FHWA

- by Jerry Werner and Peter Samuel   Regular road construction conjures up images of brawny asphalt paving contractors getting together at a hamburger joint to agree whose turn it is to put in the "low" bid for local state highway work, and discussing which official needs to be "helped" in order to ensure that "that new bastard" - not "one of us" - is kept off the list of "qualified contractors."

FHWA has published undemanding if sometimes confused "rules" for tolls on value priced or express lanes, and newly tolled interstate construction under federal control.  The rules do nothing to "accelerate progress toward the national goal of achieving a nationwide interoperable electronic toll collection system," stated as an objective in federal SAFTEA-LU law enacted August 2005, but US legislators set FHWA an impossible task there, given the cons

Karen Hedlund, longtime head of the Washington DC area office of Nossaman, and a partner at the tollroad specializing law firm, is the new chief counsel at the Federal Highway Administration. Hedlund is well known in the industry as a confident, knowledgeable speaker on finance law, including toll revenue bonds, various federal support programs and the state of P3s in different states.

December estimates by FHWA of traffic  throughout the US in December 2008 (2008-12) show a decline of 1.6% in vmt on 2007-12, the smallest drop in the previous corresponding period (pcp) in eight months. Urban interstate traffic was level on pcp, while rural interstate traffic was 1.6% lower.

An economist position at FHWA was on, then off, and is now on again, hopefully a course the US economy will track. The economist position is in the Highway Needs and Investment Analysis and is to provide a replacement for Darren Timothy.

US traffic was down strongly in November, in line with the experience of many toll operators. The office of highway policy information at FHWA estimates that travel on all US roads and streets in November 2008 was 5.3% lower than in the previous corresponding period (PCP), Nov 2007. 12.9 billion  or 3.7% fewer vehicle-miles were racked up in the eleven months to end-Nov 08 as compared to PCP.

The FHWA's "Current Toll Road Activity in the US" report we previously wrote on concedes that errors and omissions are possible. see http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/3950 This critique is devoted to a few we found. The most serious omission in our view is lack of discussion or listing of detollings - removals of tolls.

Federal Highway Administration has released a set of twenty analyses of toll road activity in the US, the most comprehensive effort of documentation of tolling in the US to date. It includes a 'white paper', four databases, three summaries, and a bunch of sorts of the data by different classification criteria, and some miscellaneous tables.

One reader emailed that our reference to "errors in FHWA data... may be misleading, as the errors don't necessarily lie with FHWA."

Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) chief counsel James D Ray has written again to TxDOT detailing how the toll concession bill HB1892 contains provisions that put federal support for Texas highways in jeopardy. The procurement process for a SH121 concession detailed in HB1892 providing NTTA with topping rights "seems to directly contradict" the requirements of US law requiring fair and open competition.

The Road Gang lunch talkgroup in Wash DC had Anthony R. Kane USDOT’s exec-sec, its leading career officer venture some longterm predictions about US transp:

The FHWA has funds available to support the development, operation and evaluation of pilot tests of innovative road and parking pricing projects. www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/vppp.htm