On Thursday, February 12, 2009, the Subcommittee on Technology and
Innovation will convene a hearing to review the research, development,
and deployment activities of the Department of Transportation. The
hearing will focus on issues related to the funding, planning, and
execution of current research initiatives and how these efforts fulfill
the strategic goals of both Federal and State Departments of
Transportation, metropolitan transportation organizations, and industry.
With the expiration of SAFETEA-LU in
FY2009, this hearing will also examine
possible ways to improve the current Federal transportation effort.
Witnesses
- Paul Brubaker, former Administrator of the Research and Innovative
Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation.
- Dr. Elizabeth Deakin, Director of the University of California
Transportation Center, University of California, Berkeley
- Robert E. Skinner, Jr., Executive Director of the Transportation
Research Board.
- David Wise, Acting Director of Physical Infrastructure Issues,
Government Accountability Office
- Amadeo Saenz, Jr., Executive Director, Texas Department of
Transportation
Overview
Signed in 2005, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient,
Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) (P.L. 109-59)
authorized a total of $2.227 billion through
FY2009 for research and related programs under
Title V of the bill. This Title authorizes surface transportation
research by the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), training and
education programs, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, the
University Transportation Centers (UTCs), and Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITS) Research. The Science and Technology Committee’s
jurisdiction over surface transportation research and development is
based on House rules which grant the Committee jurisdiction over,
“Scientific research, development, and demonstration, and projects
therefore” and legislative precedent. Jurisdiction over these programs
is shared with the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. The
Science and Technology Committee has a long referral history regarding
surface transportation research and development (R&D) bills, including
H.R. 860 in the 105th Congress and H.R. 242, and H.R. 243 in the 109th
Congress. Elements of each of these bills were incorporated in the
highway reauthorization bills for the respective Congresses.
Issues and Concerns
Planning, Coordination, and Evaluation of Research, Development, and
Technology (RD&T)
Despite the creation of a specific RD&T coordinating agency within
Department of Transportation (DOT) by the Mineta Act of 2004 (P.L.
108-426), and requirements in the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st
Century (TEA-21) (P.L. 105-178) and SAFETEA-LU
that DOT evaluate and coordinate its research
programs, efforts in this regard continue to fall short. In 2003, the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) evaluated the coordination and
review efforts by the Research and Special Programs Administration
(RSPA)1. RSPA had been created by the
Secretary of Transportation to coordinate and review RD&T activity
across the modal agencies. It was dissolved when the Mineta Act created
the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) to fulfill
largely the same functions. In the 2003 report,
GAO found that efforts to locate duplicative
programs and opportunities for cross-collaboration between the modal
agencies were hampered by a lack of information on the RD&T activities
being pursued across the modal agencies. GAO
also found that DOT did not have a systematic
method for measuring the results of federal transportation research
activities, or a method to show how their research impacted the
performance of surface transportation in the U.S.
RSPA cited a lack of resources to perform
these types of evaluations, and they also stated that each modal agency
undertook its own evaluation of its research programs.
GAO recommended that
RSPA define metrics to evaluate the outcomes
of its DOT-wide RD&T coordination efforts. In
2006, GAO did a follow-up evaluation of RD&T
coordination and evaluation. They again offered similar recommendations,
noting the continuing lack of common performance measures for
DOT RD&T activities. However, at the time of
that evaluation, RITA had just recently been
established. GAO commended the initiative in
RITA’s FY2007 budget
request to devote $2.5 million to RD&T coordinating activities (an
increase of nearly $2 million over the $536,000 spent by
RSPA in FY06 on
coordination).
In November of 2006, RITA submitted the
Transportation Research, Development and Technology Strategic Plan for
2006-2010 to Congress. The Transportation Research Board (TRB), of the
National Research Council, evaluated this plan and noted, “The strategic
RD&T plan for 2006-2010 is a reasonable first effort. It offers useful
descriptions of the many RD&T programs within the Department. At the
same time, it is more a compendium of individual RD&T activities than a
strategic plan that articulates department wide priorities and
justifications for RD&T programs and budgets.” According to
TRB, the plan lacked stakeholder input and
also failed to identify how stakeholder input would be sought for
strategic planning in research topic areas. It further failed to
articulate the role and value of DOT’s RD&T
activities; describe the process used for selecting research topics to
ensure their relevance, quality, or performance; describe the expected
outcomes from RD&T; and describe the process for monitoring performance.
