2015 MATC Fall Lecture Series - Randy Peters

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11/13/2017 Added

6 Plays

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Nebraska Transportation: Perspectives From a Career of Civil Engineering Practice

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[00:00:00.662]So welcome to the NTC MATC seminar
[00:00:04.148]to the kickoff seminar for this year, for this fall.
[00:00:08.638]It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker, Randy Peters.
[00:00:12.443]He's an associate professor of practice in civil engineering
[00:00:15.498]at the University of Nebraska Lincoln,
[00:00:17.995]and he's had a very varied career, most formerly
[00:00:21.368]director of the Nebraska Department of Roads.
[00:00:25.652]He's gonna give a very interesting talk on perspectives
[00:00:28.764]of career, based on his experiences.
[00:00:31.280]So, welcome Randy, and I'll let you take over.
[00:00:34.827]Thank you Dr. Rilette.
[00:00:37.137]I thought I would let the room
[00:00:38.928]dictate where I stand in here.
[00:00:41.380]I wasn't quite sure how many people would be here
[00:00:44.360]and where I could get eye contact with the most of you.
[00:00:48.189]So I'm abandoning Plan A, which was to have an informal
[00:00:52.415]conversation around the table, and I'm going to Plan B.
[00:00:58.312]However, I do need to have a line of sight
[00:01:00.725]with the PowerPoint as well, so I'm gonna challenge
[00:01:05.119]Larissa to follow me with the camera.
[00:01:10.131]This is going to work pretty well.
[00:01:13.612]So, thank you all for coming out to this seminar.
[00:01:19.567]As Dr. Rilette told you, I'm brand new
[00:01:22.163]to this community as well.
[00:01:24.179]I signed a contract with UNL on August 7th,
[00:01:30.075]to come here and teach on August 17th,
[00:01:35.579]while classes started the 24th.
[00:01:37.160]So, I'm honored and humbled to be
[00:01:41.085]a part of the community here.
[00:01:43.359]I've met some of you and you've made me feel very welcome,
[00:01:46.990]and I'm happy for that.
[00:01:52.343]I am going to be a professor of practice,
[00:01:56.155]and I am officed in the civil engineering department.
[00:02:02.852]I'll tell you a little bit about my own career
[00:02:06.193]trajectory, and use that as a explanation about
[00:02:12.644]what qualities I bring to be a professor of practice,
[00:02:17.190]to share with you in the College of Civil Engineering.
[00:02:22.731]It was easy for me to buy into the mission of UNL,
[00:02:25.779]and I support the idea with my intention to connect
[00:02:29.460]students with the industry and the professional community.
[00:02:35.119]I've had extensive experience here in this state
[00:02:38.781]and I know a lot of the people who practice.
[00:02:42.263]I've had good mentors at the university,
[00:02:44.826]and they did the same thing for me.
[00:02:47.850]They made sure that the doors were open and I was able
[00:02:50.698]to meet with the people in practice.
[00:02:55.225]So, a little bit about myself, my professional experience.
[00:02:59.669]I was an employee of the Nebraska Department of Roads
[00:03:05.239]before I became a student at UNL.
[00:03:10.072]So I had 10 years of pre-professional experience
[00:03:14.727]in a transportation agency before I earned my Bachelor's
[00:03:20.506]in Civil Engineering here at UNL.
[00:03:24.274]And that was, that's a good perspective in its own right.
[00:03:29.111]In those first 10 years, I was a technician in the planning
[00:03:36.587]department, the year was 1977, and I did the equivalent
[00:03:45.376]of what is the Google car these days, you know,
[00:03:48.340]the car that's outfitted with the video camera,
[00:03:51.025]that drives the street grid and takes street-level photos
[00:03:58.026]of anywhere, everywhere, geography.
[00:04:01.878]It was my job to do that in the state of Nebraska.
[00:04:05.487]But this was before technology was in its present state,
[00:04:09.311]there were no video cameras that were ubiquitous.
