Back to Basics—Accountability for Results
Americans have a right to demand that transportation investments meet community needs, are spent wisely and accountably, and improve their quality of life. They agree that one of the government’s most fundamental roles is to build and maintain roads. While transportation investment must be increased, top-to-bottom reforms are needed to guarantee that taxpayers will get their money’s worth. What we need is a program that will be accountable for results, make investments based on community needs, and deliver projects on-time and on-budget.
AASHTO recommends:
1. Refocus the Federal Program on National Objectives
The current laundry list of over 100 different program objectives for highways, and another 50 for the transit program makes it difficult to identify true program priorities. The federal program must refocus on six objectives of genuine national interest.
- Preservation and Renewal. Preserving highway, transit, and rail systems so they last for generations to come.
- Interstate Commerce. Supporting America’s global competitiveness, growth in productivity, economic development, and national defense through an improved multi-modal freight system.
- Safety. Reducing traffic fatalities, serious injuries, and property loss.
- Congestion Reduction and Connectivity for Both Urban and Rural Areas. Improving the ability of highway, transit, and rail to improve personal mobility, connectivity, and accessibility.
- System Operations. Using advanced management techniques and technologies to assure travel reliability and provide effective emergency response in disasters.
- Environment. Enhancing community quality of life, and minimizing impacts on the environment and global climate change.
2. Establish Goals Through Which the National Objectives Can Be Achieved
To ensure accountability for federal funding, goals should be established for the national objectives. AASHTO, in consultation with Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs), cities, counties, transit agencies, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA), and U.S. DOT, should develop national performance goals for each objective. The goals should be formally submitted to the Secretary of Transportation, and promulgated as guidance. No rule-making process would be required or desired.
3. Plan and Select Projects Based on a State-Driven Performance Management Approach
To align project selection with the national objectives, AASHTO supports the development of a state-driven performance management process in which each state DOT, and its MPOs, would focus federal funding on meeting national performance goals. Each state would adopt performance targets relating to the national goals in their long-range planning process.
4. Develop State-Driven Performance Measures Process
To improve accountability for achieving national objectives, each state will be called on to develop specific measures through which they can track and report on results.
Candidate measures will be recommended through an AASHTO-developed process to have all states use the same performance measures. For example, under the category of “safety,” a measure could be the number of traffic-related fatalities in the state for the year. However, it is important for Congress to define a process through which states self-define targets that would work in their unique context, rather than have measures and targets imposed through federal statute or regulation.
Flexibility is key. The recommended performance management process would have key common elements and measurement areas among states, but each state would determine its own performance targets and the appropriate strategies to meet those targets. Not every state will improve on every performance measure every year. Not every state will lead on every issue. What matters is that they start off in the right direction.
A performance–oriented pilot program should be created to provide regulatory relief for those states which have successfully established targets.
