hearing will come to order good morning welcome everyone to today's hearing on the department of transportation's research portfolio and best ways of establishing and supporting the department priorities earlier this year secretary la hood laid out for key priorities that would guide d o t policies safety economic competitiveness environmental sustainability and community liv ability i think that we can all agree that these are laudable goals however as chair of the subcommittee that oversees the national institute of standards and technology the federal agency charged with by the constitution with maintaining the nation's systems of weights and measures i constantly repeat a couple of things if you can't define something you don't know whether you're doing it or not and if you can't measure it for economic or technological purposes it doesn't really exist this is the focus of today's hearing i want to better understand the definitions of secretary la hood's key priorities the main elements of an r d agenda that support these priorities the metrics required to ensure that we are making a difference and finally what is necessary to ensure that r and d results are actually used in the field this examination is very very important because the public expects to reap real benefits not just hear terms or terminology from washington d c the d o t supports research on a wide array of surface transportation topics from improved paving materials to runoff reduction methods and i am interested in hearing from all the witnesses today about how the over half a billion dollars per year that d o t spends on research is supporting the agency's proposed priorities for example with new priorities like livability there may be need for broader research into the kinds of payoffs that we might expect from our investment in this field and into additional means of data collection this is the third transportation hearing that this subcommittee has held in the one hundred eleventh congress the first hearing looked at the need to bring better planning and coordination to the d o t surface transportation agenda and i continue to have a strong interest in this and particularly how the various regional research components coordinate and actually make their research relevant to the operating units the second hearing examines research needed to mitigate the impact of surface transportation on carbon emissions and climate change both of these hearings emphasized the need for better technology transfer and improved efforts to ensure that federally funded r and d meets the needs of state and local transportation officials these two issues go hand in hand if the research does not address the problems of the people managing our transportation system it will not be transferred into practice i'm pleased that today we have state and local representation with us to discuss their challenges and the types of research that will actually meet their needs the pending surface transportation reauthorization which most of us hope hope will happen sooner rather than later gives us an opportunity to examine the research programs i'm hopeful that this hearing will shed light on priorities and bring specific recommendations on the types expertise as well as we examine the portfolio and policy priorities of the o t as committee action on the r and d legislation has been pushed back to the delays in progress on the overall highway bill this hearing does present a great opportunity to examine our priorities in advance of full committee consideration of reauthorization of this hearing is intended to focus specifically on the r and d needed to support department wide goals of safety economic competitiveness environmental sustainability and community livability i hope we can also consider economic survivability in order to do this i believe it's important that we examine the goals themselves understand their purpose and meaning and evaluate whether they are appropriate for guiding future  particularly concerned with the appropriateness of the administration's quote unquote community livability goal maybe getting back to the economic survivability and at a minimum it represents the concept difficult to define and very close even in urban areas americans have demonstrated a great willingness to accept heavy traffic congestion and long commutes in exchange for the opportunity to live in a larger home with a yard in a neighborhood with good schools and low crime and also feed the world  in the sense it seems the administration's vision of this livable community is quite different from that of what i would call an average american while these policy concerns do tend to go beyond the committees they're important and relevant because the departments are in the maybe will hear like we did two weeks ago that climate change can be solved in part by reducing the amount of red meat consumption or beef consumption i hope that's not really the case of itself is saying that but i do thank you for wish statements will be added to the record at this point and now it is my pleasure to introduce our witnesses mistress polly troughton bird is the assistant secretary for transportation policy at the united states department of transportation mr peter pell is the administrator of the research and innovative technology administration also at d o t mr neeld patterson is the administrator of the maryland state highway administration and the vice chair of the standing committee on highways at the american association of state highway and transportation officials and that's why we say that an acronym almost all the time that is in that news and slammer is deputy executive director of policy with the metropolitan transportation commission in oakland california and she is also the vice chair of the intelligent transportation society of america mr allen is an independent consultant and our finest final witness is mr robert skinner the executive director of the transportation research board at the national academies of science you each have five minutes for your spoken testimony and your written testimony will be included in the record for behalf of secretary ray la hood i'd like to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the subcommittee today with my colleague peter a pal to discuss the research and policy priorities of the u s department of transportation really appreciate the leadership that this committee has shown on transportation research and we appreciate the guidance and oversight you've given the department over the year this committee's recognize research is a critical component to accomplish the goals that we all share of national transportation system that is transparent and accountable data outcomes and on maximising the value of public investment having had the opportunity to work on many transportation bills myself during my twelve years as a senate staffer i know firsthand how important timely and targeted research is for  congressional decision makers and for other stakeholders as such the office of policy and the top priority to provide accessible and relevant research and strengthen the ongoing dialogue with leaders in congress the administration and the larger national transportation community this is particularly important as we consider the next service transportation bill at a time when our nation's transportation system faces profound economic social and environmental challenges and as we all know and the chairman mentioned our transportation system also faces unprecedented fiscal challenges with dedicated revenue sources no longer adequate to maintain our existing infrastructure or to fund the future investments that we need we're currently developing our twenty ten to twenty fifteen strategic plan which will outline our strategic goals and the plan is not yet complete but it will focus on the key priorities of the chairman mentioning that secretary la hood has articulated with i think one more added to the list creating a national transportation system that improve safety and public health livable communities promote and encouraging our partners stakeholders