[00:04:13.951]We did the filming with an analog camera, still pictures,
[00:04:18.720]a big, if you think of the old time movie cameras
[00:04:23.989]with the big magazines on a tripod, it was that kind
[00:04:27.640]of a camera, with a 10-inch diameter magazine
[00:04:32.187]that the film was threaded through,
[00:04:36.040]and it was an engineering mechanism set up
[00:04:39.001]to take a photo every 52.8 feet,
[00:04:43.374]or one-hundredth of a mile, and then
[00:04:45.615]that digital information was superimposed
[00:04:48.984]on the bottom of the still.
[00:04:51.741]So, you'd drive down the road and you'd here this
[00:04:54.273]rhythmic click, click, click, and the pictures
[00:04:56.671]would be snapping as you went along,
[00:05:01.467]and then we edited the rolls down into 100-foot rolls,
[00:05:05.749]so about that big of a diameter,
[00:05:08.054]put them on a special motion analyzer, and if you ran it
[00:05:11.742]at 24 frames per second, it was like a motion picture.
[00:05:16.784]You could see a pre-video video
[00:05:21.257]of the highway network in Nebraska.
[00:05:25.534]That was an interesting job.
[00:05:27.065]It sparked a lifelong interest in learning
[00:05:31.459]about technology, and how technology can be applied
[00:05:35.228]to solve civil engineering problems.
[00:05:39.773]About the third time I drove every mile
[00:05:43.428]of every state highway, and just did every city
[00:05:47.994]in the state, I could see that to go further in this agency,
[00:05:55.125]it would be in my best interest to pursue
[00:05:58.817]an education in civil engineering.
[00:06:02.447]Which I did, while working at
[00:06:04.479]the Nebraska Department of Roads,
[00:06:06.867]I matriculated here at UNL, and in five years of that first
[00:06:12.535]10 there, I spent it as a student working 70% full-time
[00:06:18.459]at the agency and being a full-time student.
[00:06:22.645]So I graduated in 1987 with a degree in civil engineering,
[00:06:28.307]and because during that work as the Google car driver
[00:06:34.679]of the day, I was working under the supervision
[00:06:37.542]of a professional engineer, I was able to qualify
[00:06:40.731]to sit for the professional engineer's exam on graduation,
[00:06:48.545]which was a big bonus to me.
[00:06:51.077]It was all the student work, all the scholastic work
[00:06:56.954]was fresh in my mind, the professional engineer's exam
[00:07:00.426]was a piece of cake for me, and that was lucky break,
[00:07:04.000]I consider that, a very lucky break.
[00:07:08.359]So then, at the end of 10 years I am now a graduate civil
[00:07:12.638]engineer, and a professional engineer at the same time.
[00:07:20.732]So I would say my career trajectory for the first 10 years
[00:07:23.978]was a plateau at the very lowest rung of a highway agency.
[00:07:31.564]And then as soon as I graduated, and had the entree into
[00:07:37.042]the profession, the professional license and a bachelor's
[00:07:40.514]degree in civil engineering, I became a highway designer.
[00:07:48.399]And that was, those years, I probably was the most
[00:07:54.067]technical in my entire 38-year career, applying what
[00:07:59.425]I learned in the civil engineering school as far as highway
[00:08:05.963]design, transportation engineering, real-world projects
[00:08:10.485]with project delivery deadlines, and meta-production goal.
[00:08:18.246]I did that for three years, before I was promoted
[00:08:23.839]to a specialty position.
[00:08:26.410]At that time, computer-aided design
[00:08:28.912]was an emerging technology.
[00:08:31.285]Most of the design up until that point was done
[00:08:34.687]with drafting equipment and hand-drawn cross-sections.
[00:08:41.889]Computer-aided design was a brand new field,
[00:08:46.740]was an opportunity for a young, ambitious engineer,
[00:08:49.593]so I volunteered to be there at the ground floor
[00:08:53.590]and establish things like naming conventions,
[00:08:58.503]level guides, line weights, all those kind of standards
[00:09:04.599]that had to be put into place so that a big agency,
[00:09:08.140]a multi-disciplinary agency, could share
[00:09:10.960]computer-aided design files.
