Shoddy Signs Spotlight: Arlington (Middlesex County), MA

The focus on this blog has largely been on the Southeast so far, but New England should not be left out when discussing poor traffic control standards.  This is especially true in Massachusetts who relies more heavily on townships than any other state in New England with an extremely low ratio of state control (8%).  Most New England states maintain on average around 19% of their road networks.  What all New England states share, however, are these typically poorly maintained township roads: at least as far as traffic control devices are concerned.  In fact, New England is actually worse off than the Southeast due to their complete reliance on this antiquated model of governance for all services including roads.

Check out the cheap and shoddy work here on Forest St.  Apparently purchasing signposts is out of the question with this bridge clearance "warning sign" (a guide sign?) posted on the left side of the street.  Unless you're in the UK, it's posted on both sides or it's a one-way street, you do not post signs like this on the left side of the street.  Also note the nearly impossible to read warning sign on the right (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

If towns are closer to the people, shouldn't they have more time to clear vegetation away from a sign?  Here it is once again...a sign on a telephone pole.  While such a thing is perfectly allowed, that should be limited to when the pole is in a visible location.  The sign, posted in a non-approved font, mentions something about flooding at the underpass ahead.  I'd hate to be the guy who missed this sign after a summer gully washer (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

Here is a correction for this mess you see in the previous images.  First, there are obvious space restrictions on this street judging by the crazy telephone pole signs.  This means that the low clearance sign should probably be mounted overhead possibly adding a special "LOW BRIDGE" or "LOW CLEARANCE" plaque since this is what they wanted to convey.  A proper W12-2 sign also replaces the non-standard guide sign on the left (I don't think people are looking for directions to "LOW BRIDGE").  Also, the wordy and confusing information warning of possible flooding under the bridge was replaced with an MUTCD standard W8-18 sign on the right.  There is adequate space for a single sign on the right.   It should be noted that this bridge is also in a sharp curve, but this is not even signed northbound (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

The fun doesn't stop continuing on dangerous Forest St. in this hapless little burg.  Here you see the "low bridge" with no warning under it whatsoever except some small text spray painted on the bridge and a couple reflective strips on the sidewalk rails.  No object markers, no actual low clearance sign.  Nothing to make up for the shabby advanced warning (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

This obviously narrow underpass with restricted height needs a little more than some strips of red and white reflective sheeting used on big rigs.  Added here in this photoshopped image were two object markers to properly indicate bridge supports and a proper W12-2p clearance sign mounted over the roadway to further alert large trucks that might have a reason to use this street (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

While many states in the US have townships, New England takes it a step further essentially rendering counties as nothing more than interesting geographical features.  In fact, Middlesex County, MA was voided as a functional entity in 1997 leaving the individual towns including Arlington as the ONLY governing bodies within the county.  Even New York and New Jersey both split responsibility between counties and townships retaining at least some county government just for the maintenance of arterial and collector roads.  While there might be a few benefits in the township system in terms of public access to elected officials, those benefits do not include roads, taxes or any other government service.  With high costs and low output due to the tremendous number of tiny towns carving up the much larger counties, quite a few townships do not have a good grasp on properly installing and maintain traffic control devices and other safety improvements.  On top of this, the majority of town maintained roads tend to be built very substandard.

Here is the other side of the rail trail underpass: another of the wordy, worthless sign that could be stated in three words via W8-18 hanging on a rather unsafe telephone pole.  Also note the curve sign in the background (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

Fortunately it appears newer curve signs noted in the city do not have this extreme of an error, but this needs to be replaced!  There is not any curve sign posted in the other direction.  This also appears to be a condition for a turn sign instead of a curve sign.  If they want you to go "slo" they need to say just how much sloer (sic) than the posted speed limit.  In fact, it appears that no actual speed limit is posted on the street (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

The fact is, much like some remote county or small town in the Deep South, townships have a pretty good excuse in not following proper engineering standards.  Their small size and low population typically does not justify the extra expenses involved in hiring a traffic engineer to make sure they are doing this job correctly, but this system is clearly not working when it comes to managing roads.  Arlington Township, MA is just one example of many.  Other townships in Massachusetts are likely far worse.

Gloucester St at Highland Avenue shows that the town also is, at times, font challenged.  This Stop sign is by no means MUTCD compliant even though it has the right shape, color and post height simply because the font is incorrect.  The street name sign is also incorrect for two reasons: improper letter height and no cross-street posted.  Street name signs are among the most frequently in error of all signs in the MUTCD: enough that AASHTO caved and at least permitted some color variations, which do not appear to be an issue here.  8" text is not required here since both streets are posted less than 30 MPH.  (Image from Google Street View, 2012)

Zoomed in here is Crosby St and Columbia Rd.  While the sign in the foreground is MUTCD standard, the dead end sign in the background is definitely not.  The MUTCD offers two options for Dead End signs, but a rectangular sign in an 18" x 24" blank is definitely not one of those.  These signs are so common that this should not even be an issue!  A 24" x 24" "DEAD END" sign surely cannot cost much more than what they posted there, but if you're skimping on post height like they are in the image, perhaps it might be slightly too large.  It is usually not an issue when the sign is mounted with a proper 7' clearance.  (Image from Google Street View, 2012)

Arlington is not exactly a low population place.  Its population includes 42,000 residents meaning that alone they should have enough money for proper devices even if they lack funds for an engineer, but consider that the township is small and one of 296 townships along with 55 cities.  These townships really split the funding and jurisdictional pie into very small slivers, so accountability is pretty weak as well as state level funding even though Massachussetts has an ample gas tax rate of 24 cents/gallon.  It should be noted that not all signs in the town are bad, and many have appeared to have improved in recent years, but the errors noted are not small errors.  There is also a noticeable lack of curve warning signs and chevrons, a lack of proper intersection warning signs and street name signs all are in the wrong font.  If the county itself was handling these street signs you can bet that these issues would not be nearly as bad as what you see in these images.  If the sign program was handled by the county alone, it would certainly be a very different story considering that Middlesex County has a population that is 1,503,085: slightly less than the population of the entire state of Idaho!  Most Idaho counties, however, have a much better sign program with far fewer people!

Lastly check out this gem on Old Mystic Road.  The vague "Danger Slow" sign with the weeds almost obscuring the sign actually refers to an approaching Stop sign!!!  Yes, where a W3-1 (Stop Ahead) sign should be used, instead they're just giving you some vague message about a hazard ahead.  The hazard is a non-optional stop situation.  (Image from Google Street View, 2012)

Yes, the fix is this simple on Old Mystic Road  (Image from Google Street View, 2012).

The reason I picked Arlington is because a friend referred this particular jurisdiction to me due to their very, very poor design and engineering of traffic signs.  When I saw the condition, I felt the town was worthy of this dishonor to be featured here to show how not to engineer and maintain traffic signs.  The examples here shown around the town demonstrate the problem with the township model in regards to traffic control and why either a cluster of towns in the region (or the whole state) should form a traffic control cooperative or this responsibility for traffic control devices should be handled by the counties, a multi-town regional road district or MassTrans.  Perhaps the most simple and effective approach for New England townships, at least in populous counties, is to either create a county-wide engineering department possibly jointly funded by all towns based on population that oversees all townships, provides equipment on a rental/loan basis, consolidates purchasing and takes over the production, installation and maintenance of traffic control and other safety devices.  Another option is to meet with the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (Boston) and establish a traffic control region within the bounds of that area.  This way towns can keep their local control without doing such a shoddy job.  Meanwhile the town can do a better job with far less cost while being required to minimally support a PTOE and any other traffic engineers hired for the region as the cost would be spread across many cities and towns.

THE SOLUTION FOR ARLINGTON

It is no secret that New England residents love their town governments.  While close to the people and quaint, they are a disaster for traffic engineering.  Seeing that the biggest issues that towns like this have are with traffic control, this is an example of why townships statewide should form regional cooperatives that handle traffic control.  Since Massachusetts is a small state, this cooperative should preferably be statewide developed through the Massachusetts Municipal Association with subdivisions based on and brokered with American Planning Association: Massachusetts Chapter for the 14 regional planning commission districts.  With such a low ratio of state control, it is almost certain that state revenues to the towns are adequate, but not adequate enough to fund traffic control for 296 different towns!  Combining it this unit would take care of all traffic signs and signals on behalf of the townships and cities unifying standards statewide.  While the cooperative unit would not be permitted to set local traffic ordinances or post guide signs without first gaining town approval or funding, they would have broad discretion to make decisions based on most standard warning/regulatory signage and traffic markings pooling resources, consolidating purchases and using the same equipment across many different townships.  In this case, borders would no longer matter, and situations like those seen here in Arlington would disappear.

The absurdity of "starving the beast": stealth devolution by refusing to raise statewide revenues

USA Today posted this article in April 2014 about the fast-growing devolution trend.  The first question begging to be asked is, "Where is the opposition?"  Surely somebody supports keeping these large state maintained road networks in place or expanding the state's role?  Why is there this newly found trust of local government?  Since when did local governments of small means and population have the means to supervise large scale maintenance and infrastructure projects?

