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Upgrading Upkeep

An emerging approach to highway maintenance takes the politics out of road repair.

Michigan and a handful of other states are leading a nationwide push to use asset management to improve the way highways, bridges and other infrastructure are maintained.

The goal is to fund highway upkeep according to roadway performance rather than in the usual haphazard manner. Powerful legislators tend to hoard funds for roads in their districts. Whatever is left over gets divvied up by "windshield assessment"--engineers take note of crumbling roads and bridges and repair the worst ones first.

Michigan is the first state to coordinate with local governments on using asset management. This fall, a council of state, county and city representatives will hash out a common set of standards for gauging the performance of Michigan roadways. Using these standards, they will assess the current state of roads and set targets for future performance. Funds will now go toward keeping all roads in the state-- no matter whose district they are in--up to those performance standards. "Asset management is a new attempt for cities, counties and the state to do a better job of making investment decisions," says Lou Lambert, deputy director for planning at the Michigan Department of Transportation. "Usually we're at each other's throats."

Momentum for this approach is building across the country. The association of state highway officials, known as AASHTO, has a task force studying asset management and has set up a clearinghouse on its Web site. Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration launched its own office of asset management in 1999, and Mary Peters, the new head of FHWA and Arizona's former transportation chief, strongly supports the method.

Montana started using asset management three years ago. One advantage of the approach, according to Sandra Straehl, Montana's head of transportation policy analysis, is that agencies can think of infrastructure as a whole and make logical choices and trade-offs that simply weren't considered in the past--putting off guardrail fixes in one county in order to pave rutted roads in another county, for example. This has meant, in some cases, re-directing funds from interstate highways to the state's primary roads. "You don't want to overbuild some parts of the system and under-build others," Straehl says. "We are now making decisions based on the best overall package."

A big boost to asset management has been new tools that have made it easier to assess road and bridge conditions in the field and given managers sophisticated software to run maintenance scenarios. The Florida Turnpike, for example, is developing a database, including costs and life expectancy, of all its assets: 443 miles of highway, 270 miles of guardrail, 770 miles of fencing, 10,350 highway lights, 21,000 signs and 500 toll booth air conditioners, among other items. When the system goes live in December, it will give decision makers an unprecedented view of the highway's maintenance needs. "It's cheaper to consistently maintain your assets than to replace them," says Bill Thorp, the Turnpike's finance director. "We're hoping that given the right information, management can make good choices that will eventually result in saving money."

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