Shoddy Signs Spotlight: Morgan County, AL

Morgan County is a moderate population county located to the south of Huntsville.  With 119,490 residents, the unincorporated county has over 40,000 residents with its largest city Decatur dominating the county in population serving as a bedroom community for Huntsville.  Considering its population, most people would think that traffic safety improvements would be excellent.  They would be wrong.  Quite possibly no county has surpassed Morgan County, AL in atrociousness when it comes to traffic sign standards.  This is unfortunate considering that the county otherwise appears to otherwise have an excellent road system.

The first photo is on Lando Cain Road southbound where it transitions into East Byrd Road via a 90 degree turn.  This atrocity is what you see as you come up to that dangerous turn.  A street name sign is posted on top of the curve sign for a particularly confusing experience.  Additionally, a single off-center chevron with the curve sign in the middle of the sharp turn are all that greet drivers.  There should either be at least two chevrons visible from each direction or large arrow signs (W6-6). Westbound in the second photo only a (very incorrectly designed) curve sign is posted.   As to the curve signs, this appears to be a contractor purchase that wasn't inspected to make sure that what they were buying was MUTCD-compliant.  Granted you could shoot into either driveway if you miss the curve, but most drivers would be close to highway speed before being surprised by the severity of this curve an otherwise arrow-straight road.  Because of that, the risk of hitting a car coming from the other direction is pretty high (Photos from Google Street View, June 2014).

This is the intersection in question from Google Maps

The issues with the signs are quite numerous.  Extremely poor traffic engineering is the tip of the iceberg.  The design of nearly every warning and regulatory sign is completely wrong, maintenance is poor, post height is incorrect and what signs exist are rather sparse.  Furthermore, county routes still appear on maps, but signage has completely disappeared even though these county routes have not been assigned or posted with names.  Street name signs also do not meet MUTCD standards and do not include cross-street names meaning traffic coming from a side road will need GPS to even know what road they are approaching.  How can a county that otherwise has smooth, well-built roads have such poor management of traffic signs?  This is the county paradox, and this is why safety improvements as a whole are something that should typically not be handled from an individual county or municipal level with exception to a few high income, high population areas.  Reason would say that you would be punishing the ones that do it right, but clearly self-policing does not work, and if those "good ones" know something that this county does not, then that knowledge needs to be shared in a way that changes are permanent and for the better.

These winding road signs are just two examples of poorly designed signs pandemic around the county.  Both are atrociously designed and do not comply with the MUTCD located on County Road 55: a major collector road.  Note that the post height is less than 5' on the first sign and that both signs are 24" x 24" on a major road with a 45 MPH speed limit (both signs are required to be 30" x 30").  Also note that the road curves to the left.  This is actually a left reverse curve, not a right winding road.  The second sign was witnessed in other counties suggesting a contractor that was not properly vetted for compliance.  The first image is on CR 55 eastbound west of Fowler Road and the second on CR 55 westbound west of Chambers Ln (Google Street View, September 2013).

Curve in question on Google Maps.  It's fairly obvious from here it is a left reverse curve not a "winding road".

It should be noted that this county does have an engineer, and this engineer clearly has no interest in this aspect of the county road system.  However, is this engineer a PTOE?  Alabama has provided county engineers, but nobody like this for traffic control.  Otherwise, it would be much better.  Obviously no traffic study has been conducted on any of these roads or there would be advisory signs under the curve signs, signs would be posted at the correct height, signs would be in the correct place and the signs would look like standard signs.  If nothing else, an engineer's right to oversee any county road system when funded by the state should rest on the engineer's compliance with state standards for safety improvements, but preferably the county engineer should not be wearing "many hats" with something like traffic control being a side job, which is clearly what is going on here.  Clearly Alabama has no mandate that counties and cities follow these standards despite providing ample funds for this purpose.  Since Morgan County was not a captive county, there was also never at any recent time any state help to upgrade these signage deficiencies.   To fix this problem, it would be best to be handle this problem from a state level or regional level.  Could it be fixed from a local level?  Partially, but it's doubtful that the efforts would be enough to truly correct the issues.  It did appear some newer signs were more compliant, but that's not enough.