in the public to redouble their efforts to reduce transportation related fatalities and injuries as this committee knows we conduct and support research in the safety area an administrator of power will describe more detail creating livable communities that provide residents with affordable transportation options and other the priority as you all know d o t has formed a partnership with the department of housing and urban development and environmental protection agency to integrate transportation housing economic development and environmental planning and research this innovative in cost cutting effort to promote increased access to jobs school health services and other activities and we hope this effort will have you know important results in urban areas in suburban areas and in rural areas we think it can work in all parts of the country the three agencies will be engaging in joint research and data collection developing appropriate analytic tools and performance mathers that we hope will produce better liveability policies  s must also maintain our existing infrastructure in the state of good repair our nation has built one of the world's most extensive and productive transportation systems representing trillions of dollars in public and private and it is essential that we adequately maintain and modernize the existing infrastructure to maximize its reliability capacity and performance reduce operational and replacement cost and extend the system's useful life we also seek to achieve the maximum economic impact from our transportation investments and lay the groundwork for a long term long term economic growth and prosperity it's essential to determine which investments on both the passenger and the freight side will yield the greatest benefits to the transportation network especially during this period of economic hardship and with difficult budget choices at all levels of government finally the obama administrat committed to a comprehensive national energy and environmental policy that emphasizes reducing carbon emissions and consumption of fossil fuel as well as protecting enhancing natural resources is committing to advancing transportation policies in investments that reduce energy use and foster protection of critical watershed willian priorities will require us to accelerate the rate at which we convert research into data driven policies and outcomes too often in the past we've done a good job of funding cutting edge research but have not done a good enough job of making sure that the research is translated by policy makers and practitioners into better safer more efficient transportation we intend to focus on the entire innovation process going forward from research to policy development analyzing the outcomes of existing programs to make sure that the american people are getting their money's worth from their research to date thank you very much alex but your question thank you very much secretary triton very you've done a great job of squeezing your oral testimony welcome the opportunity to talk about transportation research and i'm thrilled by the interest this committee has in it the research and innovative technology administration has has a unique role within d o t we're charged with coordinating collaborative multi modal research and development we look across the modes of transportation and our partners to identify synergies and opportunities for collaboration and support of the departments priorities to help make critical investment and policy decisions based on sound science and rigorous analysis we do this in a variety of ways one way is through the research development of technology planning team which is chaired by rita staff and through there are d m t planning council which i cha and includes delete the leaders of each of the operating administrations of deity the team consists of heads of research organizations of the modes within the departments and meets to discuss ongoing research activities to convene clusters of researchers and specific science based disciplines and to ensure research alignment with deity priorities the planning team will work to ensure not just that our research is aligned with our priorities but that we have a clear strategy to facilitate the adoption of these research results we need to consult with stakeholders such a state deities transit authorities private companies and other key trance taishan players another way we do this is via the university transportation center program the u t c program which consists of more than one hundred universities nationwide conducting multi modal research and educating the next generation of transportation leaders our national transportation library uses new media tools to reach across stakeholder communities along with tier b s research and progress databases it enhances real time information sharing helps identify potential needs and collaboration opportunities and makes innovative research products available to those who can implement research results of course one of the most important components of redoes the bureau of transportation statistics good research relies on good data b t s is key data programs support research and analysis that will be needed to achieve the president's transportation goals we must and will focus on how to continually improve both the effect of miss and the efficiency of these programs moving secretary la hood's priorities let me give you some examples of research that relate to those in the area of safety the department recently hosted a distracted driving summit which has led to a wide array of specific actions and multi modal research agenda we ha participation from every part of the department recognizing that distracted driving is an area of scientific research that affects every aspect the transportation sector has recently launched a d o t safety council which will prioritize cross modal safety research and read it is taking the lead in supporting the secretary on that effort the strategic highway research program to sharp two is performing the largest naturalistic driving study ever conducted which will evaluate the causes and consequences of crashes and near crashes including those where distracted driving was a factor r i t s programs intel a dr initiative is laying the groundwork for a future future highly connected and safe meant for vehicles and our infrastructure in the area of livable communities our partnership with hud any p a helps us to develop a research agenda and performance metrics for our little community's efforts they should also include safety metrics and research to improve pedestrian and bicyclist safety which are critical to the advancement of little communities the o t is evaluating a pilot program and for communities to demonstrate the contributions of non motorized transportation towards achieving health environmental and energy and continues the national fuel cell bus program green research is being conducted at some of our u t c s for example the university of wisconsin is analyzing consumer adoption and grid impact for plug in hybrids the f a a is supporting aviation climate research in coordination with nasa and noah and making progress on renewable fuels in the area of economic competitiveness the next generation air transportation system next gen uses trying to twenty first century technologies to ensure future safety capacity environmental needs are met through the small business and but innovation research program s v r d o t is stimulating technological influence innovation in areas such as green transit traffic signal analysis and human associated with next gen deployment in the area of state a good repair or expanding research to develop new materials to provide greater dura billet and reliability provide enhanced tools for asset condition inspection and deliver more environmentally friendly construction techniques the highway administration is also looking at materials such as high performance composites to reduce cracking water penetration and pretty much assured deterioration of structures so we're continuing to look at and explore ways