Currently, Total road and street mileage has increased approximately Paved mileage, however, has almost tripled, from thousand miles in to 2. Most highway mileage is located in rural areas — more than 3.
But these roads carry only 30 percent of highway traffic. Most traffic is in urban areas, resulting in greater wear and tear on urban roads and bridges and congested travel conditions. Building and maintaining roads and bridges is generally the responsibility of state and local governments.
Of the 4. Only , miles are under the jurisdiction of federal agencies, including roads in national forests and parks and on military and Indian reservations.
Just under 1 million miles of road, or about This mileage carries The 48,mile Interstate Highway System, initiated by Congress in and the largest public works project in history, is the backbone of the federal-aid system. Initial construction on the Interstate System is now virtually complete. Beyond that, the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of ISTEA set in motion a framework for developing a strategic federal investment program designed to upgrade other existing highways and bridges that serve a national interest.
The law directed the U. The NHS designation became law in November Since then, the National Highway System has been expanded to , miles. The NHS helps focus federal highway funding on international and Interstate routes, as well as on roads that serve major population centers, ports, airports, and international border crossings.
While the NHS includes only 5. Specifically, the NHS includes the 48,mile Interstate Highway System, many existing major urban and rural arterials, the 15,mile defense strategic highway network, and strategic intermodal highway connectors. The NHS reflects the major demographic and travel changes that have occurred in this country since the designation of the Interstate Highway System over 60 years ago.
Highway travel in the U. Growth on the federal-aid system, which includes the NHS and most other major roads, has grown even faster, percent. The greatest growth, over percent, occurred on segments of the Interstate Highway System in urban areas. Today, there are more than million highway users—licensed drivers—in the U.
S, up from million in They operate over Annual travel by motor vehicle has reached 3. The personal motor vehicle automobile, light truck, van and motorcycle is the predominant form of personal transportation in the U. Privately owned vehicles account for By way of comparison, air transportation commercial and general aviation accounts for approximately Walking, biking and other modes such as ferry boats account for the remainder.
With a land area of 3. For example, according to the U. Transportation and transportation-related spending accounts for 9 percent of GDP, while road transportation accounts for 60 percent of all U. In , trucks handled slightly more than 42 percent of all U.
Obviously, a very significant portion of the cost of U. To improve U. After housing 33 percent , transportation almost 17 percent accounts for the largest single household expenditure. A study by the Texas Transportation Institute found traffic congestion due to inadequate capacity contributes to almost 7 billion of hours of delay on the Interstate Highway System and other principal arterials, compared to uncongested conditions, adding billions in costs to interstate commerce.
The U. DOT is required by law to prepare a report for Congress every two years that details the condition and capital investment requirements of the U. The Conditions and Performance Report, issued in early , found:. According to the most recent data on the condition of U. Federal policymakers should recognize that America will need additional highway capacity to meet transportation demand driven by changing demographics and public and business needs.
Federal surface transportation law should not be used as a tool to advance anti-highway and anti-growth social policies. Provisions of existing law that support these agendas should be eliminated. ARTBA believes the cost of building and maintaining highway infrastructure should be borne primarily by highway users through the imposition of dedicated fees, excises, and tolls. Americans realize that greater investments in highways and bridges are needed to keep them safe and efficient.
And opinion research shows that a solid majority support dedicated increases in highway user fees for these purposes. In light of documented, unmet surface transportation needs, highway user fee revenue should only be used to finance highway, bridge and mass transit infrastructure capital improvements. Such an entity would promote further diversion of highway user revenues to non-highway purposes.
ARTBA supports increasing the federal motor fuels tax, dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund, to finance highway and bridge capital improvements necessary to, at minimum, raise the amount of revenue the U. State and local governments should at least increase their motor fuel taxes to the level necessary to fully participate in the federal-aid program. ARTBA urges all levels of government to index highway user fees-including motor fuels excises to the Consumer Price Index to assure that these fees rise commensurate with increases in inflation.
This action would help preserve the purchasing power of the highway and bridge improvement program. Congress has supplemented existing trust fund user fee revenue with a series of general fund transfers since If and when the integrity of the Highway Trust Fund is restored by returning to an exclusive user fee revenue stream to support surface transportation investments, those budgetary protections should be reinstated to assure all trust fund user fee revenue is invested expeditiously to support surface transportation improvements and avoid accumulation of a trust balance in excess of the amount needed to meet cash flow requirements.
To ensure that all federal transportation user fees are collected as intended, federal and state activities aimed at combating tax evasion in this area should be continued and expanded. Experience at both the state and federal levels suggest that even modest resources expended in this effort yield very significant financial returns.
This activity has the potential to add substantial revenues to the trust funds for capital investments and should continue to receive federal support. These excises should be equivalent to the energy content value of the tax currently levied on gasoline.
We caution, however, that there is a direct relationship between fuel efficiency and highway user fee collections. ARTBA opposes the concept of linking the availability of federal highway funding to state and local government compliance with federal mandates of any sort. ARTBA believes the federal government should guarantee that each state will receive back in the form of federal highway funding at least 95 percent of the highway user fee revenue that it sends to the federal government, in accordance with current law.
ARTBA urges the federal government to adopt a capital budget that differentiates between federal capital investments in public infrastructure and the general day-to-day operating expenses of government.