[00:09:15.916]So, I did that for two years
[00:09:19.145]before a new opportunity came along.
[00:09:21.948]And this really signaled my leaving the professional,
[00:09:27.439]technical part of the profession
[00:09:29.971]and moving into management and leadership.
[00:09:33.165]I became a section head for the roadway design section,
[00:09:39.524]that was the assistant manager for a department
[00:09:46.103]that would design all the roadways
[00:09:48.370]for the state of Nebraska.
[00:09:50.845]This was in the early 1990s, and Nebraska had embarked
[00:09:56.569]on a program to build a new, the big vision was,
[00:10:02.361]let's build this 600-mile system of four-lane,
[00:10:06.813]almost interstate-like, expressways connecting the towns
[00:10:13.497]of 15,000 and greater to the interstate system.
[00:10:18.312]So it was an exciting time to be
[00:10:20.338]in the highway design field,
[00:10:24.178]we were doing, our designs were not on the map yet,
[00:10:30.169]and we really, literally, altered the face of the map
[00:10:33.974]for the state of Nebraska, and started building
[00:10:36.624]these four-lane expressways.
[00:10:40.582]It was a very exciting, very rewarding position to have.
[00:10:49.919]I did that for about five years, and then
[00:10:52.341]an opportunity came to be the division manager
[00:10:55.150]for the traffic engineering division.
[00:10:58.723]A little bit different specialization, and it was oriented
[00:11:04.975]towards traffic engineering analysis, signing,
[00:11:09.675]safety studies, speed limit determinations, and it's billed
[00:11:16.803]as the state traffic engineer.
[00:11:20.766]We often referred to it as the complaint department.
[00:11:24.642]Any operational problem or perceived safety problem
[00:11:30.032]on the state highway system usually found its way
[00:11:33.499]into the traffic engineering division.
[00:11:38.427]That was very interesting work, very related to one
[00:11:43.892]of the sub-disciplines here that Nebraska's particularly,
[00:11:50.580]UNL's particularly good at.
[00:11:54.446]After 10 years I responded to an opportunity to become
[00:12:01.207]the planning and project development division head.
[00:12:04.695]In a sense, that was returning back to the home I started
[00:12:07.679]with as a pre-professional in the planning division.
[00:12:11.137]It was also an area that needed some attention
[00:12:13.561]because there were, there was an emerging concern
[00:12:19.026]about our ability to develop projects in compliance
[00:12:22.683]with all of the National Environmental Protection Act
[00:12:28.468]requirements, in the NEPA.
[00:12:32.665]Federal laws required us to follow these steps,
[00:12:36.871]and it was kind of a contentious area,
[00:12:39.454]and so that's why it presented an opportunity
[00:12:41.904]to come in and solve some problems.
[00:12:46.236]I did that for only two years when an opportunity came
[00:12:51.024]for the promotion to one of the top three spots
[00:12:56.616]at the Department of Roads.
[00:12:58.444]The way it's organized, there are 2,100 people,
[00:13:04.472]one director and two deputies.
[00:13:07.858]One of the deputies spots, deputy director
[00:13:09.981]for engineering, became available in 2009,
[00:13:16.618]and I was privileged to be selected for that spot.
[00:13:22.539]That launched my, if between computer-aided design
[00:13:27.721]coordinator and planning project development head
[00:13:30.455]was management, I would call this the leadership role.
[00:13:35.485]Management's still an element, being grounded
[00:13:38.318]in the technical competencies is still an element,
[00:13:41.284]but leadership is more about setting the long-range
[00:13:45.301]future direction, being the point of contact
[00:13:48.470]with outside communities of interest,
[00:13:51.704]and agencies, the legislature, the governor.
[00:13:58.404]Completely, you're grounded in your civil engineering
[00:14:02.578]competencies, and you have the competence that you earned
[00:14:06.695]from the problem solving skills doing engineering,
[00:14:09.917]but it's very much a soft skills and political universe
[00:14:14.036]when you move into the realm of the leadership.