to not only enhance this research but pursue broad dissent nation this knowledge and these products and many of my colleagues at this table are partners in the effort to get out the people that really use this technology and research i thank you and i look forward to answering your questions thank you very much mr patterson thank you mr chairman ranking member smith it's a pleasure to be here today on behalf of the american association of state highway and transportation officials otherwise known as ashton on behalf of ash that i went to express my appreciation for your focus on transportation research needs in united states in my testimony today and in my written testimony there are four main points that i would like to cover one it is critical that we retain the current multi tiered transportation research structure that has worked very well for us number two the u s d o t should take the lead in conducting national policy level research in support of the emphasis areas of the administration current research activities conducted by state universities and transportation research board can complement and support this research third ashta representing the state o t s is identified a number of research needs in each of us the o t s were priority areas that are contained in my written testimony and i'll cover a few examples in forth that is critical to ensure that discoveries made through research are communicated in transferred into practice first on our current research structure there are numerous levels and layers to the current research structure funded by federal state and local dollars from ongoing policy research at u s d o t the technical research carried out by the transportation research board and the states to research and training conducted by our universities there is substantial cooperation collaboration and communication regarding research this multi layered in integrated structures worked well in delivering strategic research that responds to the need of our transportation industry the relatively small amount that we spend on research helps to leverage the rest of the transportation program by providing us with solutions that improve the quality in the efficiency of our investments thus in any consideration of future federal transportation research programs this multilayered approach should be continued in supplemental second the secretary as articulated for areas of policy emphasis that we've heard about it is appropriate is it it is an appropriate role for the us d o t to undertake strategic research in support of these policy areas through the existing multi layered research structure others including here be in the states can support and compliment the strategic research with their own research efforts it is also very important that us d o t is the broadest level of flexibility in undertaking research priorities it is identified in support of its policy emphasis areas third regarding four areas of policy focus i'd like to highlight a few examples of needed research in the area of safety key research on understanding the myriad of reasons why a crash has occurred will be invaluable in our efforts to cut are estimated to be attributed to driver error in the area of sustainability i'll offer the following definition which is a slight modification of one state the ots definition of sustainability is the provision of safe effective an efficient access and in mobility in the long term future while sustaining the long term economic social and environmental viability the so called triple bottom line sustainability requires that we change our frame of reference for decisions to think about their implications eighty to one hundred years into the future or even longer research focusing on life cycle costs and long term environmental impacts and benefits would be very helpful to the state u t s as we attempt incorporate sustainability considerations into our everyday decision making livability is a term that means different things different people we consider it to be a critical element of the social component of the triple bottom line is essential that any definition developed for livability be broad enough and flexible enough to reflect the needs of all of our communities from rural to suburban in urban areas human behavioral research will assist us in understanding why people choose to live where they do and where they choose to travel the way they do in the area of economic competitiveness urges research focus on defining in the szell freight transportation system how to find public benefits of investments in public dollars in privately owned freight facilities and how to address multi state planning and investments in the freight system finally but certainly not least is the importance of transferring the findings of our research transportation planners engineers designers and contractors u s t r he should embrace the latest methods to assist technology transfer and implementation and be provided with the funding needed to share this information web based technologies including webinars an interactive web pages online training and other mechanisms can ensure that new research ideas get out practitioners and be implemented more quickly we already know that research properly transferred into practice can make a difference in the way americans in their goods move about the country state the o t s stand ready to collaborate with you on this crucial effort again thank you for this opportunity to testify before you today and  answer questions as well thank you mr patterson this planet please good morning a chairman lou ranking member smith and distinguished members of the subcommittee i'm honored to be here today my name is ann fulmer i'm the deputy executive director for policy at the metropolitan transportation commission which is the metropolitan planning organization for the san francisco bay area i also serve as the vice chair of the board of i t s america which is an association of public and private sector entities that are brought together by a common vision for advancing the development and deployment of intelligent transportation systems to improve safety mobility and the environment and you are all very well aware of the challenges facing our nation's transportation system in past decades we focus on building infrastructure to alleviate the increasing traffic in our communities but today we need to utilize that infrastructure more effectively and make better use of technologies to actively manage our transportation system both reduce congestion and emissions make our roads safer and provide the traveling public with better transportation options yes america we believe the key to a sustainable transfer to the transportation future lies in transitioning to a more performance based approach to managing our transportation investments including better use of technology to measure and improve system performance we also believe that national performance goals can and should be established to encourage states and m p s to set the short and long range mode neutral performance targets for transportation investments so our first recommendation is that the u s d o t identify a set of performance measures related to the four priority strategic goals of safety livable communities economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability this would include the difficult task of reaching consensus on appropriate national performance goals but as well an ineffective process for measuring progress toward these goals at the state and metropolitan level by way of an example i've included in my testimony specific performance measures that my agency has most recently used in the development of our long range plan a second recommendation for priority for the research agenda is to address the challenge of collecting quality data needed to establish a baseline performance levels to set meaningful performance targets and to measure changes in performance over time there are technologies already being used today to collect real time data but these technologies are not typically deployed consistently on a