Issues

Many specific issues are discussed here that exacerbate the problem of inconsistent and poor quality roadway standards.  These issues explain the reasons why the proposals on this blog were created and why the research was conducted to find a solution for the problems inherent in state and local highway systems nationwide.

1.  Devolution Alternatives: Counties and Municipalities are Not Powerless To Reform The System On Their Own

Few alternatives have been presented to local governments in recent years to lessen their financial burden while improving their roads to levels that the state government typically provides.  Much of that has to do with local agencies being heavily reliant on the state DOT due to their small size and inadequate structure.  Here, four of the major proposals here are summarized into a post describing how local agencies can use existing contract laws to form large regional or statewide cooperatives as a way of pooling road maintenance into much larger agencies capable of functioning similar to state government.  If the states want to reduce their burden, that burden should not be shattered into many different counties and municipalities.  With the right movement, these counties and municipalities can retain authority to build roads while combining road maintenance into a single jointly-owned unit that works as a statewide DOT created just for routine maintenance of local roads.  

1.  Devolution: NOT the solution

In modern circles, there is unfortunately little opposition presently to the various strategies by the states to transfer increasingly more responsibility to the local governments without substantial funding.  While local governments are needed as a means to balance state and local needs, the trend has been to not only transfer financial responsibility for larger road projects to the local government but also the entire maintenance operation.  The fact remains that most local agencies are far too small to provide state-level services to anywhere near the levels that the state can provide when considering their population, tax base and political quirks.  While exceptions do exist where it works, local control is not something that should be viewed as a default method of managing roads that exist below the backbone road network.  Local governments today in most cases are just as ill-equipped to take over all road maintenance work as they were in the 1930's when the states began to seize road responsibility from local agencies.  This post explains how full devolution should be abandoned by instead embracing a strategy where states and local governments work as partners.  Additionally, this post explains why states should not be abandoning their efforts to maintain thousands of miles of roads in the few states that have larger state highway networks.

2.  Why Our Approach to Road Safety Improvements Must Change

This piece describes the mission of the Coalition for Better Roadway Standards describing how local governments have failed in the area of roadway safety improvements.  It also explains how states have also been lax in their duties on their own roads and deserve part of the blame for the shoddy conditions found on local road networks.

3. Major Changes Needed in MUTCD to Improve Uniformity of Traffic Control Devices

The MUTCD as it is written has blindly trusted local governments to do the right thing in regards to properly engineering, installing and maintaining traffic signs.  The problem is that they recommend regional cooperation as a means to achieve that goal.  This is not happening in most counties, cities and townships across the country resulting in substandard conditions in much of the nation.  This post proposes changing the language in three sections of the MUTCD to require that either states or larger regional engineering units become the only agencies authorized to engineer and maintain traffic signs.  The goal is to move this responsibility away from small local governments who lack the means, organization or consistency to handle this effectively on their own.

4.  Curve Warning Signs: A Need For Better Federal Guidelines

The issues with curve warning signs are two-fold: oversigning due to a lack of a consistent policy from state to state and the number of major errors found with curve signs along most local roads.  The first issue is that it is not properly clarified where and to what extent curve signs are used.  The second issue involves local governments who fail to conduct proper engineering studies nor properly maintain curve warning signs meaning that substantial errors are typical on roadways under local control.

5.  Trailblazing Doesn't Just Involve Trails: A Need for Statewide Guide Sign Management

With all of the issues that local governments fail on in regards to traffic control, the application of guide signs tops the list.  An afterthought for most local governments who already have major issues with simply maintaining essential regulatory and warning signs, local governments in most states place little to no priority on directional guide signs and trailblazer assemblies meaning that in most cases they are not there at all.  In the instances that they do exist, they are often inadequate or substandard meaning that they likely have never have properly studied this issue.  The proposal here explains why states should be solely responsible for engineering and maintaining most directional, mileage and informational guide signs along local roads providing that service at no charge to local agencies.  Because highway systems are not always consistent in state maintainance ratios, it is an imperative and essential element of traffic control management that the state identify and integrate local roads as a means of providing the shortest and best route in every situation as well as helping travelers on major local roads follow these roads just as if they were a state highway.

6.  South Carolina: Headed Down The Wrong Road

This post is a commentary on an article in a local publication detailing the state's plans to transfer thousands of miles of secondary roads to the local level while refusing to raise revenues to adequate levels.  The article is no longer available, but the commentary describes what's going on and why the plan that is being presented is not an effective strategy.  South Carolina's roads are compared to Alabama and Georgia to compare and contrast how each state handles it.

7.  Lessons Learned from Alabama's Captive County Fiasco: Advice for Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina

The issues that have led to the huge maintenance backlog and have stirred up political debate over the state's role in roads that normally would be under local control in other states is not a new one.  While seemingly part of a larger trend, the history of devolution can be rooted in states being unwilling to either raise taxes or come up with a strategy to share responsibility with local governments.  Alabama's Captive Counties were very controversial from the start as both the counties themselves and the "free" counties were continuously debating the advantages and problems with the system.  After about 15 years of debate, referendums and accusations, the state permanently abandoned its efforts to allow certain counties to hand their county road systems to the state.  In researching the history of those 24 years of state control, the arguments sounded eerily similar to Virginia's road system today with many in the state proposing similar measures to abolish state authority over the majority of the state's road system.  This post explores what went wrong and why.  It then goes on to propose a better solution than the approach Alabama took through transfer of all secondary road maintenance to county governments.

8. Mileage Caps vs. Proportional Ratio Caps

Mileage caps are a short-sighted and poor strategy to reign in costs and curb excesses in the layout of state highway systems (and some county road systems).  Clear limits are needed, but they should be laid out based on ratios that allow for the road system to grow with the overall mileage and population.  Not doing so creates an unfunded mandate to local governments and discourages correcting state highways to better reflect roadways of statewide significance.  This issue discusses mileage caps, what is wrong with them, why they are wrong and how to fix them.

9. The Absurdity of "Starving the Beast": Stealth Devolution by Refusing to Raise Statewide Revenues

This post addresses a USA Today article describing South Carolina's push to transfer roads to the local governments by refusing to raise roadway taxes to levels adequate to maintain the system they have.  Many states are demonstrating an unwillingness to continue or expand the state's role on thousands of miles of roads, and states that are not openly pushing for devolution have considered it in the past and are likely to discuss it again.  Since local revenues are often well below what the state can provide, this issue is clearly a failure on the part of the states to maintain what they have that has nothing to do with the number of miles under state control.