Pennsylvania DOT Releases Transportation Performance Report; Says Additional Investment Needed

AASHTO Journal, 8 March 2013

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation joined forces with the State Transportation Commission (STC) and the State Transportation Advisory Committee to compile the state’s first Transportation Performance Report, which presents a full picture of the state’s transportation infrastructure in a variety of areas. The findings showed that, while the state has come a long way in ensuring a safe, efficient, and growing transportation network, it must find a way to invest additional resources to keep building on that success.

The performance report examined and reported on Pennsylvania’s transportation system status, performance within current resources, and opportunities for progress. The report does this by identifying the major areas that ensure a strong transportation system (safety, mobility, preservation and renewal, accountability, and funding) and examining the performance of each of them. The state received “good” performance marks for safety as it received “good” marks in impaired driving, unbelted fatalities, speeding/aggressive driving, distracted driving, and pedestrian safety, leading to an overall safety mark of “good.” The state received lower marks for preservation and renewal, as the areas of local bridges, pavement reconstruction, and transit infrastructure received marks of “low” and state bridges, posted bridges, and rail infrastructure were marked as still “improving.”

These lower marks show that Pennsylvania needs more resources to deal with these issues.

“Without additional resources, bridge and roadway infrastructure will deteriorate and there will be reductions in transit service, impacting the public and businesses throughout the Commonwealth,” according to the report.

The state received “improving” marks for mobility (with high marks on transit ridership and Amtrak ridership within that category) as well as accountability, though “legislative support is needed to implement some modernization initiatives,” to improve the accountability marks.

“This performance report shows that PennDOT has made great strides in traffic safety and modernizing its operations, but we still have significant needs that we can’t address with the resources we have,” said PennDOT Secretary and STC Chair Barry Schoch in a statement. “I invite the public, our customers, to review the findings to see our progress and challenges in the system they use every day.”

PennDOT said the report will be updated every two years.

The 30-page Transportation Performance Report is available online here. ​​

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