AASHTO Journal, 28 October 2016
State departments of transportation will have to submit initial “asset management plans” to the Federal Highway Administration by April 30, 2018, under a final regulation the FHWA issued Oct. 24.
Required under the MAP-21 law in 2012, the regulation tells DOTs what to include in their formal plans to operate, maintain and improve roads and bridges in the National Highway System that receive federal funding.
This is among various efforts to target surface transportation performance, which include establishing performance characteristics to measure as well as forming official plans to get the most out of federally funded infrastructure.
The FHWA in a Federal Register notice said asset management includes identifying “a structured sequence of maintenance, preservation, repair, rehabilitation, and replacement actions that will achieve and sustain a desired state of good repair over the life cycle of the assets at minimum practicable cost.”
Once it has the initial plans in hand in 2018, the FHWA said it will review them for certification as meeting the final rule’s requirements, and work with the states to make any needed adjustments.
“The FHWA recognizes that some state DOTs may require a substantial amount of time to develop the full data-gathering capability needed to develop complete asset management plans,” the rule said. “This was a factor in FHWA’s decision to use phasing for asset management plan implementation.”
While the initial plans can leave out certain aspects, the FHWA said its regulation calls for state DOT submission of a plan meeting all requirements by June 30, 2019. Then the federal agency will make annual determinations that the states have compliant asset plans.
The agency has scheduled two webinars on Nov. 8 and 9 about asset management issues and this final rule.
The FHWA said its final regulation differs from its earlier proposal in several ways, including that it reduces the asset management plan requirements for assets other than NHS pavements and bridges if the state DOTs choose to include such other assets in their plans. It removes language on bridge and pavement management systems standards from the section on the asset management plan processes, and places those standards in a separate section.
The federal agency said it lacks data on the overall benefits or economic savings that can result from states setting forth systematic plans on how to operate and manage their roads and bridges for the asset’s life-cycle.
But extrapolating from a 2004 Iowa DOT study about long-term asset management, the FHWA estimated the nationwide benefits for state DOTs could be worth $341 million to $454 million, far greater than the projected $46 million to $54 million costs of developing those plans.
The final regulation also sets minimum standards for states to use in developing and operating their bridge and pavement management systems. And it includes federal requirements and deadlines for the DOTs to make periodic evaluations “to determine if reasonable alternatives exist to roads, highways or bridges that repeatedly require repair and reconstruction activities” after emergency events such as storms.