Even the local governments themselves don't want to have to take over thousands of miles of state-owned roads knowing it will swallow up a very large percentage of the county budget.  These counties also know that unless they have a very broad tax base they're not going to be able to do what the state did even at their worst.  Why does nobody see the benefit in consolidating the road responsibility under a larger statewide or regional agency who has the proper staff and resources to make sure that consistent road standards are found in both urban and rural areas and that costs are managed in such a way that work actually gets done?

History has shown that these unfunded mandates also mean a virtual guarantee of lower standards.  This means unsafe roads.  Local agencies are given two choices: higher taxes or lower standards.  The history of local control in the South shows that lower standards win when a small tax base is coupled with a very inefficient system.  The last time that devolution fever swept the country to this level was in the 1970's citing oil shocks and stagflation as an excuse.  This time a similar tactic is being employed, except that this time it is quite simply a refusal by state governments to raise adequate revenues to do what they always did before.

Yes, nobody likes taxes but with roads you will pay one way or another.  It is not cheaper to give the responsibility of one government agency to hundreds!  The problem is that these states would rather drive up costs significantly on the local agencies, pass the buck (literally) and do a one time large payment to repave the road before dumping them on the counties for good.  This was bad policy in the late 70's and it's still bad policy today.  Better ways are available to handle this, but none are being considered by the state legislators.  The local control bandwagon is a runaway train prepared to take the quality of more of the nation's roads off of a cliff.  This bandwagon can be stopped and put on the right track with smarter policy reforms than the proven failure known as devolution to counties and municipalities.

Commentary on article:

The USA Today article describes the effect of devolution on Beaufort, SC.  This article is odd because it is mentioning cities instead of counties who usually are the least interested in state meddling in their domain.  The issue here is more with counties than cities who stand to lose the most when it comes to devolution of secondary roads to counties.  Cities like Beaufort should be offered a different approach with city maintenance agreements where they can use funding from the state or their own resources to have state forces maintain their streets for them without actually owning the roads.  That way the city has leverage to build roads to their own standards but have state forces do the nuts and bolts maintenance for them.  This was one of South Carolina's major mistakes: instead of adopting the North Carolina or Virginia system they just added roads across many jurisdictions randomly into a crazy patchwork of secondary state highways that did not promote adequate efficiency or real need to continue to operate without substantial revenue increases.  Virginia, in contrast, took a more hands-off approach with cities allowing only small population towns to contract with the state taking a reverse approach with cities.  Cities in Virginia are required to maintain both state surface roads and local streets.  While not a perfect system, it is still more efficient than duplication of services.

The article also mentions that North Carolina, Texas, West Virginia and other states have tried devolution tactics.  In other words, they want to dump a bunch of roads on individual cities and/or counties that are neither financially nor structurally prepared.  However, they want to sweeten the pot by giving them a one-time handout so that they'll shut up and never mention secondary roads again.  States have been successful at forcing roads on the counties in the past, but the quality of those roads noticeably declined the second the deed was signed over.  However, some high population counties have ultimately recovered such as in many high population urban counties in Florida.  These exceptional counties with populations of small states, however, should not be used as a case for devolution.  If devolution is to be done, it can be replaced with more sensible solutions such as local agencies hiring back state forces, statewide or regional cooperatives and, if nothing else, creating a separate state agency that splits the responsibility for farm-to-market and local roads from major highways.

Essentially this is an era of white knuckled fiscal conservatism, and a bunch of mostly conservative states have decided that instead of taking a risk by making sure that enough revenues are raised to pay the bills, they will just play the more safe political route by passing the cost onto counties who will ultimately charge a lot more for a lot less work.  Texas, mentioned in the article, has 27% of their roads under state control and is routinely rated one of the best state-maintained road networks, but they'd also rather pass the cost to the counties and cities who clearly are by no means financially prepared for the job.  In Texas's case this is even worse considering that the farm-to-market roads they are looking to turn back are maintenance-only roads that require local governments to fund capital improvements thus a small cost on the state compared to rural roads.  Most county roads in Texas are severely substandard even in some larger metropolitan areas similar to how they are in many other Southern states.  The state-maintained systems all work just fine as intended as long as they aren't starving them for funds the way South Carolina has, but they'd rather not have the responsibility or liability.  

We also tend to suspect a motivation for more local control so that the liability involved in maintaining to proper standards can be bypassed.  Roadway standards are almost never enforced on a local level the way they are on a state level, and there is far less money, equipment or resources for proper safety improvements.  If counties and cities were held to the same standards as states are, you can bet that the majority of counties and cities would be screaming for the state to take over their roads.

Maybe Texas should look into the regional approach presented here, which will be a periodic theme with throughout this site as different maps will be created carving up states into regions.  As such a large state with such a large population, a regional approach would be very effective since most regions would rival many states in size and population.  Placing farm-to-market and ranch-to-market roads under regional responsibility and expanding that responsibility so that more roads are farm-to-market than what TxDOT currently offers would be far better than just burdening local governments with tens of thousands of miles of roads that they can't afford.

The main focus of the article, however, was South Carolina.  While South Carolina's road plan correctly was designed to improve planning statewide, its use for political power purposes was only partially true.  This was a progressive-era plan that was championed by then-governor James F. Byrnes who was a proponent of the Good Roads Movement.  Unfortunately the proponents of this movement are all dead meaning that they are not here anymore to either explain why they did it nor argue against devolution.  He probably liked North Carolina's system, but was afraid of political fallout from having a sweep of all the county road agencies into a single state agency.  Remember that it was 1952 instead of 1932 with the depression long over.  In other words, the risk was less calculated in North Carolina and Virginia since both states at the time had a single-term governor system with a clear mandate to rescue destitute local governments at the height of the depression.  The strategy employed then was also to have the state take over these roads only after they were brought to state standards.  Because of the 20 year difference, Governor Byrnes let the system grow slowly.  Unfortunately, the legislature did not respond by adjusting the tax structure accordingly nor did they ever finish the job of taking over remaining county roads as-is.

SCDOT spokesman Pete Poore was quoted in the article suggesting that the system they have is a relic of 1930's and 1940's politics and does not relate to life in the 21st century.  This is an absurd argument.  It can basically be translated to "Because this system was set up before my time and it's not the way that every other state does it, it is thus archaic and unworkable and thus should be replaced with an even more archaic, inefficient and unworkable system called "local roads" that doesn't save any money but makes it look like the state is keeping your taxes low and takes the liability off of us".  Absolutely no imagination is applied to this argument, and the state is only giving counties and cities a leaky boat.

Beaufort then states that that if they took over secondary roads they simply need more money and that they should do exactly what they want.  Wrong answer, Beaufort.  It's not that you need more or less money.  You just need the system to work as it is intended and make it work better.  You're saying "if you give us more money, we'd be glad to take on the roads".  That's going to cost you, and the roads will not be any better.  It's time to reform your argument.  If you want to take over the roads, incorporate it into a unified statewide strategy to provide something equivalent to what SCDOT provided for years.

The article then goes on to talk about a loss of interest by state governments in keeping up large state road systems stating the often abused 19% nationwide figure.  If everybody else jumps off a bridge, should these five states do the same?  This is a logical fallacy just because most states weren't willing to adopt the North Carolina plan in the 1930's.  The only reason these states did not adopt the plan was because at the time counties were stronger and less willing to give power to the state government.  They even noted at the time that North Carolina's roads greatly improved by adopting that system.  Instead of adopting the archaic and broken county model of road maintenance, why not try something new such as regional roads, statewide cooperatives or separating the secondary system into a separate state agency from SCDOT with a better local funding mechanism?  Why not have the state maintain all county roads in exchange for counties taking back literal ownership?  Nothing like that seems to be on the table.  All or nothing is the only game in town.  The winners?  Short-sighted South Carolina politicians.  The losers?  South Carolina motorists and local governments.  

The article states what is already known in that states took over county roads because they weren't building enough roads or weren't maintaining them well.  The problem is that they still don't maintain them adequately except in less corrupt or higher population counties.  Nothing changed except the view from the top.  The state DOT's don't want the liability for the roads and the state legislature doesn't want the price tag.  This might sound fair enough if they plan to hold the hand of every county and city, but history has shown that is not the case.

The article also states how these large state road systems are a drain on state resources.  In this they are correct, but where else is the money coming from?  The only other option counties have independent of statewide legislation is property taxes.  While the states are probably too big to handle it themselves, the states took them over in the first place because the counties were too small and poor to handle it alone.  This is still true today in the majority of South Carolina counties, but unfortunately most states have shown no interest in local government reform.  Unless the states want to redraw county boundaries so that each state has huge, high population counties with deep tax bases then either the state is going to have to stay involved or a regional approach to local control is going to have to be considered.  The article also states that states own portions of local roads that were added long ago because of political reasons.  This is true in pretty much any state that has a state road system.  No system is perfect and a powerful politician usually can wrangle at least a few miles of roads into places state roads are not needed.  This is evidenced by the lopsided Georgia highway system where in a few parts of the state where powerful politicians resided saw far more roads added to the system than others.  About the only solution to that is to have only the most bare bones state highway system consisting of 8% or less of the roads.  The downgrade planned of the system to 34% will not get rid of all political roads, but it will ramp up costs for the counties.  At that ratio counties will still be too underfunded to do a very good job with these new "county" roads that they had no hand in building.  