state by state or metro by metro area basis and there is no national program for gathering and disseminating this data in a form that is useful to the practitioners such a system was authorized in section twelve zero one of safety lou but has yet to be implemented the third priority for the u s d o t research program should be to identify and if possible quantify the environmental benefits of developing and deploying the transportation strategies and technologies that can cost effectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions the department should broadly demp disseminate research and data to state and local agencies on how to accurately measure emission levels and on the cost benefits challenges and best practices associated with developing deploying technologies to achieve an absolute reduction in emissions and fuel consumption a fourth area of research would be to implement a two prong strategy that both encourages more rapid deployment of existing transportation technologies that in can improve safety both in driver awareness reduce the number it's a very it's a very of traffic crashes and improve emergency response but that should happen at the same time as we accelerate efforts to advance the research and development of future safety solutions that are well within reach the u s d o t sponsored intel a drive program does hold significant promise for reducing traffic accidents by managers with real time information to operate their systems more efficiently also give state and local officials a comprehensive data to measure system performance and enable innovative financing options should we move in that direction as as a nation the i t s j p l has provided tremendous leadership in the development and testing of intelligent technologies and now proposes to conduct the policy institutional operational research necessary to accelerate its deployment i think the federal research program should provide sufficient resources to complete this work in order to advance the real world deployment of transportation technologies and encourage more aggressive investment by the public and private sectors we do recommend that there be a large scale testing and model deployment program focusing on smart cities and communities this would have a dual purpose of providing the public with tangible safety mobility and environmental benefits while also generating real world data on cost benefits challenges and lessons learned each model city or community would establish clear multi modal performance objectives and provide real time information to travelers for smart travel decisions they would also define performance measures and rigorous data collection analysis methodologies in order to report out their results i know that an approach similar to this has provided the foundation for the widespread implementation of the five on one traveler information system throughout the country and finally in conjunction with the smart cities and communities initiative at least one city or community should include a test of user fee based pricing programs that could vary by time of day and by congestion levels and other pricing system recommendations are included in my written testimony i thank you for inviting me to join you today and i'll be happy to answer a question thank you very much  let me switch thank you that seems to be working here i speak as an independent researcher representing no organization or interest i will focus on just two aspects of the charge to us first the need for research on the strategic goals of the d o t to make them more concrete programatic guides and second the information demands that these goals and the other parts of the reauthorization will generate in broad summary of this first area research and policy analysis needs to be directed early on to provide scoping and tangibility to the admirable but amorphous strategic goals before they can provide the bases for programs or we will need to define their boundaries and their content we will need to define and develop quantifiable means of performance measurement those measurements will define the goals and ways that can be funded pursued and measured safety lends itself very directly to performance measures the goals are clear and subscribed to by all the objectives are quantified the remaining three goals livability economic competitiveness sustainability are nowhere near as concise a shared the objective i would set for transportation in order to an economic competitiveness livability and the other goals as well would be this design the transportation system of the future that will serve the needs of a population with a value of time double of that of today's average travel roughly fifty dollars an hour and serving in a condo me with an average value of goods moved double present pav values of time high value workers and high value goods movement will demand and be able to tolerate the costs of high value transportation services transportation congestion angers and frustrates  users addressing congestion is a major priority service to achieve all of the four strategic goals identified research shows that relieving congestion improve safety environmental damage greenhouse gas emissions and economic competitiveness most americans would certainly associated with us a live ability in the affluent society we all expect in the future the value of time will be the ultimate driver of goals and activity time is the ultimate  unsustainable resource technological changes in fuel vehicles will dominate the issues and surface transportation sustainability transportation agencies failed to recognize the technological opportunities that exist and instead tend to focus on seeking to force behavioral change this has a long record of failure the goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions not to reduce vehicle miles of travel raising the cost of travel trying to squeeze drivers out of their car will only harm the lowest income groups and minorities those on the fringes of vehicle affordability one of the great research driven areas of potential success in the future serving very effectively to meet every one of the aspiration git goals of the d o t will be the increasing automation of highway travel these technological opportunities well enhanced safety energy consumption environmental impacts to effectively improving road capacity traffic management steve speed and reliability turning to my second point about data needs in safety lou congress directed the d o t to to conduct a comprehensive transportation information needs assessment that study was never conducted by d o t so in two thousand and six the data section of the transportation research board in an all volunteer effort produced this document underneath the as a volunteer effort called transportation information assets and impacts substituting for what it was unable or unwilling to do my challenge to the the expected value and cost of meeting those needs and recommend priorities for an hansing both local and national transportation data assets chairman arbor starts legislation has forty sections calling for new reporting requirements performance measures and performance targets to say that the department is not up to it is almost laughable but neither are the states or the m p o or anyone else we don't have the content we don't have the methods we don't have the institutions and we don't have the money i'm happy to take questions thank you thank you very much mr mr precisely mr skinner pleased to say good morning  ranking member smith and members of the subcommittee my name is robert skinner jr and i'm the executive director of the transportation research of the national academy i'm pleased to testify about research and innovation directed toward the goals of safety communities economic competitiveness environmental sustainability my comments are based upon the work of committees of experts appointed by the national academy let me briefly highlight selected recommendations in a strategic area i will start with safety although safety is important for all modes ninety five percent of