The Never Ending Story? Why road projects take so long to complete.

Building a new highway involves a complex and painstaking process, one that begins years before the folks in hard hats and orange vests arrive on the scene.

Episode Transcript

Bernie Fette (00:14):
Hey everyone.
Welcome to ThinkingTransportation -- conversations
about how we get ourselves andthe stuff we need from one
place to another. I'm BernieFette with the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute. Ifyou've spent any time at all
traveling on streets andhighways, you've no doubt
encountered construction zoneswhere workers are either

(00:37):
building new roads or repairingold ones. And if you're like
most of us, you may havewondered -- why is this taking
so long? The short version ofthe answer to that question is
... it's complicated. Here togive us the longer version of
the answer is Bill Eisele, asenior research engineer at

(00:57):
TTI. Bill is also an associateagency director and research
group leader for TTI's planningGroup. Bill, thanks for being
with us to explore some of themysteries of road building.

Bill Eisele (01:10):
Happy to be here, Bernie.

Bernie Fette (01:12):
So maybe it's a safe guess to say that as we
travel about in our cars, on atypical day, most of us have
observed situations where wemay have thought, wow, they
(whoever "they" is) they reallyneed to do something about this
road. Is it fair to say thatthere's a lot more to it than

(01:32):
that?

Bill Eisele (01:34):
Yeah. It really is complex and I've been there
myself where you go through aparticular situation and it's
like, boy, and, and I knowbetter. Those people, whoever
"they" is, need to do somethingabout that. And there is a lot
to it. There are a lot ofdifferent options to be looked
into. There are a number ofstakeholders who are involved

(01:54):
in those decisions and I lookforward to unpacking a little
bit of that with you .

Bernie Fette (01:59):
Okay, good. Can you start by walking us through
some of the higher altitudesteps involved in getting a
highway built?

Bill Eisele (02:07):
Yeah. Really fundamentally, and as simple as
I can get, there's about fivesteps. First, there's a a
planning step as you canimagine. Secondly, a project
will go into kind of apreliminary design phase.
There's a lot of environmentalwork that's done at that stage.
Once it passes that, it goesinto final design. Then there's

(02:28):
the purchase of right of way ,and then finally the
construction phase.

Bernie Fette (02:33):
Okay. So you mentioned the planning process
first. Now you're getting astep beyond the big picture
maybe, and talk about some ofwhat is involved in that
planning process.

Bill Eisele (02:45):
Sure. The planning part is very complex. There's a
number of levels to that. Thereare a number of plans that are
usually in place or beingreadied by a community. So what
really kind of happens broadlyis that cities, regions, even
at the state level, they'llhave a larger transportation

(03:07):
plan where they've identifiedtheir vision and goals around
transportation and what'simportant to them. Typically,
it has a long time horizon toidentify kind of what policies
and strategies might supportthat vision. So then the actual
building of a highway, if itgets to that point, must be in

(03:30):
line with that plan that's outthere. And so then once that,
hey, this is something we wannapursue, as you can imagine,
there's a lot of those thingsin the bucket of possibilities.
So it's really necessary tothen go in with a , a finer
tooth comb, prioritize some ofthose proposed initiatives,
look at identifying initiativesthat would be most appropriate,

(03:54):
where they're gonna beavailable funds for it, and
then actually programming itand putting it into what's
often called an improvementprogram that's done on a
shorter time horizon that says,okay, of all the things in the
plan, these are the ones thatwe can tackle with the funding
that we have at this point. Andthere's a really substantial

(04:15):
public involvement processthroughout this that's
important to understand it .
And in fact, there was aFederal Aid Highway Act that
was passed back in 1962 and forurban transportation planning
processes, what it did ismandated that as part of a
condition to get federal fundsin urban areas, you have to go

(04:38):
through this thorough planningprocess. And it kind of coined
the term and started , if youwill, what's called a Three C
planning process. Mm-Hmm.
, which justmeans that the planning is
continuing, comprehensive, andcooperative. And it all goes
back to ensuring that all thestakeholders are involved
throughout the entire fivesteps that I mentioned.