It is also true that inflation and better vehicle fuel efficiency are stripping states of a solid revenue stream.  However, the real problem is that a fiscally conservative, anti-tax approach is part of why revenues are drying up.  Any state road system is only going to work as long as revenues are sufficient. Starving the beast is going to kill it not make it lean.  Even states like Michigan and Minnesota, both which have very small state highway systems, are having real trouble raising adequate revenues.  State control is not the issue.  Money is. 

The article quotes a representative from the National League of Cities stating that local governments are being stuck with roads they neither chose to build nor given the money for them.  If that's the case, shouldn't these roads be maintained by the state or a regional entity with enough resources pooled together to be able to manage them efficiently and effectively?  A county with 12,000 people should not be on the hook to maintain a road built to state highway specifications complete with expensive to maintain roadway features.  If they are given enough money to do it, it will cost more in taxes than if it's handled by another higher population county or regional government with at least 100,000 people.

States are also turning into salesman trying to "pitch" local control to city and county governments such as the TxDOT turnback program mentioned in the article.  If instead counties and city road agencies could be grouped into regional or statewide cooperative highway commissions, turning these lower maintenance roads down from the state system might make sense.  Texas has the highest number of counties in the country along with the largest land area.  Having 50-70 regions instead of 254 counties handling at least the farm-to-market roads would be more beneficial than dumping them on counties that in many cases have populations under 10,000 residents.  Likewise having 1-2 agencies handling 46 counties in South Carolina makes much more sense than assuming that every county is the same with the same capabilities.  Since regions are not an actual government jurisdiction they can also have authority to maintain these city streets now under TxDOT responsibility.  Until then Texas should just stick to their commitment to maintain 1/4 of the state's roads.

The article mentions that West Virginia was proposing local funding mechanisms that did not require devolution.  At least West Virginia gets it that regional cooperation for funding makes more sense than a big dump on counties and cities.  West Virginia's entire state population is very low meaning that the counties can hardly afford to take on what the state does for them.  WVDOT is struggling to maintain what it has, but with a lower population and more consistently rural population they are able to do it more effectively than fast-growing North Carolina and Virginia.  

Fortunately, the article makes mention of the other problem being too much local control.  That's what devolution creates with roads: too much local control.  The article cited New Jersey counties and townships struggling to fund roads after the rough winter of 2013-2014.  Indeed, New Jersey also has a major issue with townships, and this fragmentation of local responsibility has resulted in very high local property taxes and very inconsistent standards.  As another inefficient means of maintaining roads, road responsibility should revert to either regions or counties with townships primarily taken out of the road business.  Costs could be far lower when authority is centralized into high population counties.  New Jersey is one of the most populous states in the country and their 21 counties typically have populations that well exceed 100,000.  By just using county government alone, the regional concept would work very effectively with the few counties who are under 100,000 residents partnering with the higher population counties.  This is why most county roads in New Jersey are often better maintained than in other states because they do have such high populations and responsibility, but those benefits do not expand to townships or to the lower population counties.

In all, this article helped to highlight the real issues that local governments face and why states are giving them a raw deal.  It is time that we re-evaluate our approach to how we handle roads instead of simply thinking that starving the beast and forcing counties and municipalities large and small to shoulder the burden is some sort of forward way of thinking.  Are they honestly suggesting that the whole Good Roads Movement was a mistake?  Authority for roads other than counties did not exist before 1920, and states took that role in varying degrees because local government was not a reliable source for efficiency, construction standards or long-distance travel.  While this article in no way is suggesting the complete removal of state authority, it is assuming that a "county" road is a pretty little tree-lined one lane country road.  The fact is that on average 24% of every state's road network is eligible for federal aid with a further 5% designated collector and often built to highway standards.  Most small local agencies really don't have the revenues to keep up roads like that.  We need to either re-think our approach to local government or resist devolution as a "solution" to funding problems on a state level.  

Regional Roads: Examples of Potential Regional Roads Concepts (Part 3)

Four examples here can demonstrate how regionalization could help solve complex transportation issues that have not been easily resolved by other means.  Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads and Metro Atlanta all have been competing heavily for transportation funds with their surrounding states while the fragmentation of government in the region has made it very difficult to adequately raise revenues for region-specific projects as well as not providing an adequately maintained road system due to widely varying priorities and poor economies of scale.  A similar problem exists with township roads in New England, which is also discussed here.  While New England lacks as much in the way of regional competition, what they do have is the severe fragmentation that lowers the standards and raises costs for residents of those states.  These systems need to be unified, but in no case has the state been a good partner to these areas.  Here I will describe each possible regional scenario:

NORTHERN VIRGINIA

Northern Virginia is one of the fastest growing and most populous portions of Virginia.  With a collective population of around 2,000,000 it shares an equivalent population to the entire state of West Virginia.  The region has also suffered from working with a state who assumed control of county roads in all but one county over 80 years ago.  When the Byrd Road Act took responsibility for county roads in Loudoun, Fairfax and Prince William Counties, all were very rural areas with few paved roads and little need for local control.  Since then the roads have not kept up with traffic demands with rough pavement, lack of intersection upgrades and substandard roadway designs choking traffic throughout the entire region.  Northern Virginia desperately needs to invest in a modernization of the road system, but local governments have a disincentive to invest heavily in the roads when the funding can be transferred elsewhere in the state and funding is held by the state capitol instead of within the region.  In addition, local option funding has been severely limited by the state government.  What works for rural Virginia is not working so well for this area.

However, legislation passed in 2012 already has developed a framework to give Northern Virginia more autonomy for road improvements through the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority.  This agency has its own taxing powers and plans road and transit improvements specifically for the region.  In all, it appears to be a big step in the direction of regional control of roads, but at present the region has otherwise maintained their current structure of state control of roads in all but Arlington County and local control of municipal streets in all but Clifton.  Nonetheless, in the past 15 years the push for local control has popped up periodically: especially with Fairfax County.  Fairfax County carries the largest percentage of the population with over 1,000,000 residents.  Such a county is financially capable of maintaining their own road system, but the issues stretch beyond Fairfax County including several independent cities.  Arlington County also has more financial flexibility due to never giving their roads to VDOT.  While county-owned roads would probably work, it would be better if the entire region functioned as a single unit keeping the same road structure that VDOT has currently but operating it out of Northern Virginia exclusively instead of Richmond.  Because independent cities exist in this region, they would either have to be opted out or the "engineering district" model would have to be adapted basically centralizing engineering among the various road agencies along with shared traffic control.  It should also be noted that Northern Virginia's regional transportation authority matches the boundaries of the regional planning commission.

Northern Virginia, however, works largely as a unit on many things.  They also share in the cost of the transit systems and even park systems.  Northern Virginia is also in a unique position in that it does NOT have existing county road networks except in Arlington County.  This means that a transfer of state authority to a regional authority would be a far simpler process than in other states.  Instead of combining different employees and approaches, they would roll over the existing VDOT regional offices into a Northern Virginia DOT thus instantly gaining power as a state within a state.  Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William and Arlington Counties could collectively control the regions roads instead of each county separately allowing them to pool resources and define projects independent of the state.  Instead of primary and secondary state roads all owned and maintained by VDOT, primary roads would be owned by the state and maintained by the region and secondary roads would become regional roads owned and maintained solely by the regional DOT.

It should be noted, however, that the Byrd Road Act has a flaw in that it did not include cities in the plan.  While some towns in the region already have their roads contracted to VDOT, cities in the region are in a reverse position.  The cities of Alexandria, Manassas, Manassas Park and Fairfax are all required to not only maintain their own roads but also the non-expressway state roads within their cities.  Manassas Park in particular has suffered from a lack of adequate funding and maintenance problems due to not being able to combine forces with anyone for roads as well as being required to maintain primary routes.  With a new regional DOT, the rules need to be changed allowing all cities and towns to give part or all road maintenance to the regional system regardless of population.  This rule change is also needed for the next area of interest.

HAMPTON ROADS

Hampton Roads is probably one of the most unique transportation regions in the country.  This is because Virginia's requirement that cities are independent of counties has led to the disappearance of counties around Hampton Roads resulting in a solid cluster of independent cities instead of one larger city.  Because VDOT is not allowing non-expressway state roads in the region to be maintained by VDOT, this means that each city is responsible for most every road in the region including some expressways.  However, each city also works independently of each other with widely varying road standards that in most cases are all below VDOT specifications specifically in the area of safety improvements.  Four counties (Gloucester, York, James City and Isle of Wight) also exist in the region, and of those one of those was in talks to take over their county roads due to their proximity to the nine cities that make up Hampton Roads bringing the population total to 1.7 million.  James City County has also recently been in discussions with VDOT to take back their county road system.

Clearly the roadway situation in Hampton Roads is dysfunctional and it sets a bad precedent for the rest of the state.  The independent city structure should not prevent cities from seeking a means of providing a regional road delivery structure.  Like Northern Virginia, Hampton Roads also has a regional transportation planning organization.  The entire planning commission area also covers two more counties: Southampton and Surry.  Since each city and county is already consolidated, it once again makes sense to create a unified road structure that includes the entire region.  Because of the highly urbanized population and higher level of local control, however, it might also make sense to place a regional agency in charge of major roads in lieu of every cul-de-sac like VDOT does.  Essentially the existing regional transportation planning organization would create a DOT to take over all expressways, collector and arterial roadways in the cities from both VDOT and the cities respectively.  In the five counties in the region, the regional DOT would also assume control of all remaining secondary roads from VDOT in the six counties of the region similar to what is proposed for Northern Virginia.  However, all of these counties should also be given the option to stay with VDOT if they choose considering that the region will still have adequate population even without them.  In the independent cities, the roads would be divided into three tiers: primary (maintained by the region), regional (main roads owned and maintained by the region) and city (other streets).  Traffic control should be handled by the regional cooperative on all roads in the region even if certain streets are otherwise maintained by the cities.

