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:
- 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
- Urban area boundaries (the metropolitan area and exurban counties surrounding a larger city with a minimum combined population of 1 million residents)
- 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.
- 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
- Statewide (best option for initial system)
- Federal-Planning Regions (best option in case of broad participation as long as minimum population thresholds are met):
- Rural Statewide (requires a minimum threshold and a maximum threshold)
- 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:
- 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.
- 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:
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- Regional road districts must have a combined population of at least 300,000 residents to operate independent of other regions.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Combined state and regional ownership of roads in the farm-to-market plan should be 30-40% of the total state mileage.
- 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.
