The essential federal role in highway research and innovation

Highways are the arteries of the U.S. economy and society. Each year, motor vehicles travel nearly 3 trillion miles on these roads, enough for more than half a million trips from the earth to the moon and back. Travel on the nation's nearly 9 million lane miles of roads accounts for 86 percent of all person trips and more than 75 percent of the value of goods shipped by all modes. For all its success, the highway system is under great strain. This vast and aging asset, valued at nearly $2.8 trillion, is not keeping pace with demand as bridges and roadways deteriorate, roads become increasingly congested, and more than 30,000 lives-90 percent of the nation's transportation fatalities-are lost each year. Moreover, the funds available to federal, state, and local governments responsible for roads fall far short of what is needed to maintain the system, much less to expand it to meet the needs of a growing population and an increasingly globally connected economy. The user fees that provide for most highway investment continue to decline in real terms because of improved vehicle fuel economy and resistance to increases in these fees, even to account for the erosion of purchasing power caused by inflation. This situation portends a future of continued constrained resources. Innovation can help bridge the gap between available resources and the actions needed to maintain the performance of the highway system, but public agencies often hesitate to introduce new technologies and processes that involve risk and uncertainty. Barriers to innovation can be overcome, but not without significant time and effort. In this context, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has an essential role in fostering national deployment of innovations based on its own research and development and that of other highway research programs. The agency is also critical in the nation's highway research, development, and technology (RD&T) transfer through its investment in long-term, high-risk research and through the filling of gaps not covered in state department of transportation and other federal highway-related research programs. Examples of past successful innovations described in the report have reduced the time needed to deliver highway improvements, increased throughput, and improved safety, while reducing costs. These innovations have been developed with limited funding, with a level of federal funding for highway-specific research that is a mere fraction-only one-third of 1 percent-of the annual cost of maintaining the nation's highways. FHWA's RD&T role in the future will be critical in two other particularly important ways. First, the nation may soon realize profound improvement in safety through the connected vehicle initiative under development by government and industry. FHWA is the lead federal agency in developing and deploying safety applications to provide safety messages between infrastructure and vehicles. The safety alerts to motorists will depend on FHWA leadership in applying national standards to the variety of traffic signaling systems in use around the country. Second, FHWA is poised to work with states and local governments in deploying the innovations developed through the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2), a congressionally authorized 9-year, $223 million federal-state investment. SHRP 2 has developed dozens of innovations to renew aging infrastructure more quickly and cost-effectively, improve the reliability of travel time, provide capacity consistent with environmental protection, and improve safety. The benefits of this significant investment will be delayed or lost if FHWA's central role in fostering deployment is not continued. In the committee's judgment, reductions in FHWA's human and financial resources for RDS&T will hamper the agency's ability to continue to fulfill its essential roles and responsibilities. Other participants in national highway RD&T are unlikely to fill any void that is created. If substantial reductions do occur, the pace of innovation on the nation's highways will likely slow to a crawl at a time when public expectations for improved safety and greater reliability, as well as reduced revenues for maintenance and upkeep, are placing growing demands on the national highway system. The nation needs to ensure that FHWA has the resources to carry out its essential role in RD&T. FHWA has the national perspective, leadership, and ability to carry out these responsibilities to the benefit of the nation, now and in the future. Copyright 2015 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.