Bernie Fette (05:01):
Okay, good. I was hoping we could talk about the
stakeholders next, but onething that you mentioned makes
me wonder, whenever you saidthat the projects, whenever
they get to a certain point andan operating agency decides
we're really serious aboutthese, that's when they go into
what you called an improvementplan. So whenever you go into

(05:21):
the improvement plan, thatmeans that they actually become
more real, that they actuallyhave a timeframe or a start
date assigned to them and maybeeven a budget. Is that what
happens at that step?

Bill Eisele (05:32):
That's exactly right. To use Texas kind of as
an example. 'cause it'shonestly the one in my backyard
that I'm most familiar with,right . They have what's called
their UTP UnifiedTransportation Program. Mm-Hmm
. , It's anannual plan that they put
together with a 10-year scope.
Okay . So they update it everysingle year. This improvement
program was the nuance. If Isaid plan, it is a plan, but

(05:57):
it's really a program. Becausewhat they do in Texas, for
example, is call it theStatewide Transportation
Improvement Program. And it'sessentially a four-year plan
and it says, okay, these arethe ones within the next four
years, we've got the fundingallocated and figured out, and
we're gonna start to move thoseinto our letting process. And

(06:17):
the letting process is just aprocess by which things are
funded every couple of years.

Bernie Fette (06:22):
Right. And so that's when things get serious.
That's when they say, westarted with this list of a lot
of good, really perhaps worthyprojects to improve
transportation for the region,but these are the ones we're
serious about .

Bill Eisele (06:34):
Absolutely. That's well said.

Bernie Fette (06:35):
Okay. Okay .
Mm-Hmm. , talk alittle about those stakeholders
that you mentioned. Can youhelp us understand in part the
challenge of serving theinterests of so many different
public officials, business andproperty owners, and uh, all
the others who may be in themix that I'm not even
knowledgeable enough tomention?

Bill Eisele (06:55):
Absolutely. It is an extensive list, and I may
miss some, but just dependingupon what the scope and the
context of the project is,there's typically going to be
federal, state, localtransportation professionals
that are involved. But not tomention also community groups,
interest groups affectedinterest agencies, transit

(07:20):
agencies, active transportationgroups. So you think about
neighborhoods that might alsobe involved and probably likely
many, many others. And sothrough that Three C process
that I mentioned, its intent isto make sure that those
individuals are engaged andhave as much opportunity as

(07:40):
possible throughout this entiredevelopment process to have
their voice heard.

Bernie Fette (07:45):
And you've got a lot of cooks in the kitchen
there for sure.

Bill Eisele (07:49):
No doubt. Varied backgrounds, varied life
experiences, varied knowledgein transportation. Some are
certainly professionals and,but , you know, some
are folks that equally havevery important perspectives on
things.

Bernie Fette (08:06):
I would think varied cultures as well in, in
many cases, right? Depending onwhere we're talking about.

Bill Eisele (08:12):
Absolutely.
Different cultures, differentdemographics, different life
experiences. And they bring allof that into the process. And
that's why it's so important tohave a really strong listening
ear in these public involvementsessions because it really does
nobody any good to come intothose with an idea of here's

(08:32):
what we're gonna do and here'swhat it's going to look like.
Because we really need to, hemake sure that as
transportation professionals,we're understanding and hearing
what's happening at the locallevel, what those neighborhood
groups are saying, and whattheir experiences have been,
'cause they're the ones thathave to live there.

Bernie Fette (08:50):
And what you just mentioned about walking in with
an idea or a notion of this iswhat we're going to build, this
is what it's going to looklike. That's really how things
were for quite a few years inthe middle of the last century,
beginning back then when roadbuilding and the Interstate
Highway System were just reallygetting ramped up. It wasn't
until later, many years laterbefore public involvement

(09:13):
became a more prominent part ofthe whole process. Is that
right?