the deaths and injuries in our transport system occur on roads and highways as administrator appelle has already noted the congressionally requested strategic highway research program is about to embark on the largest most sophisticated naturalistic driving study ever conducted will gather extensive information about driving behavior from three thousand volunteer drivers over a two year period it's ultimately a missed again fundamental knowledge about driver behavior that can be used to develop new safety measures but  for affective safety countermeasures in the area of large truck safety serval t r b committee reports have pointed out the potential efficiency gains of permitting longer and heavier trucks to operate on a limited number of interstate highways devoid increasing risk carefully controlled independently conducted trials are needed to test the efficacy of proposed technologies to enhance the safety of longer combination the term livable communities usually refers to relevant patterns that foster travel by non automobile modes of transportation recent report on the relationship between the built environment and motorised travel find substantial gaps in knowledge about how to best design transit oriented development research is needed about the density thresholds to support different levels of transit service and how the threshold for metropolitan areas and communities of all size with respect to their their employment concentrations and their land use also needed are more rigorous before and after studies of efforts to foster compact mixed purpose land use and finer grained data employment support more sophisticated public transportation planning research related to economic competitor that aims to make our transportation system operate more efficiently and work cost effectively included in this category or research programs related to the construction operation and maintenance of transportation infrastructure for highways there are opportunities to make these research programs more effective by providing greater support for longer term risk higher payoff research building and maintaining strong mechanisms for stakeholder involvement conducting aggressive well resourced implementation initiatives and increasing the share of research funding awarded through competition and merit review also included in this category or topic areas that are either new or relatively speaking have been neglected in the past freight related research is an example of  latter among other things the us department of transportation needs to develop the capability to monitor the performance of the freight system and to develop tools that assist transportation agencies at all levels in evaluating public private re lated investments which often occur at intermodal bottlenecks a newer topic concerns how to fund and operate the highway system in the most efficient way as the fuel tax fuel tax becomes less viable several groups including a national academies committee have suggested transitioning to a scheme that charges users on a per mile traveled basis and recommended r and d program to support this effort would likely cost seventy two hundred million dollars over a ten to twelve year period in the area of environmental sustainability has just released a report that recommends research programs to mitigate transportations contribution to climate change and adapt transportation infrastructure to the consequences of a changing climate given the uncertainties mitigation adaption research program of two hundred fifty million dollars over six years is needed to assist federal state and local decision makers in picking the most cost beneficial and cost effective strategies i written testimony includes more detail about these and other topic area recommendations as well as the processes by which research should be carried out and promising results implemented thank you for the opportunity to testify this morning and i look forward to your questions thank you very much mr skinner and thanks to the entire panel we will now open for our first round of questions and the chair recognizes them self  sort of slightly different from what i always do focusing immediately on brief questions i want to let the panel know that over the course of three hearings it has become increasingly apparent to me that the research enterprise at transportation seems to be fundamentally different from the relationship that research has to departments such as defense or that there are no discretionary research funds for d o t d your research dollars and safety lou were fully earmarked and that is something to examine and perhaps to change in terms of sheer quantity the s research functions and that's used for training purposes also so i think at the larger picture scale we want to examine whether this scale of the research enterprise and its relationship to operating programs is appropriate going forward it's it's like we've decided that roads have been built since roman times and we're not going to look that much except for i ts into a vastly different ways of delivering transportation at least that is a an early  assessment based on this series of hearings and i suspect that we will investigate this further in and out of hearings and any of you who community or in state organizations that there are other federal agencies such as the national science foundation and i h which have formal programs for bringing people from around the expertise to the agency and is valuable to the rest of the country in disseminating whatever is happening at the central agency and also helping folks around the country understand  what is going on in washington in the process he's here which are relevant to what they're doing is they're what are the analogous programs at rida and at the  department the analogous programs to what is going on at n s f and i h where it is an integral part of what they do and it is also viewed as an important career step for other folks whether folks are coming from academia university transportation centers or state departments i agree that this is a very important way to get new thinking and and collaboration into the  department at the outset i would say in the past we haven't done enough of it and i'm very happy to see the steps we're taking in that direction there's a the director from wisconsin that is on sabbatical now working guards office with my myself and my deputy administrator robert teenie already put the word out to university transportation center directors across the country and their faculty that we really exploring opportunities for sabbatical programs at rita and at d o t as a whole and we reached out to our colleagues in the department so in a sense there hasn't been and while there hasn't been enough of that we've got we've got the wheels in motion to bring more outside talent in for a fixed period of time we're talking to other government agencies about detail programs to get scientific research experts in to interbreed and i would hope to be able to say six months a year from now that we move that forward and i fully intend to be able to do that because as someone that's worked a lot more outside of d o t and transportation research and i've worked inside d t i see a lot of opportunity to pull it in and all the conversations and meetings i have with my colleagues at this table i know there's great talent out there so bottom line we're moving that forward would do would it be helpful to have additional statutory authority i think that's something that when you talk about i work pretty closely with these and secretary on what our thoughts are for for authorisation and what what systems work and what can we can do within the existing statutes what might need to change i welcome any comments you have i mean i think that's something we very much like to in my time on my own something we'd like to explore we i think we are as peter said we're trying to beef up not that people are giving up their cars but that they'll have another way to go if they don't want to drive i know that a lot of these decisions are going to be tough i mean