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Welcome to those of you who arrived later.
My name is King Gee.
I'm the Associate Administrator for Infrastructure with federal highways.
I am with the Federal Highway Administration.
What you will see behind me are illustrations
of what highway engineers,
both bridge, pavement
and all kinds of other highway related engineers
are involved in.
An effective, efficient and safe highway system
is critical to the mobility of our citizens
and key to U.S. economic vitality.
We depend on our roads and highways
every day to deliver
goods and services,
as a commuter network
and as a connection to our friends, family and leisure activities.
As the chief steward of our
nation's highway program,
the Federal Highway Administration
is accountable to Congress
and to our citizens
to provide for our highway system.
FHWA,
which is our acronym,
alone does not directly deliver
the nation's highway program.
Our success is dependent
directly on a network of
public and private organizations
operating in a variety
of disciplines,
including
consulting engineering,
construction engineering,
maintenance,
environment,
planning,
safety,
finance
and many others.
Two of our key partners,
the American Council of Engineering Companies
and the American Society of Civil Engineers,
are participating with us here today.
FHWA has a division office
in every state that,
together with the state departments of transportation,
the more than 39,000 local agencies
and other local agencies
with road management responsibilities,
along with our public
and private sector partners,
design,
deliver,
and manage the nation's highways program.
There are four million road miles
and over six hundred thousand bridges
that make up the highway system
in the United States.
And this highway system ranges an array of size
from our interstate highway system
to arterial roads that consist of
limited access freeways
to multi-lane roads
that connect major urban areas
all the way down to local and rural roads
that provide access to
less populated areas.
Surprising to some
is that of the more than four million
U.S. road miles,
the interstate system accounts for just 1%.
And that 1%
carries twenty-five percent
of all the traffic in this country.
And yet it is the interstate system
that is most recognized of all the
U.S. roadways.
And it is because
of its heavy use.
The interstate highway system
was a vision
of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Drawing from his military experience
as Commander of the Allied Forces
in Europe during World War II,
Then General Eisenhower
recognized the value of
effective transportation.
As President, he wanted to realize his vision
of a highway network for the United States
that would provide for greater mobility
for our citizens and if needed,
transportation for troops and military equipment.
On June 29th, 1956, then President Eisenhower
signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act
of 1956 into law.
And that law provided
for funding of the interstate system and authorized construction.
There have been a lot of changes
in the highway network since the beginning of the
interstate highway system in the late 1950s.
Much of that same interstate highway infrastructure
and many of the primary and secondary
roadways that support the interstate system now need repair.
At the same time, we are challenged as a nation
to provide the resources
necessary to make much of the needed repairs
and other improvements that are
enhancing to the system.
We have not kept pace with the improvements needed
to meet today's transportation needs.
By 2050, the United States will be home
to 100 million additional people, the equivalent of another
California, Texas, New York and Florida combined.
Potentially, our next generation of entrepreneurs may find
America's arteries of commerce seriously compromised.
And our families and neighbors will endure even greater congestion.
President Obama in his State of the Union Address in January
set as his priorities education,
innovation and infrastructure.
Rebuilding America's roads and bridges
will expand access to jobs, education and health care
in the short term,
and lay the foundation of our nation's future economic growth in the long term.
As a transportation community,
we want to be efficient and effective with the resources that we have.
And we are working with our public
and private sector partners to do just that.
We are working hard to identify and implement
new technologies and processes
that will continue to make us more efficient in how we plan,
deliver and manage the nation's highway program.
Moving innovation to application
through a skilled, technically competent workforce
is critical to the success of our nation's transportation program.
A career in transportation can be very rewarding
and like Mr. Stone, I have spent 35 years of my life
dedicated to this profession.
We face a number of challenges however, in transportation today.
And there will be even greater challenges in the future
as the demand for transportation increases and the U.S. operates in an increasingly competitive global economy.