Bill Eisele (09:19):
Yeah, that's really fair to say. And really
that Federal Aid Highway Act in1962 assisted that and urban
transportation planning when itjust came out and said, Hey, if
you're gonna get federal fundsfor something in an urban area,
you need to go through thisThree C process. You need to
make sure that your planningprocess is continuing,
comprehensive, cooperative, andthat you're engaging all those

(09:42):
stakeholders.

Bernie Fette (09:44):
And if you do involve all those stakeholders
in a really meaningful ongoingway , doesn't that help an
agency or agencies avoidproblems along the way ? The
kinds of problems that come outin the form of legal actions
that might delay construction?

Bill Eisele (10:01):
Almost certainly.
Yeah. That's what the planningstages is all about, is to hear
where people's perspectivesare, understand what sorts of
issues that we may not even beaware of. We'll , you know,
we'll touch on this withenvironmental if we have a
chance to talk about that. Butyou know, there could be air

(10:22):
quality, other environmentalimpacts, there could be
wildlife considerations. Otherthings that, as you know, pure
highway engineers going intothe process just may not be
aware of, as an example.

Bernie Fette (10:35):
I understand that travel models, which I believe
are predictive models, are alsopart of that planning process.
Can you tell us about thatpiece of the puzzle?

Bill Eisele (10:46):
Yeah, the travel demand models are a really
important part of the planningprocess and planning stage.
Early on, what we do is getsome of the observed travel
behavior out in a particularregion through travel surveys.
We identify some of the keytrip making characteristics,
how many trips are being made,where are they going, how long

(11:09):
is the trip, what time are thetrips taken, and what's the
mode of travel?

Bernie Fette (11:14):
Can you do that by asking travelers directly
about their travel experiences?

Bill Eisele (11:19):
Yes, there are some travel surveys that go
out. Also, more recently, we'reable to supplement quite a bit
just from probe vehicle datathat are out there from
different sources that we have,whether they're cell phones or
other probes that areanonymized that provide insight

(11:41):
into kind of where the activityis in the network.

Bernie Fette (11:45):
Okay. Talk a little about the environmental
piece of this. You hadmentioned that earlier as one
of the potential areas wherethings can get slowed down. Can
you talk about what's involvedthere and why?

Bill Eisele (11:58):
Yeah, so the environmental is certainly
important. I touched on itearlier. Environmental impacts
are kind of varied. It could beany kind of, you know, noise or
traffic or historicalpreservation issues with water,
or plants and animals, airquality, just to name a few.
And the National EnvironmentalPolicy Act, or NEPA, as it's

(12:21):
affectionately known, wassigned into law back in 1970.
And again, requires themandates that the US federal
government agencies evaluatethe environmental impacts of
different actions of differentprojects. So basically, if
you're gonna take federalfunds, you have to do some
things to look into what thepotential environmental impacts

(12:43):
could be .

Bernie Fette (12:45):
What are some of the things that can go wrong at
that stage? The environmentalclearance stage, maybe that's
not a fair statement. Right .
And I think you were about tocorrect me,

Bill Eisele (12:55):
, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't
know that it's necessarilygoing wrong, but there are
things that may take longer,right? For example, you come
across a rare plant or aspecies of animal that's been
living there, and where thepreliminary design is saying
that there could be a roadbuilt . And so then that needs

(13:17):
to have special mitigation andspecial consideration and can
make that process take a littlebit longer.

Bernie Fette (13:25):
Is there any way to speed up that process
whenever an agency encounterssome of those things that
you've described?

Bill Eisele (13:32):
Yeah, so one way that the environmental process
can be sped up is throughwhat's called NEPA assignment.
And Texas is one of 11 statesthat have this. And what it
allows then is it allows forthe state to assume some of
that federal responsibility forthe transportation projects in
exchange for a little bitfaster federal review process.

(13:55):
So that does help to streamlinethis and mitigate the time
involved.