[00:14:20.177]From 2012 until 2015, I was appointed by then Governor
[00:14:30.393]Dave Heineman to be the director-state engineer
[00:14:33.683]for the Department of Roads, which was
[00:14:36.674]my last professional gig
[00:14:38.711]before I accepted the professor of practice here.
[00:14:44.227]So, I'm just sharing with you some
[00:14:47.458]of the perspectives given that journey.
[00:14:51.289]Ordinarily, when I present at a seminar, I would go deep
[00:14:54.827]into some topic where I have researched.
[00:14:57.657]Today's more broad ranging, just to tell you
[00:15:02.775]where I come from, how I hope to fit into this community,
[00:15:06.302]and how I hope to aid in the mission of
[00:15:10.036]the university's college of engineering.
[00:15:15.643]So one thing about transportation engineering,
[00:15:18.832]which is my wheelhouse, that you come to learn,
[00:15:22.398]is that transportation very much develops
[00:15:25.840]in response to the geography.
[00:15:28.480]Transportation in Nebraska is influenced by the fact
[00:15:32.107]that it's a vast state, 77,000 square miles,
[00:15:37.514]with a low population, 1.8 million people.
[00:15:41.999]And so the highway network is very rural in character,
[00:15:47.590]but it's, you can meet with your fellow transportation
[00:15:52.318]directors that come from Massachusetts or California,
[00:15:57.534]and you can be talking about millions of millions invested
[00:16:01.913]in public transit, walking, and pedestrian, bicycle trails.
[00:16:08.907]And we have that component in Nebraska too, but you have
[00:16:12.232]to recognize that the density of Nebraska is,
[00:16:15.559]there's a 10,000-mile network that's very, very
[00:16:18.125]rural in character where bicycling wouldn't work,
[00:16:22.217]where freight commodities move vast distances,
[00:16:30.519]there's not a metropolitan environment,
[00:16:32.598]kind of dictates the way that the highway system
[00:16:36.231]has developed here.
[00:16:41.068]Nebraska is kind of anachronism, maybe you'd think it was
[00:16:47.346]a holdout or it's long overdue, but we're the only state
[00:16:50.829]in the country that's still organized as a department of
[00:16:54.230]roads, and not a department of transportation.
[00:17:00.036]It's really a function of the fact that there is no water,
[00:17:04.358]there's not much waterway navigation here,
[00:17:07.199]so there's no system of ports,
[00:17:09.911]there's no publicly owned rail transportation.
[00:17:15.673]The department of aeronautics is a very small agency
[00:17:20.032]and so it kind of makes sense that we are still a department
[00:17:25.010]of roads because we are a landlocked
[00:17:27.435]surface transportation state.
[00:17:32.714]It's debatable though, it's a perennial debate in the state
[00:17:37.050]legislature about whether Nebraska should become
[00:17:40.250]a department of transportation, and if so,
[00:17:42.922]what does that mean.
[00:17:48.822]When you look at the purpose of the transportation system,
[00:17:52.390]safe and efficient movement of people and goods.
[00:17:57.311]Economic growth and development.
[00:17:59.897]Often times those first two are in conflict with each other.
[00:18:05.997]There are political fault lines along those two principles.
[00:18:12.005]People in the sparsely settled panhandle part of the state
[00:18:19.197]believe we should invest hundreds of millions of dollars on
[00:18:22.806]a four-lane road there, from border to border, with the
[00:18:26.338]philosophy of build it and they will come.
[00:18:29.441]It will bring population back to that area of the state.
[00:18:35.179]People on the eastern part of the state say, whoa,
[00:18:37.132]wait a minute, we've got real traffic problems right now.
[00:18:41.280]We've got real congestion, you're not keeping pace
[00:18:44.975]with the roads we need, that's were you should spend
[00:18:48.808]those hundreds of millions of dollars.
[00:18:51.744]So, there's an engineering way to select those projects
[00:18:56.673]but there's also, you've got to realize the context you
[00:19:00.049]make those engineering decisions in, is a political context.