If both Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia broke away from VDOT to form their own "state within a state" regional DOT's it would help correct the power struggle between these regions and Richmond.  With separate DOT's formed, the state's road budget could then be cleanly divided with a guaranteed ratio going to Northern Virginia, a guaranteed ratio going to Hampton Roads and the rest of the state no longer competing with these regions for funds.  With a regional structure, the two separate regions could also raise revenues on their own without involving VDOT.  It would also help VDOT to preserve the Byrd Road Act since the rest of the state is primarily rural and functions better with the current system.  However, that does not mean that a successful regionalization of Hampton Roads and Northern Virginia could not also be applied in the rest of the state based on the population thresholds described in this proposal.  In fact, all other secondary roads in Virginia could either be divided up into planning districts or divorced from VDOT into a Virginia Rural Roads Commission that maintains secondary roads jointly across all of rural Virginia.

METRO ATLANTA

The original 10-county Atlanta Metropolitan Area is highlighted in blue.  Today that covers 30+ counties.

The story with Metro Atlanta in some ways parallels Northern Virginia, but is actually quite different.  Georgia, unlike Virginia, has not embraced collective maintenance of roads either regionally or through the state.  Georgia also does not have independent cities, so every city is part of a county and has to share revenues with the county they are in.  The state actually relies strongly on local governments to plan, construct and maintain roads with limited state funding or involvement.  Metro Atlanta is also very fragmented with Fulton County in particular now largely completely divided into municipalities that resemble townships.  Dekalb and Gwinnett Counties seem to be following a similar course with new cities replacing large swaths of unincorporated suburban towns.  With relatively high populations, the seizure of local control from high population counties makes sense, but in terms of transportation policy is neither cost-efficient nor beneficial.  Road connectivity remains poor across Metro Atlanta and roadway standards vary widely from county to county and city to city.  The state road network is also simply too small with antiquated highway routings only causing confusion and thus worsening congestion in the region.  The state road network as it stands also does not provide any real benefit to the traveling public outside of the interstates since most surface state routes are not as well-maintained as in other parts of the state.  GDOT also remains firm in not taking over any new roads despite the explosion of roadway and lane miles throughout the region.  Cobb County in particular has the lowest ratio of state control of any county in the state with only 4% under state control when the state average is 15%.  However, the City of Atlanta has an unusually high ratio of state controlled roads likely due to the inability to fund these roads adequately on their own.  Nonetheless, this high level of state responsibility in city of Atlanta offers no benefit since the state does not do a good job maintaining these minor surface state roads while the city is adequately equipped to handle that responsibility.

Once again, a regional plan should be considered here.  The state of Georgia just recently surpassed the 10,000,000 mark on population.  Of that population, 40% or 4,000,000 reside within just the 10 county territory represented by the Atlanta Regional Commission forming the original boundaries of Metro Atlanta.  In the wider metro area, the population climbs to 5.7 million or 57% of the state's population!  The region alone has a population slightly larger than Maryland.  This means that the Atlanta Regional Commission could successfully operate their own regional DOT completely separate from GDOT with more than adequate funding to do so.  Adding Polk County, which itself is a micropolitan statistical area, brings the population to 5.8 million.  For sure it is an excellent place to start in the development of a regional highway system.  Of the larger metro area, 12 counties have populations under 50,000 residents meaning that they would greatly benefit from the centralization of the region's road system to a Greater Atlanta system.  These 12 counties would ultimately turn all routine maintenance over to the region saving those taxpayers money and improving the standards in those rural counties.  The larger counties, by comparison, would be able to do more with less by transferring the major highways in the region to the region itself.  If nothing else, developing a regional road system in all of Metro Atlanta could help spearhead these outlying counties to break away and form regional partnerships with other rural counties in their respective planning regions.  In fact, four separate planning regions make up 20 of the 30 counties in Greater Metro Atlanta, and if those broke away into their proper planning regions they would instantly have populations sufficient to begin recruiting other counties in their regions to join them.  As a result, one regional DOT would ultimately evolve into five regions and would hopefully spearhead further development of the other seven south of Atlanta.

By creating a regional DOT for Metro Atlanta, the region could right-size the road system in relation to the rest of the state.  While the four core metro counties are theoretically more than capable of taking care of their own roads, the reality of the incorporation of those counties coupled with the higher costs to maintain these road networks separately is not really working as well as it would appear.  The regional system would help create greater efficiency through direct responsibility of at least 25%-30% of the road system and an additional limited responsibility for the 12 smaller counties.  This would also help Cobb, Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb, all counties with very large road systems, to focus more on the construction and maintenance of truly local roads while some of the municipalities in the region that are too small to adequately manage road networks on their own such as Chattahoochee Hills, Hapeville and Mountain Park would have the option to use regional forces entirely when state forces never previously were available to them.

CONNECTICUT

New England is a complicated situation.  Taxes are high and roads are rough in a region of the country familiar with harsh winters and a form of government not embraced by much of the country: townships.  Nowhere in the country do townships have more power than New England where counties have essentially been deactivated.  In fact, no piece of property is not part of a small municipality in New England.  While the town form of government, a relic of Colonial times, has been helpful at keeping government close to the people it has resulted in ridiculously low road standards and higher costs throughout New England due to the very highly fragmented nature of townships.

Regionalization in New England is something that does not have to be as complicated as in parts of the South and Midwest.  In many cases just placing main roads under the authority of the county would greatly improve the quality of roads in the region while allowing New England states to downsize their typically larger state route systems.  While Maine is not a really good case for this plan due to its low population and high ratio of state control, states like New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island should truly pursue the creation of either county road systems simply for the purpose of bringing more roadways up to proper specifications or create road districts based on regional planning districts or county lines.

However, the specific example being used here is Connecticut.  With only 8 counties the state could run a very efficient road operation if municipalities were laid out like most states and counties were fully functional.  Regardless, Connecticut splits the pie very thin among 164 different townships.  In no way is it cost efficient or financially viable for 164 different townships to have their very own street department doing exactly the same job on just a few roads that the next township over also does.  This makes costs very high for local government as a whole and not just for roads, and very few of these municipalities could afford to have anything remotely like a traffic operations unit to manage traffic control.  The lack of any state involvement in the maintenance of township roads also does not help.  Since these are municipalities, it is also typically more difficult for a state to have any authority compared to a county.  Compare this to Maryland where most counties have similar populations to Connecticut.  Maryland's county roads are typically far better maintained simply due to maintaining a county structure for road maintenance despite a very high population.  A typical Maryland county has a population of over 100,000 residents with few municipalities.  Thus, counties in Maryland operate at a far higher level due to the lack of incorporated municipalities carving up the funding pie.

This map of Connecticut shows how using counties instead of townships as a form of "regionalization" for road maintenance could be far more efficient and produce a far better road system.  Nearly every county in Connecticut has at least 150,000 residents meaning eight very well-maintained county road systems instead of 164 poorly maintained township road systems.  (Sourced from ct.gov)

In terms of creating an MSA-based district, the township system may actually be advantageous since it is far easier to carve up districts accurately.  In addition, if every regional road district in Connecticut, for instance, was divided based on 400,000 residents, 9 regional districts could be formed very close to the current number of counties.  Since every county in Connecticut is well over 100,000 residents per county, this means that the regional organizations would simply relieve both the state and the towns of the main roadways.  This would mean that Connecticut could cut their current state-owned ratio in half to about 9% and transfer the remaining connecting roads for a combined total of about 30-40% of the road system.  Low population towns could also simply pay the regional agency to maintain their remaining roads for them meaning huge costs savings for the residents of those towns and a lower tax burden across the state.  This would also free up far more funding for better roadway safety standards and smoother roads.

GEORGIA

NOTE: The map/information below will soon be updated to reflect boundaries based on regional planning commissions (2/17/17)

With the Metro Atlanta map, it is important to also show the whole state including the proposed 28 county region.  Georgia proves that the county model is an unreliable means of giving the best results especially when the population is spread too thin.  With 159 counties, only Texas has more counties but even Texas's counties are much larger than Georgia's micro-counties.  While Georgia avoided the township system, Georgia has not only too many counties but also far too many municipalities carving up the pie.  While the idea for regional roads was born out of a solution for Northern Virginia, it appears it could very well solve the county problem without eliminating a single county in Georgia.

This crudely color-coded map is of the existing planning regions, but is designed to also eventually define the regions of regional road cooperative districts.  Note the total of 12 regions.  Also note Region 9.  Region 9 is barely above the 300,000 threshold and may have to be combined with Region 8 if population of the region drops below that threshold.  All of the other regions have a population of 350,000 or more.  