A skilled, technically competent workforce will provide for our greatest return on investment
and will be our best asset in efforts to reduce the gap
between available resources and growing transportation needs.
I am proud of the work we are doing in federal highways.
We are working to mobilize the highway transportation industry
to move innovation to application through our new, Ever Day Counts initiative.
EDC. Every Day Counts.
EDC is an initiative that proactively requires a commitment and effort
by our public and private partners to do two things:
Shorten the time it takes to deliver projects,
and to quickly implement new technologies that benefit our highway system.
And on the technology side, we have five technologies that
we're pushing pretty hard right now.
The first is adaptive signal control technology.
I'm going to run through these very quickly
so that you get a sense of what we're involved in,
that you can aspire to.
So the first of the five is adaptive signal control technology.
How many times have you been stuck at a red light and there's no traffic on the cross street?
Well with this adaptive signal control, it senses whether there's traffic on
the side street waiting to enter the intersection or not.
If not, it will not give a green to that side street.
And as amazing as that may sound,
we don't have that throughout this country today.
A second technology is geosynthetic reinforced soil integrated bridge systems.
And that may sound like a long title, but basically it's a simple way of using
granular fill or soil and gravel, along with geosynthetic fabrics
to rapidly construct a foundation on which the bridge can be built.
So instead of talking about a matter of months or years to get a bridge built,
we're talking about a matter of weeks.
The third technology is prefabricated bridge elements and systems.
And this allows an old bridge to be replaced quickly, sometimes over night.
And what you see here is a move I actually watched
where they built the replacement bridge offsite.
In one weekend they shut down the freeway,
this is in Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah,
in one weekend they shut down the interstate, which is six lanes,
and on Saturday jacked the old bridge up
out off its foundation, moved it offsite for demolition,
finished preparing the foundation.
And on Sunday, as you see in these two slides,
moved the replacement bridge into place.
One weekend closure, the overpass was replaced,
and the roadway that went over the interstate was only closed for ten days.
That's the kind of challenges that we're facing in our urban areas
to rapidly replace an aging infrastructure.
A fourth technology is the safety edge.
Many of you have been going through work zones and you see oftentimes
work can't be completed in a day or a week.
And oftentimes when paving happens they leave an edge that cars can kind of drop down
and to come back onto the roadway often it's pretty hard
and sometimes it causes accidents.
With the safety edge technology, we create a forty-five degree angle
at the edge of pavement during construction phase
that if a car does go off, it can recover safely and efficiently, effectively.
And finally, Mr. Stone talked about sustainability.
Asphalt, which is a key part of our paving of roads,
is heated up pretty hot.
With warm mix asphalt, we're talking about a much lower temperature
that the asphalt can be produced at and so it reduces the greenhouse gas emissions.
It also allows us to do paving in a much cooler climate.
So these five technologies are really technologies that
advance cost savings or shorten construction time.
So at the Federal Highway Administration,
we recognize that EDC is not just about innovation.
It's also about balancing the need for leadership
to push the technology and innovative processes
with the flexibilities that states and local agencies need in order to fulfill their jobs.
So the state and local agencies are in the best positions to decide which technologies
they need to use and how to employ them.
And we also recognize that EDC is about taking ownership of the principles
and the goals of the initiative, about a level of commitment to make things better,
about owning the idea that we can do better and we can deliver projects sooner.
And working together we can get benefits and new technologies to the users quicker.
So we do want to create a culture of innovation in transportation
that is open to new ideas and new ways of doing things.
Our focus on innovation through our EDC program will make transportation better
and certainly supports President Obama's priorities of education, innovation and infrastructure.
Engineers have been the drivers for our highway programs since before the interstate era.
They were central to the success of the interstate system
and a catalyst of our Every Day Counts initiative.
Engineers will continue to be key contributors to our highway program
now and for the future.
Engineers do move America.
Thank you and best wishes in your career and safe travels on our highways.