WHAT THE STATE SHOULD DO

It is very clear that Alabama needs to change its approach to county roads.  With counties and cities unwilling to consistently and effectively engineer and maintain roads, a greater state role is needed.  According to "Implementing the High Risk Rural Roads Program by the FHWA" on page 16 it states, "Alabama trained county engineers in data analysis and low-cost safety improvements. Alabama dedicates all HRRRP funding to qualifying municipal and county roadways. In the first year Alabama divided available HRRRP funds equally among the State’s 67 counties as they developed a specific procedure. In coordination with relevant stakeholders, including local agency representatives, ALDOT developed a process requiring county engineers to participate in data analysis and low-cost safety improvement training to qualify for funding."  If that is so, then why aren't the traffic signs in far better shape?  This Alabama approach isn't requiring them to do anything or show any results.  This program didn't really require any real changes at all.  A few small areas look to have been improved, but no major changes have been made with this program.  It also appears that Alabama has not really worked to identify these issues on a state level meaning it's up to the counties to regulate themselves.  In addition, the lack of a "qualified vendors list" for traffic signs does not provide any means for local agencies to screen private vendors.  Many other states have this, including Georgia.  These counties by and large appear to have used this funding for other issues not related to traffic control devices.  Neither are any quality controls in place for those local agencies assigned with this task to assure that the best materials are being used.

Community Lane just west of Gum Springs Road in the northern part of the county did not disappoint with terrible signs.  The Stop Ahead sign and the reverse turn sign both have undersized, incorrect symbols on posts only about 2' off the ground.  While the conditions are correct, the signs are not.  The reverse turn sign should also have an advisory and either chevrons or arrows on the turn ahead (which it does not).  (Google Street View, June 2014)

A start would be for Alabama to carbon-copy Georgia's "Off-System Safety Improvement Program".  This program requires little to no local investment, demands state standards are followed, uses state forces to identify problem areas and takes this work out of the hands of local engineers.  Some GDOT districts have also hired private engineering firms to conduct traffic studies for these safety projects meaning that roads in many, many counties that have never before had any traffic study nor were in compliance with MUTCD standards have been able to have their safety issues corrected to where they meet or exceed standards found along state highways.  By privatizing the process, Georgia took the work out of the hands of counties who were not doing the job right.  While Georgia's county road agency structure is different from Alabama's, the state finally understood that technical issues are best addressed outside the scope of local politics at least for the purpose of distributing federal funds for safety improvements.  Georgia's approach by no means has been a cure-all nor has it necessarily corrected local maintenance deficiencies after projects are completed, but it gives local governments a chance to do something well that they were unable to do very well before by showing them how to do it the right way and making sure that funds are spent in a way that brings local signage into compliance with state and federal standards.  How well these are ultimately maintained in the future, however, remains to be seen as currently no structure is in place to provide statewide or regional traffic control services to local governments.  This latter situation is quite similar to Alabama, but the former situation has placed Georgia well ahead of Alabama.

South Cedar Cove Road transitions to North Cedar Cove Road in what is a sharp turn even less than 90 degrees.  With that much of a hazard, the only thing posted is an undersized and non-standard turn sign (no advisory) and two chevrons stacked at one point in the curve.  If nothing else, large arrows should be stacked and better warning signs should be posted.

The curve in question from Google Maps

In addition to centralizing federal-aid funding, the best strategy by far is the development of a regional traffic control district.  This can either be a decentralized model based on planning regions or a centralized one that operates as a local arm of ALDOT.

Regional Traffic Control District: Planning Region Option

The first option is to take traffic control out of the hands of the county engineer and replace it with a more centralized program where traffic engineering is a multi-jurisdictional operation jointly funded by multiple counties and cities across a larger region.  It is important to note that the region is very rural and that by itself that Morgan County would still not have adequate population coupled with its own planning region (North-Central Alabama Regional Council of Governments), but if combined with the NW Alabama Council of Local Governments, this would bring the region up to eight counties with a population exceeding 500,000.  Could Morgan County then afford a PTOE?  Of course.  If every county and city participated, the cost of a PTOE would be less than $10,000/year for Morgan County alone!  The idea is that a regional traffic control operation separates that responsibility from the county engineer so that resources can be pooled enough to fund an agency whose sole purpose is traffic control planning and maintenance.  Clearly the county is not able to do it alone, but when coupled with so many other cities and counties, a benefit that was lost when the "captive county" program was eliminated will not only be given to Morgan County, but will return to five of the counties in the region that used to be part of the captive county system up until 1979.

This top-down approach would create an umbrella regional agency operating as a superlocal division of state government whose sole responsibility is traffic control for multiple counties and cities large and small allowing resources to be pooled to a point that a "state within a state" would replace ineffective and substandard traffic control like this.  However, the fact that such an approach is untested means it will be difficult to establish.  Will a bunch of neighboring counties be willing to share a service like this?  This is why this was not offered as the only strategy.