Bernie Fette (14:01):
After the environmental process after
that step's taken care of whatcomes next?

Bill Eisele (14:06):
Yeah, so we've worked through planning, we've
worked through a preliminarydesign and environmental
process. Once the environmentalprocess is blessed for movement
to go forward, then you go intofinal design. Once the final
design is completed, thentypically a project goes into
the right-of-way acquisitionstage. And then after that, and

(14:29):
only after that do we finallyget to the point where you
start to see something on theroad. And that is the
construction.

Bernie Fette (14:36):
And that's one of the things I think as a subset
of the overall process that Iwas hoping we can talk about
today. Once people start to seethose signs of construction,
they can see the trucks comingout, they see the people in the
hard hats, and the orange oryellow vests, even then ground
is broken. And it may be yearsin many cases before that road

(15:01):
sees a ribbon cutting. Why isthat?

Bill Eisele (15:05):
Yeah, there's many factors that can go into that.
I'll highlight a couple.
Traffic control is reallyimportant. For example, you
know, just like when a doctoroperates, right? You gotta keep
the patient alive. We've gottakeep the transportation system
flowing. So there's a lot thathas to happen sort of in real
time moving traffic. And we'veall went through it, went

(15:27):
through work zones and thingschange over time, right? So
there's this constant having tostay on top of the traffic
control. Sometimes that cantake quite some time. One of
the big things that we see isjust weather conditions. You
have to have good weatherconditions in order to conduct
a highway construction project.

(15:47):
You know, you have to keep thewater out of the site. We have
to make sure that soil andthat's placed into the roadway
is at the proper moisturecontent. So we can't have
anything flooding, you know,just in order for it to be able
to compact properly and be ableto put the layers on. And then
good old concrete in and ofitself needs time to cure. If

(16:10):
you've got a concrete pavementthat you're putting in, to my
point about the trafficcongestion or the traffic still
needing to move, sometimes youhave to go to to night work,
you know, simply becausethere's just so much traffic
during the day. And so allthese different things can have
some impact on the projectitself.

Bernie Fette (16:31):
Because if you don't keep a roadway operating
while you're working on it,while you're widening it or
improving it in some way, thattraffic has to go somewhere.
And the rest of thetransportation system in a
given city perhaps wouldn'tnecessarily be well-suited to
absorb all of that trafficdemand while you close down a

(16:54):
major highway just so that youcould finish the work a little
faster. Is that fair to say?

Bill Eisele (16:59):
That's very fair to say and is very accurate. In
fact, some of those traveldemand models that we have, we
can look at because we have asense of the driver behavior,
we can look at those differentconstruction scenarios. You
know, what if we close a lane?
What if we close two lanes?
What if we close the wholething? You know, what's that
impact potentially going to beon the system? So it's

(17:22):
balancing what you're seeing asa driver going through that
work zone and a lot of otherroads that we're also having to
consider on some of these largeprojects.

Bernie Fette (17:32):
What you've described is a very detailed
and thorough, extensivepainstaking process. Would you
say in your observation thatmost projects typically move
along at a relatively steadyand predictable pace? Or are we
talking about a process inwhich something is relatively

(17:54):
likely to, again, I don'tnecessarily wanna say go wrong,
but that it's relativelycertain that there are gonna be
surprises along the way and wejust need to be prepared to
make adjustments?

Bill Eisele (18:07):
Actually, Bernie, I think it's both. I think the
process is good. I think it'sthorough. I think it asks the
right question and guides thestakeholders through the right
process. That said, it's prettyrare that, you know, something
doesn't come up, right ?
Mm-Hmm. that'sgonna throw things off. But I
think that's why the process isgood, is because it's been kind

(18:29):
of tested and it sort of, it iswhat it is, right? All the
primary stakeholders, fundingagencies accept it and it's
working, you know, I know itcan be frustrating when we're
sitting through that trafficand those work zones week after
week, month after month, yearafter year in some cases. But I

(18:50):
think it sure beats thealternative of just kind of
plowing forward without being,having a, a meaningful thought
process for all of thesedifferent things.

