Surface Transportation Research and Technology Assessment
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Executive Summary
Because more resources than ever before have been poured into surface transportation
maintenance and reconstruction over the last six years, the United States has kept pace
with its infrastructure maintenance needs. However, within the next ten to fifteen years,
the number of crucial surface connections and arteries needing major renewal will swell,
posing a challenge for officials charged with their stewardship. The task for these
officials is to hold costs within the allocated resources, while keeping surface arteries
open and functioning efficiently, not only during routine maintenance, but also during
major renewal. Complicating matters further, recent data show that traffic congestion,
always aggravated by maintenance activities, plagues more metropolitan areas now than it
did just two years ago. Fortunately, powerful new technologies, materials, equipment, and
methodologies are being explored that can help transportation professionals make
infrastructure improvements better, cheaper, and faster. Unfortunately, however, despite
concentrated efforts to speed the process, new technologies often penetrate the fragmented
surface transport infrastructure marketplace only slowly.
This document reviews Federal research and technology (R&T) programs aimed at
preservation of the surface transportation physical infrastructure through monitoring,
maintenance, and rapid renewal. Relevant programs for all modes of transportation were
examined, including the airport and port infrastructure that serve as critical connections
to the primary surface transportation modes - highway, rail, and transit. This intermodal
approach was essential to assure that the study considered the system impacts on surface
transportation infrastructure – the ways that change in freight tonnage at ports
affects road and railroad access requirements, for example. Key findings include the
following:
- U.S. DOT research and technology programs for FY 1998 totaled about $1 billion. Of this
amount, more than $900 million targeted the safety and efficiency of operations. Less than
$100 million of DOT’s 1998 R&T budget was dedicated to surface transportation
infrastructure preservation.
- Almost all DOT R&T programs that target infrastructure preservation are housed in
the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). FHWA devotes about 35 percent of its total
R&T resources to this purpose.
- Many modal R&T programs use similar types of sensing, positioning, computer, and
communications technologies to monitor or control operations and increasing throughput.
The goal is to make operations safer and more efficient or faster. Many of these same
technologies could be adapted to be very useful for infrastructure monitoring.
- Cross-modal efforts to leverage the synergies of such core technologies to improve
intermodal operations are beginning in DOT; similar cross-modal applications should be
considered for infrastructure preservation and renewal.
- Major technological advances have been made in two key areas for physical infrastructure
preservation:
- The development of stronger, lighter, and more durable materials, useful for
maintenance, renewal and life cycle cost reduction; and
- The development of remote sensing and non-destructive evaluation tools and
related positioning and communications technologies. These are essential for condition
monitoring and maintenance and rapid renewal scheduling and management.
- Wider adoption by State and local government agencies and industry of these new
technologies and the management techniques they can support could save billions of dollars
over the next few decades.
- Technology transfer programs aimed at deploying new technologies in the field have had
some success for highway applications. Experts agree that R&T programs leading to
technology innovations must be backed by validated performance results, strong incentives
and technology champions. Only then will States be more likely to adopt the technologies
and incorporate them as best practices.
Although this report provides an initial look at US DOT R&T programs for surface
transportation infrastructure preservation, the findings point to several important
additional policy questions that the Department should consider. These include:
- Should more R&T resources be focused on surface transportation infrastructure
preservation? It can be argued that less than ten percent of the Agency R&T total
is too small an amount relative to the crucial economic importance of a smoothly
functioning physical surface transport system.
- How much of the total R&T funding should be devoted to technology transfer and
deployment and how are cross-modal applications best encouraged? Since years of effort
to improve the process have produced only modest success, wider use of structured
incentives through project funding streams might be encouraged.
- How should a DOT-wide focal point for the cross cutting, intermodal benefits of physical
infrastructure preservation R&T be structured? A major role would be bridging the
significant gaps between the FHWA’s efforts and the needs of the other modes for
durable, high service, low maintenance surface transportation connections.
- How should DOT ensure that environmental and safety issues related to system
preservation are included in the research? Environmental and safety issues are
included in two of the Department's five strategic goals: safety, mobility, economic
growth and trade, human and natural environment, and national security. No one of the
goals should be diminished in the process of striving toward an individual goal.
- What is the most effective way to channel incentives to deployments aimed at meeting
intermodal needs? This is an especially thorny issue, because ownership of intermodal
linkages is often divided between the public and private sectors, and conflicting goals
make partnerships challenging.
- What benchmarks are appropriate for assessing the value and cost-effectiveness of
R&T programs for infrastructure preservation and for guiding investment? Because
long-term infrastructure performance and accurate life-cycle cost savings are not known
for many years, setting appropriate performance targets for infrastructure R&T is not
easy.
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