[00:19:05.729]If you forget that, editorial boards of the local newspaper
[00:19:10.706]will be sure to remind you that there is a political
[00:19:14.233]context to those decisions that you make.
[00:19:21.114]Part of providing mobility options in a state like Nebraska
[00:19:28.995]is not so much that we have recurring congestion
[00:19:33.153]that would make your trip to the airport unpredictable,
[00:19:37.137]you don't often encounter completely stopped traffic
[00:19:43.153]in this state.
[00:19:44.672]Because we are so rural, we don't have
[00:19:49.844]major congestion problems.
[00:19:51.908]So when we talk about mobility, it's about making sure
[00:19:56.706]that the snow is plowed immediately
[00:20:00.969]after the snowfall event,
[00:20:02.912]or that the interstates roadways are open in response
[00:20:07.103]to a crash or an incident, as quickly as they can be.
[00:20:11.401]Those are the kind of things that a Department of Roads
[00:20:14.575]in a rural state will focus on for mobility.
[00:20:19.756]And, ultimately, the purpose of a state transportation
[00:20:25.783]agency is to connect people with the social goods, school,
[00:20:31.995]family, church, entertainment, jobs,
[00:20:36.353]that's the function of a modern transportation.
[00:20:45.905]A little bit more about the Nebraska.
[00:20:47.408]As I mentioned it's a huge state, not that many people
[00:20:52.702]relatively speaking, and yet there are 530 municipalities
[00:20:57.897]in this state.
[00:21:01.093]It's a lot of little towns, and each one of those towns
[00:21:04.645]owns their own street network within their own municipality.
[00:21:09.797]There are 93 counties, of which about 85 of them has been
[00:21:16.564]losing population since the 1920s.
[00:21:21.932]When you look at the transportation network
[00:21:24.069]across the state, in round numbers there's 100,000 miles
[00:21:29.198]of streets and highways.
[00:21:33.342]About 80,000 miles of those are almost unimproved county
[00:21:40.559]roads, section line roads, gravel, pavement
[00:21:46.786]is the most common.
[00:21:48.868]They're the farm-to-market roads in the rural parts
[00:21:51.424]of this state, that's were 80% of the roadway miles are.
[00:21:58.138]But, probably, something like 10 or 15% of the traffic
[00:22:04.422]is on that 80% mileage system.
[00:22:10.987]The state, on the other hand, owns a 9,902-mile network
[00:22:17.390]of state highway system.
[00:22:19.620]That's what the state agency that headed up was responsible
[00:22:22.894]for, that's where most of the traffic is.
[00:22:28.429]The remaining miles are within those 530 municipalities.
[00:22:35.568]But there's a division of ownership there, you can see
[00:22:39.484]the counties own 80% of the miles, but they're the very
[00:22:44.268]rural, very low investment miles.
[00:22:47.749]The city's own their share, and the state owns its share,
[00:22:51.565]and it gets very confusing to the users who's responsible
[00:22:55.168]for what, how this system should integrate
[00:22:58.562]with the different owners, and that's part of the challenge
[00:23:03.555]of being in the management, in the leadership
[00:23:07.513]of a state transportation agency.
[00:23:11.305]And then, overarching all of that is the federalism,
[00:23:17.088]the federal government doesn't actually
[00:23:18.512]own any streets or highways.
[00:23:21.718]But they fund federal highway funds about 45% of the state
[00:23:29.110]highway system, and I don't know what the exact percentage
[00:23:34.796]is, but something like 10 or 15% of the local system
[00:23:39.333]is federally funded.
[00:23:42.608]So, the state acts as a middleman between the counties
[00:23:47.997]and the cities and the federal government, for prosecuting
[00:23:51.491]federal projects and what comes with that are
[00:23:56.952]the whole host of environmental and social laws
[00:24:03.250]that come with the federal project.
[00:24:05.466]Often creates tension between the local governments
[00:24:08.910]and the state government.
[00:24:11.187]It definitely represents an area
[00:24:17.055]where dispute resolution can come into play.