This accounting procedure is used by most state governments and many other nations. ISTEA of allows the use of federal funds in the development of privately-owned toll facilities. TEA established a pilot program under which tolls may be collected on three separate interstate highways in different states for reconstructing or rehabilitating a highway that could not otherwise be improved.
ARTBA believes state transportation agencies should also be permitted to use federal funds to develop new toll highways and have maximum flexibility to design and implement toll-financing solutions. ARTBA believes the imposition of motor fuel excises at the federal, state and local levels should continue to serve as the primary funding mechanism for highway and bridge improvement programs.
These could include, although are not limited to, expanded use of toll highways and bridges, public-private ventures, creation of other financing mechanisms like infrastructure banks and revolving loan funds, and bond financing for capacity enhancing surface transportation infrastructure projects.
These mechanisms should not be advanced for the purpose of reducing existing levels of highway user taxes, avoiding necessary increases in highway user fees, or diverting highway user generated revenue to non-highway uses. ARTBA believes the public interest can be served well through public-private partnerships in transportation development. ARTBA further believes that public-private partnerships should be structured so that each sector provides what it can most effectively contribute.
Such recognition of expertise should maximize project success and protect all applicable public interests. State participation in such programs should be optional. To assure equity in taxation and maximize receipts to transportation trust funds so that highway capital needs can be met, ARTBA urges all levels of government to eliminate exemptions from the motor fuel excise and other highway user fees.
Along these lines, non-transportation policy objectives should be pursued through federal General Funds. Limited Highway Trust Fund revenues should be preserved for and fully invested in transportation improvements. ARTBA believes the federal government has a major role to play in the development and maintenance of an efficient national highway and bridge network for the following reasons:. For these reasons, ARTBA believes the federal role should include adequate provision of financial, technical and research assistance to the states for highways and bridges.
Working in full cooperation with the states, the federal government should also assume the lead role in developing and promoting uniform standards and guidelines for highway and bridge design, maintenance and operations.
Consistent and predictable federal funding is essential to operating orderly and cost-effective state highway improvement programs. ARTBA believes:. In pursuit of these goals, states should make every effort to incorporate state-of-the-art design standards and products in their highway and bridge plans.
All levels of government must diligently monitor transportation improvement needs and continue to dedicate motor fuel excise revenue to highway improvements.
A commitment to appropriate transportation investment among all parties is critical. The practice of awarding highway construction contracts to the lowest responsible bidder in open competition with other interested and eligible firms has helped ensure integrity in the bidding process. It has also saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. ARTBA staunchly supports the free enterprise system of open competitive bidding for highway projects.
A provision should be added to federal law that prohibits the use of union-only project agreements on federal-aid highway projects. Such agreements are counter to the free enterprise system of open competitive bidding. To assure state-of-the-art, high quality projects, contracts for professional services such as transportation planning, design and construction management, should be procured by Qualifications Based Selection procedures.
Contracts for these services should be based on salaries and overhead in accordance with Title 48 Federal Acquisition Regulations , Sec. To assure equitable compensation and fair competition, federal surface transportation law should require:. Further, compensation for these contracts should be determined on the basis of FAR cost principles without modification or limitation.
ARTBA believes that building safety into the highway system should be a top priority of transportation policy makers, planners and appropriators at all levels of government. More than 35, people were killed in motor vehicle accidents on U. Clearly, highway safety should be a paramount public health interest. The good news is that experience has proved that emphasizing safety features in the design, construction, reconstruction and operation of highway facilities does save lives.
The rate, however, rose slightly to 1. Highway reconstruction is increasingly being done under traffic conditions. The safety of industry employees and motorists in these construction work zones is of special concern to ARTBA. In any highway construction site, effective traffic control plans should be implemented, traffic control devices and other appurtenances should be properly maintained. ARTBA supports federal encouragement of training, education and voluntary certification programs for personnel responsible for traffic control at highway construction sites.
Experience has shown that public awareness programs aimed at motorists can help to reduce the number of accidents in these work sites.
To help avoid contractual misunderstandings, to the extent possible, bid proposals for Federal-aid surface transportation contracts should be required to use unit pricing. This would give the contractor a much better understanding of the actual work and project-related activities i.
It would also serve to enhance work zone safety activities. Only five weeks left to share your views on route strategies with National Highways 28 October — Press release. Latest from Highways England. What Highways England does. Transparency and freedom of information releases DfT: spend control data for April to June 21 October Transparency data DfT: spend control data for January to March 21 October Transparency data See all transparency and freedom of information releases.
Our management. Nick Harris. Janette Beinart. Lawrence Gosden. Roger Lowe. Vanessa Howlison. Carolyn Battersby. General enquiries Make a new request by contacting us using the details below. Telephone Our ambition is to ensure our major roads are more dependable, durable and most importantly — are safe. We have around 5, staff based in locations around the country.
This includes a uniformed Traffic Officer Service who serve in control centres and patrol key areas of the network. We are supported by the National Traffic Information Service. This provides information to our National Traffic Operations Centre and our 7 regional control centres. Two bodies hold us to account on your behalf. Transport Focus champions the needs of road users, while the Office of Rail and Road monitors the performance of our highways. Email info highwaysengland. Please be advised that all types of correspondence may be monitored for training and quality assurance purposes.
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