i don't mind my walking down memory lane here when i was on city council i know we had a residential intersection where wrong one resident complain that there was too much noise because there was a dip in the in the street so the city council said well if you want to stop sign on all the emissions from a stop  safety i mean we we have data that from the one nine hundred seventy s and eighty's two thousand and one national academy of sciences report showed that probably thirteen hundred to twenty six hundred traffic fatalities occurred per year additionally because of cafe standards president obama did announce that he wanted to that he wants to increase cafe standards even higher from twenty seven and a half miles per gallon to thirty five and a half miles per gallon by two thousand and sixteen they're going to be some tradeoffs and i don't think that that's an intended effect obviously but would you care to comment on that i actually think the  nearly stand alone in terms of raising that number from twenty seven and a half to thirty five and a half not considering other issues for all intents and purposes i hope that we obviously rural americans aren't really excited about such an approach for obvious reasons do you see any i know the objective in any way to issues that have to be decided would be the capability to have different way but there would also be the capability to have very simple pricing strategies that look similar to what we have today start transitioning by as early as two thousand and fifteen my personal view is that that's optimistic i think that we are going to have to have and all the studies have called for this large scale pilot large scale demonstrations of which germany was home is pioneer before where the stage ready before we're at a stage ready to implement something on a nationwide now we have achieved in the united states a commendable twenty percent decrease in fatalities for the one crisp measure crisp metric germans and french have over the same period of time achieved a sixty percent reduction of fatalities vehicles i really don't have the answer for you mr chairman in fact it's i think one of the areas research we really need to do what are they know that we don't know what are they doing that we're not doing some of the things that i've asked a question often and i can tell you some of the answers i've got one of the questions i've asked is how do we know what percent of fatalities are caused by the road condition itself the physical design and shape of the road and the europeans will say to me that's the wrong question the question is how can we design the roads and the condition so that they will not ever contribute in fact will solve the problems caused by other things drunk drivers etc etc so i think that's an area where very impressed with what they're saying but i think in the second level there is a willingness they may be a willingness there to be more draconian in their policies that perhaps we have not yet been quite willing to get to one or two examples drunk drivers thousand dollar fines license taken away people who serve the alcohol responsible so if you have a party at your house and somebody has an accident you better have everybody sleep at  house because they're going to be charged if there's an accident very low speed limits and local neighborhoods because of small variations much better than i do about this but the difference between twenty five miles an hour and seventeen miles an hour in a local neighborhood where children are playing is dramatic in terms of its impact and there's a whole array of these things that i think are going on that i just would love to know much more about and the review process that is specifically looking at the experience of other highly developed countries that are surpassing us in terms of their improvement in highway safety and that report should be out probably within two months and it's almost certainly going to address the sort of things that alan has mentioned more stringent measures against  preserve that more research is needed in terms of what has been effective in other nations but i've had in fact just had a cousin from norway visiting me over the weekend and we were talking about some of the differences where they have had some of the similar reductions they have a blood alcohol content limit point zero two rather than point zero eight which we as mr preserve the said fines are far far higher their traditional system basically does not let anyone off that is cut for drunk driving we have defense attorneys who have made a living out of getting drunk drivers through the court system in an off the speed limit urbanized areas particularly in small towns are not only set low they're set they're very strictly enforced with very high fines remember when i visited him in norway we would be on these are terrible roadways that that had one hundred kilometer per hour speed limit we would go into town if we go down to thirty to forty kilometers per hour and i was following him he was he was driving and he never they are in countries like australia willing to do random testing of drivers to see if they've been drinking that's not something we do under our constitution but it is what it has taken in some  other countries to be effective in terms of getting the drunk drivers off of the roadway and that is one of the biggest contributing sources that we have in the u s to our fate telling me thank you very much we're going to move on back to mr smith but offline i think we'll have some inquiries about the distracted driving studies and also both drugs and alcohol and their influence on the problems on the road as tallis mr smith saying that obviously there is a lot of interest in research in the transportation community about it and obviously we're following that and talking about but i think at the moment you know the white house has made pretty clear that you know that's not something  so obviously you may not think that you may not agree that perhaps there's just a misunderstanding of the empty and rural areas and that if people really knew more about it they would support it well i think you know i think i've actually looked at a lot of polling about the different ways that you could raise revenue to pay for our transportation needs going forward and there are often seems to be i think sort of a link with comfortable ness and understanding of something and how much support there is  and you know fairly complicated concept and concepts like that people tend to be suspicious of them i mean i got to go visit i got to visit oregon and see the experiment there and it was really quite fascinating at the  transportation improvements you might be getting for the money you know there might be more public acceptance of it just like now the highest public acceptance of toll people i think generally i pay a toll on the bridge i get to use the bridge you know there are also i mean excessively penalizing world drivers but you also perhaps are giving a reward to those that are reducing their i think there are potentially creative approaches going thank you i appreciate your aberration i know that objective livability is to increase density in urban areas but i do think that and again broadening it from transportation to a larger concept you know i think one way to describe it sometimes is co locating housing commercial freedoms and associated issues and still meet other needs as well so thank  thank you mr smith i think just about all of you referred to the need for improved data collection and could you talk a little bit further about the problems with the o t and state collection i think that conundrum really under is that there is a lot of data collected by different managers or operators of the transportation system whether it's local traffic engineers the public safety folks highway traffic operations it doesn't really find its way to be collected in a manner that would help us jointly deliver a better system of transportation for example if we knew  through that to collections of data all of the different conflicts that might occur