[00:24:25.685]There's quite a debate going on about whether or not
[00:24:28.158]the federal government should continue to have this
[00:24:32.398]overarching role, or whether the state
[00:24:35.995]should take more of it.
[00:24:38.624]There's clearly some federal responsibility
[00:24:42.752]for interstate commerce that the system of interstate
[00:24:46.122]highways that are consistent across the states,
[00:24:50.517]and promote a lot of the economic commerce.
[00:24:55.090]Clearly a good thing, clearly it's good to have a national
[00:24:58.569]role in setting the vision for those kind of roads.
[00:25:03.667]But beyond that, there's a question of whether or not
[00:25:06.645]states and localities should take care more of the street
[00:25:12.247]systems and road systems that are more local.
[00:25:21.085]So as an agency head, you've got this 10,000 miles
[00:25:25.451]of highway system, you've got a budget of $800 million,
[00:25:33.566]you've got roads that are in need of repair,
[00:25:40.033]you need to be able to set a strategic vision.
[00:25:43.908]So, the Department of Roads did so by framing things
[00:25:48.465]in eight strategic goals.
[00:25:50.892]And in order to be data-driven and track these goals,
[00:25:55.571]there were a matrix of associated of performance measures
[00:26:00.177]that mapped to each one of the eight goals.
[00:26:03.502]In broad terms, they were enhance safety, manage the assets,
[00:26:11.548]and again that's the 10,000 miles of highway system,
[00:26:16.590]there are 3,500 bridges, there are 599 buildings across
[00:26:22.564]the 120 different locations, just a far-flung asset
[00:26:27.505]base to be responsible for,
[00:26:31.371]You need to deliver projects, a program of projects
[00:26:34.540]for street repair, highway repair, highway expansion.
[00:26:38.908]you make promises, you need to be able
[00:26:41.163]to deliver on your projects.
[00:26:43.437]That's a very civil engineering intensive part
[00:26:47.831]of the highway department is the project delivery team.
[00:26:54.110]Strengthening partnerships across those communities
[00:26:56.876]and other political jurisdictions is very key.
[00:27:03.146]Improving mobility, again, making sure the traffic jams
[00:27:07.499]are addressed, the road closures are minimized,
[00:27:12.909]the snow is plowed, the crashes are cleared up,
[00:27:18.728]there's a strategic goal that's measurable.
[00:27:23.211]Environmental sustainability, that really centers around
[00:27:26.965]doing minimal damage, keeping your footprint as small
[00:27:31.380]as you can on the natural and social environment.
[00:27:37.249]Developing a workforce, by extension, UNL is a great partner
[00:27:42.360]in developing the workforce, and put on workshops
[00:27:45.416]and transfer some of the research findings
[00:27:50.741]to the agency workforce.
[00:27:54.049]And to be accountable for the public funds
[00:27:57.109]that you're entrusted.
[00:27:59.173]With an $800 million annual budget, you need to account
[00:28:03.445]for what's being done with those funds.
[00:28:10.429]So I just put together a couple of representative
[00:28:14.376]performance indicators that Roads used to track these goals.
[00:28:19.200]Just to kind of give you context for where your scholarship
[00:28:24.298]might be, you might think about these performance
[00:28:28.571]indicators because they're very important.
[00:28:36.851]As far as project delivery, you publish a program
[00:28:40.834]of projects and you list the projects
[00:28:44.637]that you plan to do in the next one, two,
[00:28:47.226]three, four and five years.
[00:28:50.002]Communities come to bank on that,
[00:28:52.379]and rely on your integrity delivering those projects.
[00:28:58.658]So one of the measures is track the number of projects
[00:29:05.233]you actually completed in the year you said you,
[00:29:09.312]within the five-year program,
[00:29:10.711]the year that you said you would.
[00:29:13.237]So it's quantifiable, it's a good performance metric,
[00:29:19.404]you can see its track over time.
[00:29:25.255]Sure.
[00:29:26.456](audience member speaking quietly)
[00:29:38.245]It was, it was...