The average population of all of the regions shown here is 800,000.  This means that there are approximately 12 "states within a state" to work with here in terms of ability to provide state-level transportation standards and maintenance.  However, unless a dedicated statewide funding source is able to supply the lower population regions, it may be necessary to combine Regions 8 and 9 if population of either drops below the 300,000 threshold.  Nonetheless, this is a vast improvement over the current structure.  Region 9 in particular has a population in many counties of only 3,000 in population yet they currently provide all of their own road maintenance.  Note as well how this plan ties the rural counties to population centers in the region allowing improved economies of scale and higher standards in the more populous counties while giving the low population areas access to professional standards and higher purchasing power enjoyed by the more populous counties.

CONCLUSION

Regional road concepts are a means of completely rethinking the role of both states and local governments in terms of road planning, construction and maintenance.  With so many types of regional organizations in place, it is a wonder why the actual process of building and maintaining roads continues to fall largely on very small local jurisdictions across much of the country.  With higher overhead costs and lower overall consistency still an issue today, most counties and municipalities need a better alternative now as much as they did 80 years ago.  However, states are proving to no longer be the best option to address this issue.  Various financial crises are wrecking both centralized road programs in the Mid-Atlantic states and other less centralized road programs across much of the country.  Even the less centralized systems are struggling to finance larger road systems spread across numerous jurisdictions that have all grown larger and more expensive than available funding.  Clearly both structures have outlived their usefulness.

States have also proved that they want to reduce responsibility while counties and cities have shown that it costs more than taxpayers are willing or able to pay to provide a high quality road network.  Since counties and cities have shown an unwillingness to consolidate, and secession of portions of states from larger states for that purpose is unrealistic, the only other solution is to create a means of providing road construction and maintenance on a regional level without actually creating any new jurisdictions.  This is why the regional roads plan has been proposed here as a means of right-sizing road systems keeping maintenance semi-local while improving resources, planning and staff.  It is a win-win for every party.  The state is relieved of significant responsibility, counties and cities are not dumped on them what they cannot afford and tremendous cost savings are realized by all parties involved. With the regional roads plan, no state is too big to provide high standard roads to every county and city.

Return to REGIONAL ROADS: WHY REGIONAL ROADS? See Part 1 >>>>

Return to EXAMPLES OF POTENTIAL REGIONAL ROAD CONCEPTS See Part 2 >>>>

Regional Roads: How the System Works [Part 2]

What is a regional road?  A regional road in terminology means a road that is of regional importance vs. statewide importance.  Think of a region as a larger municipality in one part of a state and the surrounding areas that are economically dependent on it.  In terms of transportation, it means a road that is important to regional traffic demands, but is not important as a statewide through route.  Historically these have been called "farm-to-market roads", but that terminology should be retired due to its antiquated usage.  Most people no longer live on farms nor do they need a simple hard-top road to get their hay and turnips to the general store in town.  Most people now live in cities, and cities aren't farm country.  Nonetheless, cities are full of roadways that are major roads that are not part of any state highway system and are not being properly marked or maintained as they usually fall under the responsibility of smaller cities, towns, townships, and counties.  These roads are typically minor arterial roads that carry heavy traffic, but for whatever reason were not deemed important enough to become part of a state highway system.  

 

In fact, state highway systems in urban areas are often archaic with roads typically following outmoded routes while many principal arterial roads remain local responsibility.  This has created a huge mismatch of priorities, and it shows that as a whole that state DOT's are not really equipped for urban areas and are failing them.  This is part of why urban counties tend to lead devolution efforts, because what works for a county with 10,000 residents does not really work for a county with 500,000 residents who is relying mostly on sales and property taxes to get roads built and maintained when the state is providing very little funding for that purpose.  The problem then is that these urban areas are not working together to solve transportation problems.  As a whole, most can operate like a state, but they are instead working as separate often competing parts with the state acting as a broker to get larger projects built and funded, but not much else.  State roads in urban areas are routinely maintained far worse, and as a whole they provide little benefit off of the interstates and principal arterial roads.

 

This is where regional road systems make much more sense than actual government consolidation.  Multiple counties and cities do not need to be merged into one entity to get those results, but they can ACT like one entity to improve efficiency, service delivery, and planning.  It should be understood that every local government usually has some historical reason to exist that they want to fiercely maintain.  In contrast, regional roads only transfer a function of government from the local level to regional level while otherwise retaining separate agencies for all other government duties.  Since this involves a partnership of many counties and municipalities on the same level, it is essentially dubbed "horizontal consolidation".  In essence, this creates a phantom jurisdiction that has no power beyond their specifically assigned duty which in this case would be to engineer, construct, and maintain roads under the direction of each partner jurisdiction.  While clearly a "special district", in this case the district is far larger than the jurisdictions within.  This jurisdictional non-status allows them to be fluid unlike a county or city so that they can adjust to serve the needs of the population in the most efficient manner.  In many ways it is similar to a congressional district except without the gerrymandering.  The regional road systems would also function much like a state DOT except for being assigned to a specific area including:

 

1. State boundaries (a region can encompass an entire state, but it is not ideal in larger states unless the participation from counties and cities is too low to work in a smaller geographic area)
• This is the default option in small geographic size or small population states where the state population is less than 2 million residents (Wyoming, Delaware, Vermont)
  
• In states where participation is voluntary and only a statewide option will create the necessary population threshold
  
2. Urban area boundaries (the metropolitan area and exurban counties surrounding a larger city with a minimum combined population of 1 million residents)
3. State-defined geographic regions (the state is divided into regions with an average population of 1 million residents per region)
• Regions are pegged to planning districts with adjacent districts combined to reach population thresholds if seperate populations are too low
• Regions are roughly based around larger population centers distributed across the state.
4. A hybrid model
   
• It is offered statewide only to rural counties under a certain populaton (in this instance, participation likely cannot be voluntary)
  
• Urban counties in larger population regions may only share services within that specific defined regions
• These regions would have to be mandatory and defined by state law, which would be difficult to execute unless it involved a transfer from a state level such as in Virginia

POPULATION THRESHOLD

The goal of any regional road agency would be to have a population comparable to the lowest state population to provide state highway quality services and an approach to planning that acts more like a state government, but tailored to the needs of each region.  Each region should average 1 million residents with a bare minimum of 1/3 of that population in the smallest population region.  These thresholds are needed to allow maximum funding allocations from a state level and an adequate pool of resources from a local level to provide adequate funding, adequate structure, and adequate specialization with an engineer-driven approach.  With a high level of responsibility, they could more effectively handle all areas of road maintenance irrespective of the size or population of the jurisdictions within that zone, but they could also be given the ability to come up with more creative and attractive solutions to engineering problems than most state DOT's.  In fact, they would be officially a DOT known under different names such as the "Hampton Roads Regional DOT" or "Georgia Regional Roads Cooperative".  Note that this total includes the population of every agency involved, not just land area.  This means if counting a county, only unincorporated population can be calculated unless the cities or towns within that county are also members.  Thus, if a county has 200,000 residents, but three cities in the county totaling 50,000 opted out, the population is counted as 150,000.

As detailed above in the list, the four options for regional boundaries are

 

1. Statewide (best option for initial system)
2. Federal-Planning Regions (best option in case of broad participation as long as minimum population thresholds are met):
3. Rural Statewide (requires a minimum threshold and a maximum threshold)
4. Urban Regions (based on metropolitan area boundaries and used in conjunction with the rural statewise option).
   

Population threshold is ESSENTIAL to an effective region.  Low participation and low population is a deal breaker, and it must operate like a fund raising drive with a minimum population threshold met to even form.  At minimum, a combined region should be no less than 300,000 residents, and they should form organically.  At a statewide level, every county, city, and town should be contacted to gauge their interest and find out how many would be willing to participate and if the interest extends to areas of close proximity.  A statewide plan can still share costs and resources, but it will require some special steps if participation is less than 35%.  Statewide, at least a combined area of 1 million residents should participate for it to work.  In defined regions, participation may need to be at or near 100%, and adjacent regions combined if population is insufficient.  One million residents is still the minimum target, and best results will not be achieved without hitting that target.  If a region falls below 300,000, then they should be combined with another region until that number is hit.  For example, let's say the Blue Valley Region has 275,000 residents (and is not gaining population) and the adjacent Green Hills Region has 310,000 (the lowest of all bordering regions).  In that case, the Blue Valley and Green Hills regions would combine to form one agency with 585,000 residents.  Similarly, let's say that member counties and municipalities in both the Blue Valley and Green Hills Regions come out to a total population of 125,000 in one 105,000 in the other.  In this case, at least three regions would be needed to be combined to bring the populations to threshold, and that could require the dissolution of specific regions to a statewide level.  The likelihood that these agreements would operate in a swiss cheese like pattern is fairly high meaning that clusters may not be able to follow the boundaries of the planning regions if this is the case.  In a state like Wyoming, this very well means that one region may cover the entire state

 

SINGLE COUNTY REGIONS

While the idea is for multi-county regions, it does not exclude single county regions.  In some cases, a single county would form an initial region by merging the cities together with other cities and/or the county.  Single county regions would operate under one of two models:

 

1. Very similar to the Lakewood Plan adopted by the City of Lakewood and Los Angeles County in the 1950's where, for instance, all townships in a county in Connecticut decided to form a county-wide road department.  
2. The "punch through model" like in counties in New Jersey where counties are responsible for most arterial and collector roads inside the boundaries of cities and towns leaving cities and towns to maintain only local streets or specific roadways that they do not want the county to maintain such as the main street through a CBD.

