The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has released two final rules that define “new performance measures to improve the condition of the nation’s roads and bridges and assess travel reliability, congestion and emissions at a national level.”
FHWA says the rules ask states to:
- Account for air quality improvement by establishing performance targets
- Create greater transparency and accountability in setting and achieving performance targets for key measures of highway performance via pavement and bridge conditions and “travel reliability.”
“These rules will play an important role in reducing travel delays and air pollution, and also improving infrastructure quality, giving the American people a better travel experience,” says Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx.
The new rules are:
National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Pavement Condition for the National Highway Performance Program and Bridge Condition for the National Highway Performance Program
This aims to increase accountability and transparency of the federal-aid highway program and to help ensure highways and bridges are in good condition and the “overall quality of transportation is improved through targeted investments.”
National Performance Management Measures; Assessing Performance of the National Highway System, Freight Movement on the Interstate System, and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program
This mandates states evaluate and report “more effectively and consistently” on transportation system performance, such as travel time reliability, excessive delay during peak hours, freight movement reliability and greenhouse gas and vehicle emissions.
“These new rules will improve the information available to state departments of transportation to help them focus their planning and programming decisions,” says Federal Highway Administrator Gregory Nadeau. “Overall, they are about targeting investment decisions more strategically and evaluating their impacts.”
FHWA has webinars covering the new rules scheduled for Jan. 25 and Jan. 26. More details on the rules and the webinars are available here.