Bernie Fette (19:00):
I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and just guess
that maybe in your years ofresearch that you may have
noticed an item or two or aplace or two in the process
where you thought, if I couldwave a magic wand, I would
change this. But I'm not gonnaask you about that just yet.
That's just a little hint ifyou want to get ready for that
one, . But first Iwanted to ask you, you've been

(19:22):
really helpful in giving us abetter understanding of why
road projects can sometimestake years to complete. I'm
wondering about exceptions tothat rule when reconstruction
of a certain major road orbridge gets fast tracked. So
we're talking about measuringconstruction time in months

(19:44):
rather than years. I'm gonnabring up the example of the
Interstate 35 bridge inMinneapolis back in 2007. I'm
guessing there are others. Canyou talk a little about what
happens, how decisions likethat are made? What merits a
decision to fast track aproject of that sort?

Bill Eisele (20:06):
Yeah, it's a really good question. And I
would say that the process,again, is still pretty similar.
We have this planning phase, wehave preliminary final design
stages. Maybe there's no rightaway if we're just fixing
something and then we moveright into construction. So in
those situations, it's prettyclear everybody wants the
project, right? So most peopleare swimming downstream and in

(20:33):
line with it because after allthat infrastructure was there.
And when an interstate fallsdown, everybody misses it
immediately. Everybody's kindof on board with it. So then it
just becomes kind of a cleanupand construction and a funding
issue. Mm-Hmm. .
And if people are all on board, things can move along much
faster. And also, we didn'ttouch on it, but something else

(20:57):
that can sometimes be put inthe construction phases are
incentives to contractors byday. You know, if you finish a
day earlier, you get X amountof incentive. And so they can
make out pretty good if theycan successfully.

Bernie Fette (21:13):
We're talking about bonus cash payments.

Bill Eisele (21:15):
Correct. Yep. Okay . They

Bernie Fette (21:17):
Can,

Bill Eisele (21:18):
Yep . Because there's a cost every day that
it's not constructed and delayand, and impacts, and so it
makes a whole lot of sense todo that.

Bernie Fette (21:28):
Yeah. Would you expect the bridge in Baltimore
to be another example of a fasttracking scenario?

Bill Eisele (21:37):
I do. Anything large like that. I think the
president came out shortlythereafter and said, hey, this
is critically important to us.
We're gonna look at ways to getthis funded quickly and, and
you know , so thoseconversations were nearly
immediate as to how that canget repaired.

Bernie Fette (21:57):
I'm gonna ask you to step back and take a really
broad view for a couple ofminutes. You're in the research
business, you and yourcolleagues are always trying to
make things a little better. Ifa research sponsor gave you a
blank check tomorrow and youcould study the road building,

(22:17):
planning process, buildingprocess, the entire process ,
if you could study that in anyway that you thought you could
and funding wasn't an issue,how would you approach that?
What kind of questions wouldyou try to answer? Is there a
better way to do things? Whatmight things look like if we

(22:41):
turned you loose with a blankcheck and a magic wand?

Bill Eisele (22:45):
I think the part, and I've got a couple actually,
I live a lot in the planningrealm, and it's really
important to me that we geteverybody's opinions and
feedback on projects and makesure that we have everybody
represented in life experiencescaptured in projects. And one

(23:10):
of the things that I kind ofstruggle with is in this day
and age, how do we best makesure that we're capturing all
those people? How do we bestengage everybody in that
process? You know, COVID kindof changed some things. It

(23:30):
certainly made us moreelectronic. It's certainly made
us, I don't know, for a whilethere not as interested in
going to meetings or perhapshaving public meetings online.
So just making sure that we'redoing state of the practice
across the nation and at thefederal, state and local levels

(23:53):
to ensure we're gettingeverybody incorporated into the
process. There is a quite a bitof research that's been done in
this space, and there are someinnovative ways to get folks
engaged, but that would be thefirst one is making sure that
we're getting all thosechannels of communication open.