Nearby to Cedar Cove Road, Gum Springs Road has this infamous combination of speed limit doubling as advisory sign and curve sign screw-up like what was seen on County Road 55 (Google Street View, June 2014).

Regional Traffic Control: State-Administered Option

Another option to consider would be using the state government to make this happen.  This can be done one of two ways:

• The Contracting Method: An individual county or city basically pays a fee to ALDOT to have the state administer their local traffic control program. 
• The Statewide Cooperative Method: The state legislature or state DOT sets up an umbrella agency separate from ALDOT where local agencies pool resources to provide statewide oversight of local traffic control by becoming "members"

Both plans in the second option have in common an operations fee, but on either plan the state can finance the operations alone and can thus waive the fee allowing poorer counties to avoid any excess costs to fund professional services.  In the planning region option, the operations fee cannot be waived, because the operations are self-funded by every member local agency.  In contrast, the state-administered option has the operations fee dictated by ALDOT with the fee used to add on any necessary employees, equipment or facilities to the existing state operations.  Any additional funding provided by the local agency must be returned in kind by the state in labor and materials.  The second plan is basically functions like a bank in that each participating local agency is a member and deposits money that can only be used on their roads.  However, this "bank" has an operations fee which is used to finance facilities, equipment, staff engineers and other employees whose sole purpose is to plan and maintain traffic control on local roads in all member counties and municipalities.  If the state decides it is able to cover it, that would remove all barriers to poorer rural counties, right?  ALDOT would not own this agency, but would be provided some regulatory oversight.  The second option would most likely require the creation of an elected position to keep the activities of the cooperative accountable to the voters.

On Option 2, the important thing to consider is the potential for permanence in such a situation.  Would the state commit to this plan long term or ax it when the budget got a little too tight?  The cooperative model is more stable, because it operates outside the realm of ALDOT or the legislature.  In addition, the idea with either plan is not to shun the private sector.  For instance, in the ALDOT plan the strategy would most likely be that the state plans all traffic control and requires local agencies to purchase from a list of qualified private vendors pooling resources for any large purchases.  The state may provide certain materials at a price to the local agencies such as guide or route signs, but the majority of signing materials would come from private vendors.

What drivers actually see approaching a long S-curve with a hidden intersection in the curve on County Road 55 eastbound approaching Patton Rd. (Image from Google Street View, June 2014)

 

What drivers should be seeing.  The signs in this image were added to the street view image slightly further west.  Advisory speeds were not included in this image since it is unclear what they would be if used.  A W16-8 street name sign was included underneath the W2-1 cross road sign for Patton Road and Moses Road so that drivers would not have to slow down to read the street names in a curve.  Yellow "signposts" were used to make them more visible in the image.  A close-up of the W16-8 sign is shown here for better visibility.

Here is the area shown on Google Maps.

Here we have OZ Davis Road east of Old Eva Road.  A local connecting road, it has a very sharp reverse turn with no signs whatsoever approaches travelers westbound at the end of a 3/4 mile bee line.  Having an appropriate independent engineering study would locate and correct missing signage like this.  Since no speed limit is posted, this is essentially a basic speed law road.  (Google Street View, June 2014).

Area in question along OZ Davis Road.  The trailers visible in the Street View image above are in the lower middle of the aerial image for reference.

In another case here, a dangerous curve with a hidden intersection passed it is noted on Nat Key Road and not even marked at all.  The latter image took the Street View image and added appropriate warning signs designed to be at proportionally correct heights.  Some specific ALDOT standards were incorporated as well such as the object marker under the arrow sign and the oversized advisory speed sign.  The yellow posts are not specifically ALDOT standard, but are used to show how these could be yellow-painted for greater emphasis. (Google Street View, June 2014).

Aerial image from Google Maps showing the sharp curve and intersection as shown above.  The image is just east of the sharp curve on Nat Key Road with Gibson Road in the middle.

Summary of the Two Plans

In all options, the county's direct involvement in planning, designing and installing traffic control devices is eliminated, but this does not necessarily mean local funding is eliminated.  What changes is the management of the devices entrusting it to authorities better trained and suited to handle such matters with a more disciplined approach to engineering standards.  It is clear from these images that enforcement of MUTCD standards is not a priority for the state, but if the responsibility was centralized to a certain point, it would create conditions where instead of the liability falling on the county or state, it would fall directly on a licensed PTOE whose career is on the line if the signs are not designed and maintained correctly.  This is the only enforcement mechanism, and this needs to be done: traffic control should be placed with an authority whose SOLE PURPOSE is traffic control and who has a vested interest in making sure it is handled the correct way every single time.  Morgan County is not doing this, and apparently they have little vested interest in the quality or consistency of traffic control.  Unfortunately Morgan County is one of many counties and municipalities across the nation with this attitude.  Public safety is simply not important enough to invest heavily in traffic control, and part of that is that nobody on a county level seems to understand the problem well enough.