Neither of these would provide the same benefits as a larger regional roads plan, but in very high population counties with few to no unincorporated areas left, this would allow counties the ability to pool resources to provide consistent planning and maintenance over the most important roads within the county that are not otherwise under state jurisdiction. 

Either way, the goal is to bring roads closer to the people than a state level but far enough away that resources are pooled to assure that proper standards are met, agencies are fully equipped and economies of scale can be fully achieved.  Instead of "sending money to the state capitol" they will be technically "sending money" to the largest city in the region or sending money to a cooperative agency whose purpose is to provide better maintenance, not cede all road planning authority.

HORIZONTAL CONSOLIDATION AND ADDITIONAL OPPORTUNITIES

Horizontal consolidation through regional cooperatives allows better access to resources and better access to state government.  The use of this method means the likelihood of a dedicated state funding source is more likely, better regional clout.  In the case of specific geographic regions, it also creates the opportunity to obtain valuable contracts with the state DOT to begin to provide state highway maintenance using forces from the region.  For example, a fictional planning region has the following:

• The initial division consisted of 1 state DOT, 12 counties and 45 cities/towns all operating separately
• 11 counties and 20 cities/towns join the cooperative with one county and 25 cities holding out initially
• The cooperative requests per-mile state-aid payments for state-owned roads so that they can provide state road maintenance on behalf of the DOT meaning millions of dollars of state-aid steered to the local level thus what started out as 58 agencies is now down to 27
• State employees are absorbed into the cooperative, but remain state employees until they quit or retire
  
• Seeing the improvements in road quality and financial benefits of joining the cooperative, the remaining county joins the cooperative along with the other 25 cities and towns meaning 58 separate agencies doing the same thing have been reduced to one operating just in that region.
• The region then petitions to divert state-aid into a dedicated fund for the region freeing the 57 partner local agencies from jointly financing operations of the agency allowing the region to return 100% of funding paid in from each local agency in roadway improvements to the partner local agencies
• The regional also already benefits from state-aid payments reducing operational costs and helping the state to provide more frequent maintenance with less cost
• The result is that both the state and all 57 local agencies are able to provide much better road maintenance than they were operating separately due to streamlined costs, more specialization, more professionalism and ultimately fewer employees needed to do the same job through attrition
• Other regions are formed around the state, and as they evolve, the state begins creating a dedicated funding source for each region allowing the regions to take ownership of major local roadways creating a two-tiered system of regional highways and regional contract roads
  

SENSIBLE DEVOLUTION FOR THE STATE ALLOWS EVOLUTION FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

The best part of regional road agencies are that state DOT's can more reasonably downsize their operations by transferring both responsibility and ownership to regional agencies, and oversight of regional agencies from a state level would be far easier than it currently is for individual counties and cities.  States with lopsided highway systems full of unnecessary state-owned roads based on mid-century politicals could be divested to regions without decline in road quality.  This means that states could far more easily justify downsizing their highway systems to the point that they only are responsible for interstates and major arterial roads.  Even US highways and some state-numbered routes could transfer to regional ownership if a separate regional-owned highway system is developed allowing highways to revert to their proper role of providing navigation along the shortest and best routes instead of posting route signage based solely on ownership.  

Since most state DOT's are eager to remove as many lower importance state routes as possible, this is a way to do so that actually works better for both parties.  Likewise, the states can also cut costs by combining maintenance responsibility for state roads with the regional agencies: a form of reverse contracting where the smaller agency handles duties for the larger state agency.  Regional boards could also be made up of a local elected officials from each jurisdiction to assure that funding and goals are met on both a regional and local level.  At present, states have been holding on to these larger state highway systems because it is generally accepted that counties and cities will not do nearly as good of a job as the state has in the past maintaining these roads, and as a result they have adopted a policy of very gradual devolution through mileage caps and horse trading.  This is a point of contention both on a local level and among dissenting state level politicians.  If the state needs to downsize, but the local agencies can't afford to up-size, then the happy medium is to place that responsibility with a much larger regional cooperative who can do everything the state can, and possibly better.

Regional road systems are a way to completely rethink the way roads are maintained vs. the old method of relying either on a larger state or a smaller local agency.  Many state DOT's have become overwhelmed as states have grown massively in population with larger cities dominating much of the state's transportation policy.  This places excessively high demands on a central agency that is far less flexible than what is needed to keep up with fast changing demands on their own system coupled with a high number of small jurisdictions all needing to be handled individually.  While authority for roadway financing and standards should still be steered by a state DOT, the role of the state DOT could certainly stand to change to a more administrative role and less as an agency solely responsible for all aspects of roads across a state.  Nonetheless, this is only possible if that role is transferred to regions large enough to handle that responsibility.  Clearly the current method is not working as states are reducing staff and cutting back on maintenance due to being increasingly strained financially as population, heavy loads, and lane mileage continues to increase while purchasing power diminishes.

CURRENT DEVOLUTION TRENDS LACK ACCOUNTABILITY

States at present are generally seeking to place more responsibility on a local level without either providing additional funding nor expecting any accountability from the local agencies that they entrust these roads to.  It is a large paradox to entrust increasingly heavy responsibility on local governments while giving them home rule when these local agencies actually need more assistance from the state to maintain their roads properly even if they are financially responsible for them.  The main reason the state wants to give up these roads is that they are unwilling or unable to finance any new construction on them or are struggling to budget routine surface maintenance.  It was previously considered that keeping engineering, traffic control, and routine maintenance on a state level while otherwise turning the roads to the local agencies might work, but that still presents problems with coordination and liability that the states want out of.  The only reason these local agencies need this help is because they are unable to staff their agencies in such a way to provide state-level maintenance and engineering standards making it nearly impossible for most local agencies to maintain their roads frequently enough nor comply sufficiently with state/federal standards.  This creates a co-dependent situation with sporadic assistance, and many major problems are routinely ignored with a "kick the can" mentality.  In fact, most states tend to own a very small ratio of the highway network, and very few maintain the majority of roads eligible for federal-aid.  This means that counties and cities remain on the hook for thousands of miles of roads in each state that are far too expensive to be their sole responsibility.  That might not matter if they were all dirt roads, but these are the products of mid-century federal-aid projects that left counties and cities with highway grade roads when they are not agencies structured to maintain highways.

In contrast, states that do maintain a majority of a state's roads are finding that the political will to create an adequate statewide funding source has not kept up with the demands to maintain such a road system.  Budget shortfalls, deferred maintenance, and predatory taxation through extreme fees are some of the ways that these states have been trying to bridge the gap, and this unfairly punishes citizens for the lack of political will in the state legislature to raise gas and sales taxes to adequate levels.  If they are wishing to push the levying of funds to a local level, that support is likely to be stronger when handing it to a regional collective vs. smaller counties and cities.  If another option was available aside from transferring more roads onto small local governments who are constrained on raising revenues and work within very tight budget margins then perhaps a balance could be achieved.  This is the only way that high engineering standards and efficiency can be retained similar to a state agency while subsequently relieving the states of added responsibility: especially in states that by and large have doubled and even tripled in population in less than half of a century.  Very large population states especially should really be exiting the road maintenance business as they are trying to manage a system with too many needs, policies that are too inflexible, and too many stakeholders.

REGIONALIZATION: OPTIONS FOR EACH REGION

Regionalization would create an interesting scenario with possibilities that are not one size fits all.  Unlike a state DOT, a region could set specific policies related to the needs of their own regions.  As previously mentioned, states could downsize their state system to backbone arterial highways while counties and municipalities could still be relieved of direct maintenance responsibility of roads ranging from main thoroughfares to entire road networks.

MORE THAN ONE APPROACH

Regional roads are best designed as a comprehensive system, but maybe the only way to get a myriad of local agencies to agree to such a plan is to only place that responsibility on certain roads keeping the most local streets local.  This means developing a regional primary "farm-to-market" network instead of requiring the transition of entire road systems to one agency.  The other option is covered in the Consolidated Traffic Operations Plan where only traffic control services are shared in the region.  The farm-to-market approach would be best as a hybrid of the two meaning full regional control on some roads and only traffic control on others that are otherwise maintained by the local authorities.  However, a farm-to-market approach is nowhere near as cost-efficient as a centralized approach, and it would only typically work in higher population areas.  In fact, the best way to roll out a regional road system is not to start with a farm-to-market system but to instead start with traffic control.  When it becomes clear that the merger of traffic operations has been extremely beneficial to all member agencies, they are more likely to consider transferring other road maintenance operations to the region.  The farm-to-market approach should generally be viewed as this: some counties or cities aren't willing to hand over all of their roads, but will transfer a few, so these holdouts will be given this privilege in order to provide ample financing to the system as a whole.