Bernie Fette (24:13):
There's one,

Bill Eisele (24:14):
And another one, and this is getting a little
bit outside of my particularscope, but a little bit more in
the weeds, and that is, youknow, utility relocations and
just one of the things that'sso frustrating for people is
you drive through these workzones and it doesn't look like
anything's being done and it'slike, boy, they were just

(24:36):
working on their , now they'restill working on it. Or now
they have a different excavatorout there where right ,
suddenly all the lights go outin the neighboring
subdivision, right? So it's theunderground utilities, gas
pipes, electric tables, waterlines , sewer lines, all that
stuff. That's kind of that prepwork and just systems

(25:01):
management systems to have inplace to understand and make
sure that we know where all ofthose things are. This is
another space in utilityengineering, we call it, where
we're doing some work here atTTI, but that's one of those
that it always seems like wecan use evermore information in

(25:21):
making sure that we've got theproper plans because there's,
there's how things wereplanned, and then there's
as-built plans, right? How weactually ended up having to put
those utilities in. And whenyou start digging stuff up, it
always seems like things are indifferent places.

Bernie Fette (25:38):
One surprise after another.

Bill Eisele (25:40):
Absolutely.

Bernie Fette (25:42):
If you had to summarize or prioritize one or
two big takeaways from ourdiscussion, you know, the kind
of thing that you hoped thatour listeners, if they
remembered nothing else, thatthey would remember this one
thing, what would that onething be?

Bill Eisele (25:58):
You are part of the process in any highway
project, you don't necessarilyget to complain about what
you're seeing on the road. Ifyou haven't made an attempt to
get yourself involved in theprocess and explain your point
of view, make sure that thepublic or the officials that

(26:20):
are involved with the projecthave a chance to hear from you
at the appropriate time. Ithink that's the biggest thing.
This has kind of been a theme,you've heard it come up two or
three times with me now, isjust making sure that we get
people engaged. And Iunderstand it's hard, you know,
we're all so very busy andguilty myself. Oftentimes we

(26:42):
don't get ourselves engageduntil we see the dirt start
moving and the truck startsshowing up and then it's like,
oh, wait a minute, wait aminute. So that's advice that I
have for everybody, and that'skind of my key takeaway and
it's advice that I have toremind myself of as well.

Bernie Fette (27:00):
What more than anything else motivates you to
show up to work every day ?

Bill Eisele (27:08):
I love the challenges in the
transportation industry. I'vebeen blessed to work with great
people and work on wonderfulprojects, and that's what keeps
me going is just being able to,to help out society. Public
service is very important tome, and transportation has been
a wonderful avenue for that inmy life.

Bernie Fette (27:32):
We've been visiting with Bill Eisele,
associate agency director andleader of TTI's Planning Group.
Bill, thanks so much forjoining us and helping us
understand the mysteries ofroad building. We do appreciate
it.

Bill Eisele (27:48):
Absolutely.
Thanks, Bernie. It was a lot offun.

Bernie Fette (27:53):
Planning, preliminary design, final
design, right of way , purchaseand construction. Together,
those steps constitute theprocess for building a highway,
and each one by itself involvesnumerous milestones, any of
which can be upended by a widerange of surprises along the
way. It's a lengthy and complexprocess on the way from

(28:17):
groundbreaking at the start toribbon-cutting upon completion,
emphasizing direct engagementwith everyday travelers and
other stakeholders every stepof the way. Thanks for
listening. Please take just aminute to give us a review,
subscribe and share thisepisode. And please join us

(28:38):
next time for anotherconversation about getting
ourselves and the stuff we needfrom point A to point B.
Thinking Transportation is aproduction of the Texas A&M
Transportation Institute, amember of the Texas A&M
University System. The show isedited and produced by Chris
Pourteau. I'm your host, BernieFette. Thanks again for joining

(29:01):
us. We'll see you next time.