[00:29:44.062]that was the recession coupled
[00:29:45.670]with an even more localized phenomenon,
[00:29:49.516]which was the legislature was not keeping pace
[00:29:52.941]with the revenue that was predicted
[00:29:55.378]when we published the five-year plan.
[00:29:57.655]So part of it was not the engineers not being able
[00:30:01.294]to develop the project on time, but the funding piece
[00:30:04.810]was not coming in on time.
[00:30:10.062]2010 was not a good time to be out explaining
[00:30:13.282]what was happening, but we were transparent,
[00:30:16.200]we knew what was happening, and we had the data
[00:30:18.559]there to back us up.
[00:30:23.186]This was an indication of how well our construction
[00:30:26.199]management people are able to estimate
[00:30:28.916]how long it's gonna take to finish the job.
[00:30:32.466]We have a corporate goal of having 85% of the projects
[00:30:38.404]completed within the engineer's estimated time.
[00:30:42.917]And many things can happen there, the weather,
[00:30:45.774]it can be a rainy year, contractors forces can be called
[00:30:51.207]to other projects you have to adapt
[00:30:53.608]and take different strategies to complete projects
[00:31:00.881]in order to continually try to meet that goal.
[00:31:06.072]This one's very important.
[00:31:10.658]The fatalities, last year there were 225 fatalities
[00:31:15.100]on the whole 100,000-mile system, county, cities,
[00:31:20.458]and state highway system within the state.
[00:31:22.643]That is a high number, 225 lives lost is a terrible
[00:31:30.096]social toll to take, and if you are in the business
[00:31:35.121]of quantifying and monefying this,
[00:31:38.339]I don't know what number you use, Dr. Rilette, but
[00:31:41.803]$3 million is one number that represents a life lost,
[00:31:48.994]and so if you're monetizing 225 deaths, that's $675 million,
[00:31:58.823]and that's compared to an annual construction budget
[00:32:04.848]of $500 million, you can spend an awful lot
[00:32:08.239]of money on safety and be justified.
[00:32:12.841]Our goal is to be, it was set to be 1.0 per 100 million
[00:32:23.291]vehicle miles in 2007, back when the rate was 1.4.
[00:32:30.074]And we thought that would be unattainable,
[00:32:32.673]and that that would be a stretch goal.
[00:32:35.085]And we broke out the champagne in 2010,
[00:32:38.986]when we actually achieved 1.0 fatalities
[00:32:46.797]per 100 million vehicle miles.
[00:32:51.110]We were aided by an economy that had people driving less,
[00:32:56.621]and for some reason that was a nationwide trend
[00:33:00.819]of better safety, and also attributed to our focus
[00:33:05.190]to focus on behaviors more than infrastructure,
[00:33:10.053]get the impaired drivers off the road,
[00:33:12.274]get people to wear their seat belts.
[00:33:15.105]It made a difference, but regrettably,
[00:33:20.115]we're trending back in the wrong direction.
[00:33:23.067]Again, research projects, research initiatives
[00:33:26.376]that have the stated goal of reducing fatal injuries
[00:33:31.702]and injury crashes are very important.
[00:33:37.852]That's just a detailed breakdown of fatalities,
[00:33:42.432]where they occurred, and comparison year over year.
[00:33:48.885]That data is thoroughly analyzed within the department
[00:33:51.863]to try to make a difference.
[00:33:56.087]This one is a measure of how many of our roads
[00:34:00.695]are in good or very good condition.
[00:34:05.291]We have a stated goal of 84% of the roads
[00:34:12.886]in good or very good condition.
[00:34:19.533]We're not keeping up as well as we might,
[00:34:22.424]with the non-interstate highways, we got behind
[00:34:27.646]but we're trending in the right direction there, we believe.
[00:34:32.903]And there's a very intensive asset management system
[00:34:36.442]that annually inspects all the roads, and rates them
[00:34:43.660]on a Nebraska serviceability index about whether
[00:34:47.405]they are poor, very poor, fair or good.
[00:34:54.625]That information is used to program projects
[00:34:57.289]and make sure that the right projects are being worked on.
