Parade Magazine features cover story on saving our roads.
Press Release Summary:
Parade magazine's cover story, entitled "How We Can Save Our Roads," focuses on what it will take to restore American highways and bridges. Article amplifies vital need for increased investment in transportation priorities nationwide, but likewise emphasizes importance of innovation in today's economic climate. Story also addresses recently enacted stimulus package, necessary highway and bridge work it will help finance, and jobs that will be created.
Original Press Release:
Parade Magazine Cover Story "How We Can Save Our Roads" Features Top AASHTO Officials
This week's Parade magazine cover story, entitled "How We Can Save Our Roads," focuses on what it will take to restore American highways and bridges. Earl Swift, in researching and preparing this story, interviewed past and present senior AASHTO officials for their views on the infrastructure challenges we face.
"We just haven't been keeping up with the maintenance and preservation," AASHTO executive director John Horsley asserts in the article. "Highways and bridges wear out."
Tom Warne, a past AASHTO president and presently a highway engineering consultant, likewise stresses the urgency involved. "We've been lulled into thinking the system is always going to be here, always going to function for us," he says. "And it won't."
The article amplifies the vital need for increased investment in transportation priorities nationwide, but likewise emphasizes the ever-growing importance of innovation in today's economic climate. Pete K. Rahn, director of the Missouri Department of Transportation and immediate past AASHTO president, discusses in the article his own state's "Practical Design" approach whereby needed road improvements are delivered in a cost-effective manner.
Allen D. Biehler, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and current AASHTO president, describes in the article his state's Smart Transportation initiative for similarly providing needed transportation solutions in the wake of budgetary challenges. When the state could not afford to build a $465 million freeway north of Philadelphia, for example, Biehler worked with local communities to come up with a much less expensive alternative: a parkway lined with trees and bike trails. That $200 million project was launched this past fall.
"How We Can Save Our Roads" also addresses the recently enacted stimulus package, the necessary highway and bridge work it will help finance, and also the many jobs that will be created. "We think we can employ a million people over the next year," Horsley explains in the article, "and build facilities that will last for the next 50 years."
To read the article in its entirety, visit http://www.parade.com/news/2009/03/how-we-can-save-our-roads.html?index=2.