In TRB’s view, the plan, at a minimum should
have explained the extent to which quantifiable goals, timetables, and
performance measures would be part of RD&T programs.
The major surface transportation RD&T program of the
FHWA has received similar criticisms regarding
coordination and evaluation as DOT’s overall
RD&T program. The program is highly decentralized, with research
activities taking place in five out of the thirteen offices within the
agency. In 2002, GAO reviewed
FHWA’s R&D approach and urged that the agency
“develop a systematic process for evaluating significant ongoing and
completed research that incorporates peer-review or other best practices
in use at Federal agencies that conduct research.”
FHWA subsequently developed its Corporate
Master Plan for Research and Deployment of Technology and Innovation,
released in 2003. This document contains many overarching principles,
such as measuring the performance of RD&T activities, but does not
provide specific mechanisms through which FHWA
will implement all of them. It is also unclear from
FHWA’s RD&T Performance Plan for 2006/2007 if
the many research projects listed have been evaluated for their use by
the transportation community. Without such analysis, the information
portrayed in these documents establishes outputs, but does not offer any
outcomes.
Tech-Transfer
There is general agreement that the transfer of technology and new ideas
from the R&D stage to deployment and adoption is slow. In testimony
before this Committee in September of 2007,
FHWA identified some of the contributing
factors that slow the state and local adoption of new transportation
technology, including insufficient information on the benefits versus
the costs of new technologies; lack of confidence in new technologies or
a lack of performance data; and a lack of incentive mechanisms to
encourage the deployment of new technology.
TRB Special Report 295, The Federal
Investment in Highway Research, 2006-2009: Strengths and Weaknesses,
notes the important role FHWA plays in
educating state DOTs about new technologies and encouraging their
adoption, noting such efforts as FHWA’s
activities to identify, market, and track the deployment of market-ready
technologies and incorporate a strategic plan for the deployment of
pavement research activities. However, the funding for technology
transfer activities at FHWA has suffered in
recent years, falling from $100 million to $40 million after the passage
of TEA-21. The report further notes, “The
missing element among all of FHWA’s deployment
activities appears to be the resources within the agency with explicit
expertise in technology transfer and deployment that could provide
guidance to the various efforts agency wide [sic].”
The Intelligent Transportation Systems program is a well studied example
of transfer and deployment of R&D efforts. In 2005,
GAO identified broad issues with
DOT’s deployment goals for traffic management
ITS, finding that the goals did not take into
account the level of ITS needed to accomplish
local objectives and priorities; did not reflect whether localities were
operating the ITS as intended; and did not
adequately capture the cost-effectiveness of
ITS 7. Additional studies of
ITS deployment have found that local officials
are aware of ITS technologies but feel that
the benefits are not adequately described.
Recommendations from TRB
With support from FHWA, TRB’s Research and
Technology Coordinating Committee (RTCC) has periodically assessed the
state of highway research and made recommendations to policy makers. In
its recent report, TRB Special Report 295,
The Federal Investment in Highway Research, 2006-2009: Strengths and
Weaknesses, the RTCC evaluated the
investments in highway R&D made under
SAFETEA-LU. According to the report,
transportation R&D is significantly under funded when compared with the
R&D investments made in other industrial sectors. Also, the report
recommended that the matching requirement for UTCs be adjusted from
50-percent to 20-percent. According to the
RTCC, if UTCs relied less on state DOTs and
others for matching funds, they would be free to pursue longer-term
advanced research topics and move away from applied research that could
be handled elsewhere. The RTCC recommended
that FHWA’s Exploratory Advanced Research
Program continue as well, and that a larger percentage of the agency’s
research budget go toward advanced research. Additionally, the report
states that all research grants, including those to UTCs, should be made
on a competitive, merit-reviewed basis. The
RTCC recommended that
FHWA be given more resources to engage
stakeholders and carry out technology transfer activities.
FHWA should be given the resources to take the
lead in establishing an ongoing process whereby the highway community
can set these priorities. Finally, the RTCC
noted that the Strategic Highway Research Program 2 (SHRP 2) was funded
significantly less than stakeholders had requested, and recommended that
it continue to receive funding for another two years.
TRB states many recommendations but does not
provide specific mechanisms to accomplish them.
House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
2318 Rayburn
12/02/2009 at 10:00AM