County Road 55 in Eva has this completely incorrect speed limit sign in Series B.  Eva is a city, but mostly contracts road maintenance to the county.

County Road 55 east of Nat King Road has yet another Series B speed limit sign that appears to be 1 foot too low considering the sign is down slope from the pavement.  The original and then the correction (fake) is posted just below it.  (Google Street View image, June 2014).  

The above sign, also on County Road 55, is even worse and is in disrepair.  It is located west of Union Hill Church Road.  Except in the instance of a kangaroo court, this sign cannot even be enforced if found to be defective, because it is not considered a traffic control device.

The last one is the worst one.  Not only is the speed number smaller than the words "SPEED LIMIT" but the sign is also barely two feet off of the ground.  This one is located on Indian Hills Road north of Bethel Road in the NW part of the county.  

Bridge rail issues are pretty typical in low budget states with a poor safety investment.  While an interesting historical novelty, it should be pretty clear from the damage on both rails that these antiquated designs pose a serious hazard to motorists.  The two safety plans proposed on a state level should help better fund corrections to this.  The first is on Robinson Creek Road over Flint Creek.  Two other bridges to the north are low-water bridges with no railing.  The second is on Nat Key Road over Robertson Branch.  Strangely the county does not seem to have as significant issues posting object markers on bridges as they do with other signs, but the posts need to be leveled out to be more effective.

At this location on Robinson Creek Road just west of Appleton Road, pipes run close to the roadway without any adequate safety devices in place to warn drivers that they could drive off into the creek.  A flood gauge is also needed here seeing that this is a low area.   This road is otherwise unpaved.  (Google Street View, June 2014).

However, none of these plans can be brokered without broader support from the state legislature, key local officials and/or discussions among many counties and municipalities that evolve into a regional and/or statewide agreement.  Like every other county in the state, local authority for routine maintenance would transfer to regions pretty much eliminating issues like those that exist in these images.  On the second and third plans especially, Morgan County would no longer have any excuse for the deplorable condition their traffic signs are in.  With the expanded purchasing power created by sharing this responsibility and professional expertise available to point out problem areas, the funding available would be more than sufficient to correct every deficient sign within 5-6 years even without any any federal funding used.  Essentially the situation with the defective and incorrectly engineered traffic signs is not just a failure on the part of the county, but also the state to not provide any dedicated funding, programs or oversight to make sure that local efforts were matching state efforts.  This plan is designed to correct that.

What drivers see as they approach the CR 73/35 junction in Eva on CR 55 westbound.

What they should be seeing.

The curve above in Eva is actually a very sharp left turn where CR 55 turns at Morgan Drive to junction with Eva Road (shown here as CR 35).  The signage is clearly negligent considering that this is a sharp turn left needing an advisory, turn instead of curve sign, large arrow signs, a stop ahead sign and a junction route assembly for the approaching county highway.

The "curve" here is actually the beginning of a winding road on a downhill section of County Road 55 westbound.  Most likely the county did not have a winding road sign that day when it came time to replace it.

The last is on Nat Key Road marking a very sharp winding road section where another "drunken" winding road sign without an advisory speed marks the curve.  (All images from Google Street View image, June 2014).

WHAT THE COUNTY SHOULD DO

Traffic signs like you see on these roads make driving these roads significantly more dangerous especially in adverse weather conditions such as rain, fog and during the nighttime.  Morgan County could do much better, and the county could and should do this with or without any cooperative efforts.  In all, they should take a multi-faceted approach to correcting this problem with or without any state help at all.  Here are the most steps the county needs to take with or without the development of a cooperative region:

1. The county needs to consider consolidating the county's traffic sign program with the county's seven cities. This will help to pool resources so that safety work can be coordinated, costs can be reduced, facilities can be consolidated, equipment purchased more cheaply with standards subsequently raised.  This could also open the possibility for the hiring of a PTOE and development of a countywide traffic operations unit allowing the county engineer to focus on other matters.
2. The county commissioners need to recognize that this is a big problem creating substantial local liability. 
3. The county commissioners should redirect funds into a significant investment on a local level to fix these problems.  This includes the hiring of a private engineering firm to perform traffic studies on all federal-aid eligible roads (arterials and collectors) that are under county control followed by remaining paved roads with costs to be spread over a five year period.  These studies need to identify the proper locations and types of warning, regulatory, guide and route signs needed.  Traffic studies should include roads in cities where Morgan County is responsible for road maintenance such as Eva.  HRRP funds should be used to finance this part of the process.
4. Morgan County needs to budget at least 2% of the county budget for traffic safety improvements until all traffic signs and pavement markings are brought to state and MUTCD standards.
5. Morgan County needs to adopt ALDOT standards for traffic signs, guardrails and pavement markings on all county-maintained roads.
6. Major reform is needed in traffic sign standards.  Employees need to be formally trained in proper design, installation and maintenance of signs according to the MUTCD, Standard Highway Signs manual and state standards.  Post height needs to be corrected, signs need to have correct dimensions and symbols and fonts need to match drawings in the Standard Highway Signs manual.  This is a training matter that does not require a full-time engineer.
7. The fabrication of signs in-house other than street name signs should be suspended until newer and better equipment is purchased.  This new equipment should have all proper fonts, MUTCD signs and plotting equipment.  An independent PTOE should review and recommend materials purchased.
8. Vendors who have sold traffic signs that fall below MUTCD standards should no longer be used.  It needs to be recognized which signs are not correct with signs removed as soon as possible.  If possible, the county should request from ALDOT a qualified vendor list.
9. The original statewide county highway system should be re-established in the county with routes posted along major county roads.  Numbers should match those as assigned originally by the state.  These should be signed within city limits of cities and towns using county funds (e.g. County Road 55).  
10. Directional and distance guide signs should be installed at the junction of major county routes with other major county routes and state highways.

The above shows yet another county error.  It's possible the city of Eva paid for these guide signs even though the county otherwise maintains their roads.  While they are genuinely helpful, they are non-compliant, difficult to read and in a poor location.  The image below shows what is needed instead, and the Google Earth edited image below shows how the intersection should be laid out based one direction.  Guide and route signs like this are needed county-wide along major county roads like these.  (Google Street View, June 2014)

The annotated drawing here with aerials from Google Earth relates to the images above.  This shows the needed route and guide signs along major county road intersections.  Both roads shown here are major collector routes.  Also note that CR 35 is shown as CR 73 on the ALDOT functional classification map but likely was originally CR 35 when the state-numbered system was still intact.

Many other counties and cities across Alabama have adequately addressed their sign issues simply through sufficient interest from the county engineer.  It is unfortunate that Morgan County has not taken this approach.  It is hoped that the county commissioners will see this and take the steps necessary such as these recommendations here to review and overhaul the county sign program.  While the county sign issues need specialization from a PTOE and traffic operations unit, at the very least some smaller steps can be taken to improve on what is already there by simply reviewing existing conditions and comparing them to MUTCD standards.  Instances such as a post height of less than 5 feet, typical signs that do not match Standard Highway Signs manual, a winding road sign for an obvious reverse curve and omission of signs in obviously hazardous conditions are all conditions that are simple to fix and do not require an engineer: they only require a commitment from the local government and local authorities to identify and replace.

CONCLUSION

Morgan County was chosen for the spotlight to highlight that issues with MUTCD compliance (traffic control devices) do not necessarily relate to either population or even access to professional engineers.  Morgan County has the population and funding to do a far better job than they're doing, and this is why requiring counties and cities to have complete control of this and other safety improvements that typically require the supervision of a licensed traffic engineer with a PTOE certification endangers the traveling public and constitutes a misuse of public funding.

This was a longer post to highlight that a local hands-off approach is not an effective solution even if counties and cities are provided with engineers and have the population to do it.  If 50% of the counties in the state do a good job and the other 50% are not, then why should the 50% that are doing it correctly bother if the others can do as they please?  Fixing the problem is not even about punishing the "good" counties: it's about recognizing that a failure in even one county or municipality constitutes the need for systemic reform.  It also highlights the weaknesses of self-policing when it comes to public safety.  While ALDOT or the legislature stepping in might better fund this problem, the only real way to put teeth into local practices is to remove the supervision of this responsibility from the local governments itself placing it instead with regional cooperatives who are able to do it well.  Nonetheless, counties and cities statewide can also do this themselves by realizing that local control is not always best when it comes to routine maintenance thus combining that responsibility into a statewide cooperative to pool resources, consolidate purchases and improve engineering standards.  Traffic safety devices are not a "small part" of road maintenance.  They are a very big part and should not be mishandled just to pave an extra road or two.  This post highlights the problem while recognizing that the problem is deeper than just the local government: it recognizes that this is a function best handled when that responsibility is handled collectively across many jurisdictions in order to establish adequate resources and supervision.

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 >>>>