Issues such as this and other answers to questions are described in better detail in the post entitled Regional Roads: Answers to Questions and Customization for Local Needs

REGIONAL ROAD SYSTEM ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Regional roads do not necessarily have to be a completely separate ownership structure.  Unlike state-owned local roads, counties and cities should have far more authority in regards to major road projects, major road funding and encroachment on businesses and residences.  That is why a regional board would be needed to incorporate local government into the organization much like how a state DOT has a DOT board except that board members would be actively operating as county and city administrators within their own jurisdiction.  Since most states have around 25% of their roads on the federal-aid highway network and another 5% designated non-federal-aid collector, then regional responsibility would basically fill in the gap between the state and local level so that if the state owns 10% of the state's road network, the regional agency would at least own the remaining 20-25% of roads of higher functional classification that the state does not own.  However, it is best that the regional agency either be contracted to maintain or completely own all other roads in most counties and cities.  This means that separate city and county systems should be reserved only for either the most high population areas or areas where a regional system is defined within a single county boundary.  That threshold should be as follows:

Full regional responsibility for local road maintenance should be required in:

• Counties with unincorporated populations of less than 50,000 residents
• Cities/towns with populations less than 3,500 residents
• Townships/boroughs with populations less than 25,000 residents

Partial local road maintenance, with only traffic control and/or certain local agency roads under regional jurisdiction, would be permitted in:

• Counties with an unincorporated population not less than 50,000 residents but not more than 100,000 residents (unincorporated population excludes municipal population)
• Cities/towns with a population of not less than 5,000 residents on a municipal level but not more than 10,000 residents 
• Townships/boroughs with populations less than 50,000 residents

Beyond this, regional DOT's should have similar powers to state DOT's on how much responsibility they have for remaining non-federal-aid local roads with some guidelines in place.  Generally it is viewed that a low population county or city is not truly financially capable of providing adequate road maintenance so all roads within those jurisdictions should fall under direct responsibility of the regional DOT per the thresholds described above.  However, these other local roads would be best funded differently via the respective local agency essentially paying into the regional system as a means of being relieved of that responsibility with their own funds in order to avoid operating a separate street department.  The separate regions should also have to work within guidelines set by the state DOT meaning that regional standards should be in substantial compliance with state standards.  This is why the only places where it may not be beneficial to have regional DOT's operating non-federal aid roads are in wealthier or higher population cities and counties where the tax base is strong enough and population high enough that a local agency might be more effective.  However, if that local agency still does not meet the needs of the public, the public would have a right to demand the transfer of those roads over to a regional DOT.  This is why higher population areas are allowed to opt out.  Note that opting out is restricted in middle population counties, cities, towns and townships.

Another approach to regionalization is to use it as a means to combat population losses in rural areas.  By requiring that any county below a certain population must be combined with other counties, cities and towns into a regional unit until it reaches a population threshold, better established urban counties improve their existing structure while small rural counties can benefit from the better structure and cost benefits of tapping into much larger regions.  Clearly a county with 600,000 residents can sustain itself without joining a larger region, but a county with 12,000 residents is not financially independent enough to operate its own road system correctly or efficiently.

A TOP-DOWN OPTION WHEN VOLUNTARY UNIONS PROVE IMPOSSIBLE

Regional systems are designed as a horizontal approach instead of top-down approach meaning that if too many agencies are opting out, the system collapses.  Preferably, once the framework is in place, it should be difficult for agencies to opt out unless they have serious issues with the management structure.  Abuse of power is not unrealistic with any public agency, which is why local government tends to be getting more fragmented, not larger.  This is because regional agreements enacted on a local level are inherently unstable, lack a clear pattern to sharing of services, often have poor financial arrangements and do not involve sharing of services to a level high enough to provide any true benefits.  Regional parks, water districts and other regional services typically do not involve even the same unions for the same groups of jurisdictions.

The regional road systems are not like that.  A set region is formed, and all jurisdictions within that region are ideally restricted to those boundaries with exception to two or more whole regions joining forces.  Most regional agreements are about survival when a low population area completely lacks resources to provide a service independent of another approximate local agency.  With the set boundaries, an allowance is made for one of more agencies to opt out, but these same agencies may return if the issue is re-negotiating the contract to better benefit the local agency in question.  As long as the minimum population threshold is met, a county or city leaving would not destroy the whole system, but every effort should be made to make sure they return.  In addition, "gutting" the cooperative may be necessary in some cases where if full road maintenance does not work out, a transition to a farm-to-market method or limiting the joint function to only traffic operations may be a worthwhile consideration.

Overall, collectives organizing from a local level instead of from a state level are not ideal due to the unstable nature of such agreements except as part of a pilot project.  However, the need to design them in this manner is necessary to prove to state legislatures that something like this can work.  If they are successful, then the state legislature can take additional steps to solidify the unions of local agencies for the goal of having far fewer agencies directly maintaining roads.  The Steps to Creating a Regional Road System article includes two pilot projects as well as greater detail how to transition a nuclear county/city model into a regional system.  Regions as designed are intended to replace part or all county responsibility and at least part of the municipal responsibility for roads.  That can't be done if single counties and cities get angry over the details and choose to opt out or defund their portion of the consolidated road network.  Instead, a regional takeover of roads is to be done in lieu of using state forces, but this cannot be done unless these systems are fully established statewide.  In addition, the creation of a statewide cooperative will also be useful to protect the union of local agencies if a large number drop out.  For instance, if 50 out of 100 counties drop out, the remaining 50 counties will be less able to function as smaller regions and will need to operate statewide: especially if contracted counties are in a region with a higher dropout rate.

For this reason, regional systems should functionally be viewed as separate state agencies not amalgams of local governments where all matters have to be handled by going to each member agency.  Due to this, the state should in rare cases reserve the option to seize control of a region that fails on its duties.  This means if there is internal corruption, misuse of funding or extenuating circumstances that render a region unable to construct or maintain roads at the same levels as other regions that the state should reserve the right to take over a regional DOT for a set period of time.  At present there is no mechanism in place to assure that all counties are maintaining roads to the same levels system-wide in most states.  In these instances, the state will temporarily seize control of all roads in the region changing regional routes to state secondary and assuming authority for existing agreements with local agencies for remaining local roads until the end of the contract (assuming a 5-10 year contract).  However, the design of regions should dictate that such a seizure would almost never happen.  Unlike counties and cities, these agencies are larger, better funded and better able to do the job they are assigned than almost any local agency.

THE PROCESS OF REGIONALIZATION OF ROADS: PILOT PROJECTS

In some ways, pilot projects of regionalization have already been tested via city-county consolidation.  Through this process, it has been well-demonstrated that road maintenance standards almost always improved in the combined entity vs. the two agencies operating separately.  Nonetheless, this approach avoids the true test of whether this can work: the addition of neighboring counties.  Nowhere has an entire metropolitan area been consolidated into a "super-city", but on a specific service level this becomes possible.
Thus, pilot projects should always start with the following criteria and a population that preferably exceeds 150,000 of the combined pilot agencies:

1. At least two coterminous counties (unincorporated) and at least two cities/towns within those counties (if they exist)
2. At least four coterminous cities/towns/townships
3. At least four coterminous (unincorporated) counties
4. One county and at least three cities/towns within that county [note: works best if cities/towns combined make up close to half of county population]

These pilot projects, if successful, will determine if the agencies have enough repertoire to maintain this union and if they can combine with other agencies.  If necessary, pilot projects can be divided across an entire region testing every part of the region where, when completed, the successful ones will be combined and the unsuccessful ones will return to prior operations with the issue revisited after issues are addressed that caused the failure.

Note that a more detailed description of two pilot projects is described in The Steps to Create a Regional Road System.  Indeed, the regional strategy is best suited to be begun in this method, because it needs to be tested on a local level and perfected before it is rolled out on a larger regional or statewide level.  The strategies described both use the boundaries of a regional planning commission while starting with the development of a small urban area regional district.

In any of these pilot projects, it starts with engineers.  Essentially one engineer per 100,000 residents in a region is hired in the pilot to oversee roads not maintained by the state through a state or federal grant running 1-3 years meaning that a region with 300,000 residents would have three engineers with the first hired also a professional traffic operations engineer (PTOE).  The need for a traffic operations engineer is especially important to assist the local governments in unifying standards on traffic control, which vary wildly per agency.  The team would be assigned to see if a central authority can successfully be established over a number of county and municipal agencies within that pilot district with the task of streamlining operations, securing funding sources, identifying important routes and establishing regional standards.  Each region selected is based on the federal regional planning districts (NOT MSA's), and a federal program should be developed that provides funding to test regional road system strategies.

During the pilot project, no actual reorganization would take place aside from prior reorganization proposed, and counties and cities would continue to operate their own agencies except that they would be under the supervision of regional engineers throughout the duration of the pilot project.  New positions would be temporary in nature with actual job titles retained.  In other words, each employee would assume a role to test the efficacy of a new organization.  Representatives from the state DOT and local agencies would continue to work together with the engineers to assess what worked best and how the process could be improved.  Preferably every state interested in the pilot project should have one test region funded per state, and federal funds could help to boost this process if the federal government was involved.  However, multiple regions could apply to the pilot program based on a majority vote of all affected counties in a region competing for the chance to participate.

Pilot projects could also test a farm-to-market strategy where instead of combining departments, the entire planning region gets the state and/or local governments to set aside funding to test maintenance of a new system of regional routes.  This means that primary collectors and arterials in each region would transfer from the county/municipal level to the regional level for the duration of the project.  The strategy would be used to determine if maintenance levels improved, costs were managed or reduced and to see if it would have a negative effect on the local agencies to transfer a portion of their responsibility to a regional entity.  The farm-to-market approach, despite the agrarian name, should ONLY be tested in a high population metropolitan area.