on city streets relative to walkability for schools conflicts at signalized intersections the emissions  reduction opportunities that may occur that certain signalized intersections which is an issue in terms of urban life part of it is really just getting it all in one place the issue i think that is important for us is that is not to say that more and more data needs to be collected out of whole cloth is really to reach out and say what is being collected today and how do we make it more useful to decision making and that's the connection that i would make there is one concern of course in terms of coverage for major data collection efforts such as real time information and that the coverage we have in our nation's highways and arterial systems is probably insufficient to help manage the system as well as to measure its performance and i do think that moving forward to cover more of our system with data collection is an important piece i do believe that local governments have a very difficult time adding that component into their day to day work because of their own economic and budgetary impacts related to that so to the degree that there can be sub regional or state level efforts to then roll up to a more federal program of data collection i think would be more helpful in the long run different aspects that i could address in this but i'd like to specifically address the issue of performance management in performance measures as related to data issues has been doing a lot of thinking about national level performance measures so suited with authorization and as we have gotten into addressing the proof the potential performance measures that inconsistency of definitions in consistency  data collection methods makes it very difficult in terms of trying to develop national level performance measures i'll give you the example that almost everyone thinks should be the easiest and that is pavement conditions and methods by which pavement condition data is collected fifty different states have fifty different ways of  condition data payments are in maryland using the same performance measure and something very inconsistent with their neighboring states and very inconsistent with what people would experience in driving between th states as well it becomes far more complicated when you get into some of the softer performance measures whether they be environmental measures or freight related measures so focusing on the data issues associated with a national performance management approach is one of the greatest challenges that i would say that we have and that uniformity function is either for a national association or for the federal government it would i actually ran the department's statistical program i actually ran the department statistical program in its early days and over the years have seen it go change institutions organizations always with kind of lack of funding and lack of great degree of interest what has happened over the years is that it's kind of waxed and waned as some people were supportive or less supportive the whole process has been very limited if you go and look at the national household travel survey which is fundamental to our national understanding of what travel behavior is all about all you have to do is look at the years in which it was conducted and you can see that it was conducted whenever we could pass the hat and find the money to do the survey we did want to it goes back to  we did one in ninety five and i said well good we're going to the river here in one thousand nine hundred ninety five two thousand there was no money and so we got around to it in two thousand and one in two thousand and five there was no money there was twenty million dollars in state funds and m p o funds put up to support that program to supplement it at the state and the m p o level and the d o t couldn't find a million and a half dollars to make the base work happen and so it was delayed and delayed and delayed and it's now becoming available finally so in effect we're going through this reauthorization with the same data we had for the last one would you say that the data needs or the data deficiencies are s same problem the overall research enterprise does that that is there is no systematic effort episodic if it occurs at all yeah i think that's a great way to describe it we've tried to get some things  stabilized like the commodity flow survey which looks at national trade flows and that has done relatively well but it also it also has has had its weaknesses and it's been cut over time on the inner city passenger side we know almost nothing our last survey was one hundred ninety five it was rather poorly done and so if we're looking at things like high speed rail we know very little about it urban goods movement is another great area of weakness it's just a matter of focus and a matter of funding and having the institutions in place to support the program thank you very much but my time has people out of their cars and we can change people's behavior that is with respect to how they travel or what aspects of the livability initiative involve potential corage and or government rules or regulations transportation choices and meeting a demand which we're seeing all over the country and the demand is different in different parts of the country in a more urban setting it might be for mass transit in a more rural setting it might be for bike lanes and a van pool but it's giving people transportation options i think it's not really a coersion it's meeting a demand that were at least we're seeing all over the country and for example in the discretionary tiger grant program that we are conducting that you all gave us in the recovery act we've got a tremendous we've got four hundred applications from all over the country from the smallest communities to the biggest cities with a whole variety of projects which i think you would really consider livability projects which are taking neighborhood streets and turning what is perhaps just a road with traffic going pretty quickly into one that can accommodate bikes pedestrian buses whatever the local community is interested in  having i could speak to this also and flummery with m t c is metropolitan planning organization in san francisco we're looking at live ability more as a an opportunity to express in measurable terms  the likelihood that people want to live in a more transit oriented development we've been undertaking a number of initiatives talking with people about what does it take but what is the choice that people are making in terms of their location in order so that we aren't looking at a coercive approach to dealing with livability but what we found is that in identifying some measurement with the community you know whether it's access to transit how does it take to get to essential services and destinations and the like that we were able to show community because by community how we're doing on a scorecard of livability you know are we really putting our investment in the right place relative to the improvements that would make current occupants of a livable community or a transit oriented development community as well as attracting more people to that choice so i do think that the issues of livability do not have to be related to the coercion or the densification of urban areas i would add that there is one element to this so that with more and more focus and choice towards more dense vacation we are also going to have some other co benefits which is people spend their money to some degree or where they choose to do something in a way is a scorecard in and of itself for instance i mean you could put in mass transit in some communities maybe people would use their voting with their feet they're just saying well whatever you did you didn't do it the right way or it just doesn't provide the extra value that i need relative to some other alternative so do you ever consider that it was pretty much more of a sort of a government planning model you know it's very much tied to choice  that it does very much tied to how well our urban transit systems are