Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, spoke at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the American Association of state Highway and Transportation Officials last week, and stressed the important of road safety. He said the number of roadway fatalities is "shocking" and he is looking for the help of the states to reduce the number.
“We have to take responsibility for the fact we have a shocking number of roads deaths in our country,” Buttigieg said. “We act like it is normal, but it is not. We cannot let it go on.”
Noting that the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) developed its National Roadway Safety Strategy (NRSS) to address the rise in roadway fatalities, hthe Transportation Secretary is looking to state DOT's to incorporate safety into all of their work.
“Please think about this, though I know you already do: Not just dedicated highway safety dollars but every penny [of state transportation funding] could and should do something about transportation safety,” Buttigieg said. “There are many choices you make that impact safety: The way a road runs, the way interchanges work, providing more pedestrian and transit options. There are lives at stake. In the military, if you save three lives on the battlefield, you win a medal. Yet everyone at this table has a chance to save hundreds of lives every day.”
Buttigieg stated that the end goal of USDOT in terms of roadway safety is to “get to a place one day where deaths from traffic crashes will seem as quaint and strange as deaths from cholera.”
Buttigieg touched on other topics too, such as the "Buy America" rule, and the long-term vision of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
“We are living through one of the most sustained and complex set of transportation disruptions in post-war epoch with the exception of 9-11,” Buttigieg explained. “What we are building now will serve us for generations. And states are responsible for deploying vast majority of our nation’s infrastructure funds, cooperating across geographic boundaries to deliver transportation system that supports everyone in this country.”
He pointed out that USDOT’s proposed changes to “Buy America” rules are one way the Biden administration seeks to build “generational wealth” among communities underserved or overlooked by infrastructure endeavors in the past.
“This is a major commitment for us, for it’s not called the IIJA with ‘Jobs’ in the title for nothing,” Buttigieg noted. “We also feel and understand the pressure you feel – to get stuff done quickly and done with American products. We also know the right thing won’t happen without the right kind of push. But we must also make sure it is a constructive push. I’m not promising that everyone will agree with that, but we’re committed to when you bring data and experience to the table about Buy America’s impact on you, we’ll take it very seriously. Because we want to make sure we create a productive level of American manufacturing through this.”
He also said putting the focus on underserved and rural communities, through either formal or informal interactions with state DOTs, is critical to making such multi-faceted infrastructure projects work. “It’s best if a project’s position reflects a local-state-federal harmony. Because I think we all agree the more ‘buy-in’ we can get from local communities, the better off project planning and construction will be. These are very real challenges, of course. But now we get to sink our teeth into them.”
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Source: AASHTO