Once the framework is in place and the pilot project is deemed successful, the entire regional entity would be officially formed.  Instead of existing as a test project, local agencies, equipment and facilities would all be combined under the management of the new regional entity.  If the farm-to-market approach is employed, the special district engineers would sign an agreement with the state and counties to formally take control of all collector and arterial roadways not otherwise owned by the state.  These new roads would be assigned new route numbers based on a statewide plan with the state also working to transfer roads to the regional system that are of lesser importance provided that the regional plan is adopted statewide.  If the new regional entity encompasses entire agencies, the new regional agency would then begin the process of phasing out individual county and municipal street departments in all member agencies.  If local agencies are phased out, then all local employees should be automatically transferred to the staff of the regional DOT with attrition put in place to help the new agency adjust its employment levels over time.  Likewise, the state DOT, all involved counties/cities and the state legislature would have to agree to a funding method and funding formula tested during the pilot project to provide all regional agencies meaning that a dedicated portion of state highway funds or local funds would have to provided to each region annually based on mileage and population.

FUNDING OF A REGIONAL ROAD SYSTEM USING A SAMPLE STATE

Looking at a sample state, the road system funding would need to be changed.  Sample state has 100,000 miles of roads on their total road system and 15,000 miles under state control.  Imagine that the state runs on a budget of $2 billion annually with 85% going to the state to maintain 15,000 miles of roads and 15% going to the counties and cities in addition to $1 billion annually going directly to counties through local gas taxes and sales taxes.  In the regional plan, it would be assumed that the ratio would change.  The state would transfer 5,000 miles of roads to the regions retaining 10,000 miles of roads.  The regions would also receive $12,000 per mile for routine maintenance of state-owned roads.  Thus the budget looks like this:

• Under the existing budget, $300 million goes to local governments and $1.7 billion is reserved by the state
• The proposed budget would transfer an additional $120 million to the regions for state highway maintenance
• An additional $300 million will be required for regional control of an additional 25,000 miles of roads formerly owned by counties, cities and towns
• This means that the funding ratio would change so that 69% of $2 billion is reserved by the state for state highway construction and administration, 21% is transferred to the regional agencies and 10% is reserved for counties and cities
• If the sample state chooses NOT to use regional forces to maintain state roads, then the ratio would be 75% for state highway construction and maintenance, 15% for regional agencies and 10% reserved for counties and cities
• It should be noted that the 10% reserved for counties and cities would include a retainer by the regions for regional maintenance of county roads and city streets in agencies that do not have their own forces
• In the $1 billion annually going directly to counties and cities, at least 25% would be split off and given directly to regional agencies with the remaining funding going to the local level.  This would fund major construction projects on regional roads

GOVERNANCE OF REGIONAL ROAD AGENCIES

The setup should be somewhat similar to a state DOT, but accountability needs to be brought into consideration.  Preferably a commission system should be adapted meaning these would be called "regional road commissions".  The organization consists of three main parts: a regional board consisting of at least one representative from each county and each city with a population of at least 10,000 residents, an engineering division and a regional roads commissioner.  This means if three counties and 15 cities are in a region with 4 of those over 10,000 residents then the board is made up of 7 members.  The second part will involve the engineering division.  The engineering division will have primary decision-making authority in regards to day-to-day operations and will consist of at least 3 full-time civil engineers meaning one engineer for every 100,000 residents although as many can be hired as budgets allow.  The chief engineer should not only be a civil engineer, but also a PTOE.  The engineering division will also have supervisory authority over all employees in each region.  Lastly will be the regional roads commissioner.  This could be either an appointed position from the existing board or an at-large elected position with a term limit of 4-6 years.  If term limits are not used, then the position should be appointed to avoid lifelong commissioners and too much politicization of regional road agencies.  The regional roads commissioner would serve as a liaison between the public and the highway agency allowing greater public input directly into the agency instead of indirectly through county and municipal leaders.

PRIVATIZATION OPTIONS

Much interest has been sparked in recent years on bringing the private sector into the road maintenance process.  This would be much easier in a regional system than on a county or city level.  Perhaps not every aspect should be privatized, but many duties such as engineering services, traffic control, safety projects, construction work, special equipment needs and other duties could be handled by private firms and contractors.  Unlike in a county or city where a private firm or contractor can usually only be hired on a consultant basis, a private firm could work full-time for a region providing services for the region under annual contracts.  This would be ideal during the transitional process and could be continued on a case-by-case basis once the system is established.

NEEDED STATEWIDE REGULATION OF REGIONAL ROAD SYSTEMS

The following rules should apply to all regional road networks and should be codified in state law:

1. Regional road districts must be laid out based on regional planning commissions with boundaries of each region restricted the boundaries of the regional planning commission.  They are NOT laid out based on MSA's (correction from the previous version).  
2. Agreements to join the cooperative are done on a 5-10 year basis meaning that at the end of the term the local agency has the option to leave, change the terms or renew.
3. Pilot projects during formation of the system do not have to be laid out based on regional planning commissions to allow for suitable partnerships to form based on need rather than geography.
4. Regional road districts must have a combined population of at least 300,000 residents to operate independent of other regions.
5. If the combined population is below 300,000 residents, the region must combine with an adjoining region.  The adjoining region should have the lowest population of all adjoining regions.  Up to three regions may be combined as a means to bring population to the acceptable threshold.
6. State DOT's may contract all state road maintenance in a region to a regional DOT, but ownership of the entire state road network may not be transferred to a regional DOT. 
7. A region with 1,000,000 or more residents will have broader powers including the ability to maintain not only surface state routes, but also interstates and freeways/expressways on behalf of the state DOT.
8. Farm-to-market regional systems should preferably be limited only to regions with 1,000,000 or more residents although they may be considered in any region.
9. State DOT's reserve the right to temporarily take over a region that is negligent in their duties.  They may contract this responsibility to a private firm during the duration of the seizure.  The takeover may only last 3-5 years.
10. Sparsely populated states where setting up regions would only result in two or less regional systems should instead pursue the creation of a separate state agency to handle local roads in lieu of responsibility falling under the state DOT directly.  
• E.G. a state like Wyoming with a population of less than 750,000 would organize roads under a statewide county highway commission that would consolidate, engineer, manage and supervise county road and city street departments into a single unit independent of the state DOT.
• Statewide county highway agencies would most likely follow the model where engineering oversight is handled by the state agency with some limited maintenance activities (such as maintenance of traffic control devices and shared equipment) but otherwise counties and cities would operate independently.  This is due to the geographical issues.  
11. Counties whose unincorporated populations are less than 50,000 residents must contract all road maintenance to the region; counties whose unincorporated populations are greater than 50,000 residents are permitted to maintain their own roads, but should have traffic control supervised by a regional traffic control cooperative.
12. Townships and their borough subdivisions whose populations are less than 25,000 residents must contract all road maintenance to the region; when over 25,000 residents they are permitted to maintain their own streets, but should have traffic control supervised by a regional traffic control cooperative.
13. Cities/towns whose populations are less than 5,000 residents must contract all road maintenance to the region; when over 5,000 residents they are permitted to maintain their own streets, but should have traffic control supervised by a regional traffic control cooperative.
14. In the farm-to-market plan, regional DOT's should collectively have direct ownership of at least 15% of the state's road network.  This means that state responsibility for roads may only exceed 15% if regional agencies are otherwise responsible for all other roads that would normally be maintained by counties.
15. Combined state and regional ownership of roads in the farm-to-market plan should be 30-40% of the total state mileage.
16. Regional DOT's may take ownership of all county roads if state law specifies as such, but they may not take over ownership of municipal roads.

REGIONAL HIGHWAYS

Discussed throughout this plan are the backbone regional routes.  The regional routes as a whole would form what would otherwise be a state secondary system (with state-owned roads forming the primary routes).  Regional routes are not a county road system, and with the way the plan is designed should have its own form of highway markings.  While a county route marker could be used, the fact is that using one would be misleading and incorrect.  Preferably regional highways should be laid out with two types of road markers.  A regional primary marker indicating highway-type collector and arterial roads and a regional secondary marker for other local roads contracted to the regional agency.  Including the regional name might be problematic thus why a design without one is also shown.  The images below show some possible designs for such markers.  In the second marker, the text "REGIONAL ROAD" may be replaced with the name of the region if text fits.  "FULTON" refers to the county name.

Some suggested markers above.  The first marker is clearly an adaptation of the county route sign with a change to white to denote a higher status than county.  The second marker combines the type of road with the name of the county the road is in denoting a split responsibility for those roads.  It also is designed to be easily visible although less important than state highways.  The blue color is designed to make the entire sign more visible at night.  The secondary signs are for county and municipal roadways that are contracted to the region.  The second "2907" marker includes the alphabetic county number under the route number and includes the pentagon shape to denote primary county ownership.  Either or blue and white or black and white may be used.  

Continue to Part 3 - OPTIONS FOR EACH REGIONAL ROAD PLAN See Part 3 >>>>

Return to Part 1 - REGIONAL ROADS: WHY REGIONAL ROADS? See Part 1 >>>>