being used we're actually doing some valuation now in certain of our counties to identify where transit is most competitive relative to you know being inviting to people's use and mapping that against where we deliver transit today and you will start seeing some disconnects and by virtue of those disconnects we are not doing as good a job of getting an effective use of an investment so those kinds of tools and data collection and dealing with the livability questions i think will go a long way towards making some different investment decisions thank you thank you mr wynn thank you very much mr aiken mr carnahan five minutes challenges that we're facing in our service transportation system and we clearly can't just build our way out of that issue what do you think are really the greatest inhibitor s to communities relying more greatly on i t s solutions to really deploy technology better i think one of the biggest in a lack of resources to dedicate to technology when there is an opportunity to install technology or to evaluate whether technology makes sense for a certain investment at a local level it is often in trade off with other very fundamental needs of a city or county having to deal with pavement management pay you know pavement condition other safety concerns what we would have done quite a bit of an region just as a bit of it our own experience we have a hundred cities and nine counties all of which have some level of traffic engineering expertise and some of which are doing far better in the realm of intelligent transportation systems or the use of technology we do quite a bit of peer to peer work among all of us cities to help each other out making those decisions so we don't replicate mistakes and a lso get as much benefit as we can we use some of our federal funding at m t c to actually create a panel of experts who are assisting the technical from a technical basis traffic engineers to make decisions on technology in order for them to be able to make those decisions more cost effectively about i do think that is the fundamental issue is the resource question the cost is the biggest driver obviously they can make the case for our region as to what would be the best investment to improve the capacity and the operation of the freeways that we looked at everything from inference tests infrastructure expansion but what came out the most was moving towards more technology for ramp metering i mean fundamental things this is not new cutting edge technology but the fact that we had not been able to evaluate the cost and benefit and bring that into a public discussion of investment choice was really up to now so getting that real world data to make those decisions what do we need to do to get that data in the hands of those decision makers well what we've i think speaking just from the metropolitan level in our own commission getting it in the hands was to collect that from what is being collected today whether from the state departments of transportation managers of major arterials in our in our area the data collection though is driven quite a bit at the opportunity for better data collection from the technology that is embedded sensors traffic signals cameras and the like in order for us to process in real time data that is already being collected and therefore can be used for making investment decisions as well as real time operational improvements easiest question for last and that is in our need to move away from strict reliance on the gas tax how we can use technology to really is as we see more and more alternative fuel vehicles whether it's biofuels hybrids plug in electric  hydrogen to be sure that we have a fair system that is fair is perceived to be fair but that they're all users are paying their fair share to support our system how do you see technology being used to get us to that point well there's technology that is available today that we use for toll collection and for the type of pricing mechanisms that are related to the usage of the  system not necessarily a flat rate b m t based system but one that charges according to the use of particular portion of the network an example for us today in the bay area is the development of  occupancy toll lanes which would use technology that's already in place through our toll collection for bridges and to start a process of being able to invite people in to use the capacity to existing capacity the system in their h l v lanes and to charge them if they are using that system as a single occupant vehicle moving to the mt i believe there are technologies that are already being developed within vehicles to calculate and to disseminate in information relative to how much usage on any given time period or in a certain part of the metropolitan area if we were to do some kind of congestion or zone based charging that  technology is well in place and i think what we're really going to have to see and i know there was a time frame mentioned in earlier about a ten to twelve year period i think that has to do as much with the development and the turnover of the fleet that will make it that technology more available within within the vehicles as well thank you and thank all the panel and or thank the chairman for letting me visit this committee i serve on the transportation committee and some very interested in what you're doing here thank you we are under five minutes but we still have a few hundred members of congress who have not voted on the on the floor so well we will not return to the topic of   i think we have time for is what would each of you recommend to be at the top of the priority list in terms of a kluge and the r and d title for the transportation bill and i'll ask you to be brief in your testimony today but this is something course that we are very very interested in this subcommittee and ask you to submit your comments at writing if anyone would like to address this topic now u s d o t conduct what was called the tina the transportation information needs assessment and looking at where we're going the fact that we i think pretty much been a failure at trying to use data better for planning and policy purposes and now we're talking about stepping to the next level of using it for performance evaluation using it for transparency and areas where we're not i think prepared i think that's where that assessment needs to occur one of the things that ashton is very concerned about as the percentage of money that goes to the corps programs continues to decrease the amount of money available particularly for s p r programs is threatened so protecting the amount of money that goes to research would probably be our first and highest priority you did make reference before to twenty five percent of s p r being set aside for research that's a minimum in terms of what can  go to research i will cite maryland's experience but i think it's common to other states much of the remaining three quarters of the money actually goes to data collection that supports both planning activities as well as critical for research as well and i think we taught before about the importance of data it's very critical that we have that money available for data as well and then the final point i would make which is really the first one that that i made in my testimony we do believe that the multi layered research structure that we have in place does serve us very well and we would want to continue it seems to me that the  research component is not the only component that needs to be beefed up data collection or the feedback loop is also a little bit weak anyone else think overall it's important to recognize to continue to recognize that there are s and continue that we need to have a program at the u s department of transportation has greater discretion and flexibility and i think in terms of topic there are some new topic areas that need more to thank you very much and i want to thank all the witnesses for appearing this morning on the record will remain open for two weeks for additional statements from members and to for answers to any follow up questions which the committee