4. Add the Highway Capacity needed

Americans depend on highways for everyday travel.

According to U.S. DOT's Bureau of Transportation Statistics in 2007, excluding aviation, Americans traveled more than five trillion miles on highways, in transit or on Amtrak as they went about their daily business. More than 95 percent of this travel, or 4.8 trillion passenger miles, was on our highways, either in cars, motorcycles, trucks or other vehicles.

Clearly, for most of us, highways are an integral part of our life, whether we live in major metropolitan areas, the suburbs or the country. But it's not just because highways carry cars—more than 73 percent of the freight moved in this country by tonnage, and 93 percent by value, moves by truck, including the Interstates, major roads and city streets. As the American Trucking Association has stated, “If you got it, a truck brought it.”

How much capacity will be needed to unlock the gridlock of congestion, connect underserved areas of the nation and keep our economic engine working?

The Eisenhower Expressway offers a good example of what is needed.

The Eisenhower Expressway is a key link in the transportation network serving northeast Illinois. Designed in the late 1940s, built and opened to traffic in the 1950s, the roadway was the first expressway in the United States to incorporate a rail transit line in the median with rapid transit sharing the right-of-way.

The Eisenhower Expressway was originally designed to accommodate approximately 100,000 vehicles per day. Today, it carries close to 200,000 vehicles on six lanes. Motorists experience stop-and-go traffic for 14 of 24 hours on an average day. An average of 3.5 crashes takes place each day. Resurfacing has maintained the condition of the Eisenhower Expressway over time; however, the pavement base is past the end of its 40-year design service life.

Reconstruction of the Eisenhower Expressway, including the expansion of its current capacity, is clearly needed, but due to funding and planning constraints, has not yet been scheduled by the Illinois Department of Transportation.

At the same time that the region is struggling to find the resources to fund expressway projects like the Eisenhower, it is also trying to fund critical freight rail projects like the $1.5 billion Create Project. This project is planned to connect the railroads of the Western United States with the railroads of the Eastern United States through a series of rail bridges that will separate freight rail from regional passenger rail service, and eliminate the necessity of transferring cargo across town using thousands of trucks.

Urban Interstate Needs

Metropolitan areas will continue to be the center of population and economic growth in the United States. During the past 50 years, the number of people living in metropolitan areas increased from 85 million to 225 million. During the next 40 years, this number is expected to grow to nearly 335 million.

The AASHTO 2007 Future Options for Interstate Highways study illustrates the kind of capacity increases that will be needed in urban areas across the nation during the next four decades. To reduce current congestion and meet future needs, the study found that the equivalent of 30,000 additional lane-miles should be added to the existing 85,000 lane-miles of urban Interstate. Additionally, another 40,000 lane-miles need to be added to the existing urban segments of the National Highway System (major non-Interstate highways and freeways).

AASHTO has recommended that funding for the overall highway program be increased to $375 billion over the next six years, including funding for preservation and to meet rural needs. A significant portion of these funds should be provided to build needed highway capacity. These dollars should be systematically programmed by states and metropolitan planning organizations to meet community needs, especially the needs for increasing metropolitan mobility and reducing congestion.

Future Analysis. The 2007 Future Options for Interstate Highways study has provided a perspective on the capacity needs of the 47,000-mile Interstate System. AASHTO's authorization proposal has called on Congress to fund a study by U.S. DOT and the states of the future preservation and expansion needs of the 162,000-mile National Highway System (NHS), which includes the Interstates. NHS routes constitute 4 percent of total highway mileage, but carry 40 percent of all traffic and 70 percent of combination vehicle truck traffic.

For more information and for detailed examples by state of needed capacity on both the National Highway System and the Interstates, go to http://ExpandingCapacity.transportation.org.

More information on AASHTO's authorization programs can be found at http://AreWeThereYet.transportation.org.