[00:35:04.648]This performance measure has to do with mobility.
[00:35:07.646]It's a measure of the number of incidents on the Omaha
[00:35:11.115]freeway system in the gold bars, and the average time
[00:35:17.220]it takes to clear those incidents, and that's being
[00:35:20.564]monitored by the operations center with cameras
[00:35:27.139]around the clock observations of those incidents.
[00:35:32.573]With the goal of improving that, it really improves
[00:35:37.397]safety and it improves the efficiency of the system
[00:35:40.984]if you get those accidents out of the way
[00:35:44.028]as quickly as you possibly can. (mumbles)
[00:35:52.108]This is one of the sheets, a balance sheet from a state
[00:35:56.670]transportation and you can see that the bottom line
[00:36:00.772]cash flow allotment for this fiscal year was $843 million.
[00:36:09.861]A lot of ways to account for where that money goes.
[00:36:13.685]The one I circled here is maybe of interest to my colleagues
[00:36:17.491]here and you for your research proposals annually,
[00:36:22.385]$10.5 million is set aside for planning and research.
[00:36:27.918]Nebraska Department of Roads works primarily
[00:36:30.392]with the University of Nebraska for research.
[00:36:35.025]They're not nearly as deep a source as
[00:36:37.775]the Department of Defense
[00:36:38.758]or the National Science Foundation, but they are always
[00:36:42.378]here, and it is a good partnership to work on.
[00:36:46.455]I hope to be able to connect more
[00:36:49.589]between your scholarship and the Department of Roads needs.
[00:36:58.424]Every year in the fall, the director of the Department
[00:37:00.765]of Roads goes before the Nebraska legislature
[00:37:03.557]and presents the highway needs looking 20 years out.
[00:37:09.557]Last fall, when we presented the needs, broken down
[00:37:16.268]into these categories, resurfacing, rural geometrics
[00:37:22.649]being roads need wider lanes or wider shoulders
[00:37:28.274]or some expansion based on their traffic.
[00:37:31.939]And there not inside a municipal boundary,
[00:37:33.957]there's a rural geometrics, same thing.
[00:37:37.399]Within a municipal boundary are called urban geometrics.
[00:37:41.620]And then needed improvements
[00:37:43.637]to railroad crossing in the state.
[00:37:47.028]When you look at the needs over 20 years,
[00:37:50.286]and estimate costs, non-inflated, this is non-inflated,
[00:37:58.224]the number is $10.1 billion dollars needed for 20 years.
[00:38:04.568]Usually the message was, our program is not keeping up
[00:38:08.172]with the needs, the needs are outpacing current revenues.
[00:38:16.814]I think you can still say that, even
[00:38:19.403]the department just published a $500 million construction
[00:38:23.269]program this year.
[00:38:25.983]So if you do the math without inflating it,
[00:38:30.462]$500 million for 20 years just about keeps up
[00:38:35.396]with $10 billion worth of needs,
[00:38:39.735]but our stakeholders aren't that patient.
[00:38:42.774]Many of them are saying, "Yeah but I want my road
[00:38:46.503]sooner than 20 years from now".
[00:38:48.721]So there is still continual pressure for more revenue.
[00:38:56.553]So, that's the end of my personal narrative
[00:39:02.315]for my career trajectory through the Department of Roads.
[00:39:05.892]What I hope to be able to do here as a professor of practice
[00:39:08.904]is use that, share, share what I've learned
[00:39:12.332]with students and faculty here.
[00:39:18.301]I'll be finding my rightful place in terms
[00:39:21.788]of the teaching, service, research,
[00:39:24.789]and outreach components here,
[00:39:26.827]but I wanna be part of this community and help
[00:39:29.849]you all be successful.

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ntc
matc
nebraska transportation center
mid-america transportation center
unl
university of nebraska-lincoln
randy peters
ndot
nebraska department of transportation
civil engineer
civil engineering
transportation engineering
nebraska college of engineering

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2015 MATC Fall Lecture Series - Randy Peters

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