its nightime landscaping lights, above (photo: Shanghai Daily). The first months of 2008 provided an expensive ($22 billion) lesson in the critical need to keep winter highways reliably available in winter weather to maintain economic performance in modern economies.

Posted by Dick Hanneman at 07:51 AM | Permalink