| December 2002
Street Cuts: the Battle
Continues
One subject that is guaranteed to raise blood pressures —
on both sides of the bargaining table — is what can be done
about street cuts and their cost.
Cities increasingly charge fees — sometimes very large ones
— to make the cuts, even though they have traditionally let
gas companies and others with contracts to make the cuts do the
repairs.
Utilities cry foul, saying that cities only make the charges
to increase revenues.
In truth, as in most things, there are two sides to this
story.
Some cities do try to gouge utilities.
Some utilities try to leave poorly made repairs that cities
have to go back and fix.
Most of the poorly made repairs stem from contractors putting
in fiber optics.
I recently saw a cut that extended for several blocks, up the
center of the street. When the work was done, the fill was
inadequate, with only temporary patching material tossed on top
of the covered trench. After a heavy rain, large holes filled
with water appeared, creating driving hazards in what had been a
newly surfaced street.
Whose fault was this poor repair? First, the contractor or
subcontractor doing the work couldn’t have cared less. Crews
were careless and sloppy throughout the job, including the
street cut repair phase. Watching them provided a real education
in poor work.
Did the utility that hired the contractor ever check the
work? It is their responsibility, too.
And, finally, it is ultimately up to the street department
involved to inspect the project and make sure that the completed
project met their specs. Of course, this assumes that they
insisted upon adequate specifications.
In this issue, you will find an article addressing the
constitutionality of trench-cut fees. It was authored by those
involved in the day-to-day realities of such fees and when they
are or are not legal. Read it to learn whether tacking on new
fees to utilities that have franchise agreements or contracts is
really such a good idea.
November 2002
The IRS Wants To Do What?...
A press release from the National Stone, Sand & Gravel
Association informs us that the Internal Revenue Service has
proposed taxing mobile machinery, which has been exempt from
federal highway excise taxes. Currently off-road equipment
(including machines used in excavation and construction) is
exempt from both the excise and fuel-user fees because these
machines are not considered to be highway vehicles.
The IRS has proposed a rule that would terminate the
exemption for any non-farm equipment that could be used on
roads, whether its primary use is off road or not. This rule
would subject the equipment to the new vehicle excise tax of 12%
of the purchase price, motor fuel user fees of $0.184 per gallon
on gasoline and $0.244 per gallon on diesel, tire excise tax on
heavy-duty tires, and annual heavy vehicle tax based on weight
and capped at $550.
What equipment will your company or agency pay
taxes on, if this nonsensical rule is passed? Mobile cranes?
Concrete pumps? Wheel loaders that move aggregate where it’s
needed? Graders to push dirt and aggregate on road construction?
Mowers? Just about anything with wheels could qualify. Sales of
models of tracked vehicles would surely increase rapidly.
Maybe the IRS will let you keep a daily driving diary,
logging in the miles on the road and the miles off the road to
decide how much you pay. And then again, maybe they won’t. If
they do, what red tape will be required to prove that the miles
off the road are correct. And what would miles have to do with
hours of use, anyway?
And, will the ruling apply to contractors, engineering
companies, and agencies, or will agencies be exempt, since they
are part of the government?
Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) requested an extension for comments
until December 4th, so all of us had better move along if we don’t
want to pay these fees. Contact your Senator or Representative
today. None of us need more governmental controls or taxes, and
this proposal is surely one for the books — the not-so-funny
books.
October 2002
Move into the Moment
At a recent industry meeting, one of our readers told me that
he didn’t know how he was going to handle his ever-increasing
work load.
“We have to move our office,” he said, “and, they’ve
given me another whole department to supervise. I need time to
get up to speed on what those people do and what they need to
do, but I don’t even have time to get the work I have now
done.”
He went on in this vein for quite some time and finally said,
“Do you have any ideas?”
I replied, “Move into the moment.”
The only time we have to achieve anything — work or
pleasure — is now.
On the job, you can set aside the most important task on your
list and concentrate on doing it moment by moment.
If you’re moving to a different office, pack each box,
considering what goes into it. Move it when needed, and unpack
it the same way, without thinking about how many more boxes
remain.
Don’t think about all of the work piled up for tomorrow; it
will just distract you. Fretting about it won’t help you do it
faster or better.
Don’t think about how much easier it was a few years ago
when people didn’t expect so much from you. This can make you
angry or depressed and take you away from this moment, when you
can achieve so much if you try.
Try not to let others drag you into the past or the future,
wasting your time. If they want to reminisce about the good old
days or worry about what may or may not be coming tomorrow, ask
what they plan to do today; or, if you can bring yourself to
ask, what they plan to do at this moment.
And when you go home, don’t waste a half hour (or longer)
complaining about your work problems to your family or friends.
If they ask about your day, say, “It was good; I’m handling
it.” Then, realize that they are the family that you’ve
chosen for yourself, and spend each moment at home doing
something together such as sharing a book or TV show, or even
driving to the grocery store to do the shopping.
When you try to sleep, if projects from work chase through
your head keeping you awake, turn your thoughts to what is near
you. Let yourself feel the softness of a blanket or enjoy the
tick of the clock, and soon you will be getting the rest you
need.
What will this do for you? It will seem to slow time, helping
you complete more than you could imagine possible. Even more
important, you will enjoy completing each task and each day and
be more alive at work and at home, living in the moment.
September
2002
Keep Your Eyes Open
On a page near the back of a recent edition of USA Today, a
reporter added a throw-away line at the end of a short story
suggesting that Tom Ridge, Head of the Office of Homeland
Security, could include U.S. infrastructure security as part of
the program already in place to build and maintain bridges and
roads.
This innocent-sounding statement means we need to watch the
Administration and Congress to make sure that dedicated highway
funds don’t get moved into this new work rather than being
spent for road construction and repair.
It makes sense to coordinate highway construction and repair
with security measures, perhaps, but we need to keep the funding
and the overall administration of these two areas strictly
separate.
Can you imagine having to get the Office of Homeland Security’s
okay to let a bid for a bridge construction project or to spend
the money allotted for your roads on a highway project? Can you
imagine highway contractors competing with security device
manufacturers for Highway Trust Fund dollars?
We don’t need another layer of administration and
oversight, especially one that has only a somewhat aligned goal,
when it comes to building and maintaining roads.
Instead, we need more cooperation from federal and other
authorities to improve or at least maintain the current state of
our roads, including the release of dedicated funds that
Congress hasn’t authorized.
The fact that this news item was buried at the back of the
paper raises questions in my mind. It seems just a little bit
too innocent. So let’s all keep our eyes open. Sure, we need
to improve security of our infrastructure. But if our roads are
crumbling, so will our security and our ability to move goods
and people.
Dedicated highway funds are just that; dedicated to highways.
Let’s make sure they stay that way.
August
2002
Thinking About Our Long-Term
Future
Our art director’s new daughter arrived last month and
started me thinking about what our industry will be like when
she’s ready for her first job in 20 years or so. Will it be an
industry that would attract her and make good use of her skills?
By 2022, she and her family will drive on intelligent
highways, according to Kumares Sinha, Purdue’s Olson
Distinguished Professor of Civil Engineering.
Trucks will be moved to an exclusive network of truck-only
roads with built-in computer-based intelligence that will
include sensors, satellite connections, and automated billing.
All roads will share many aspects of this computerized
intelligence, with monitoring traffic and rerouting vehicles to
avoid congestion as additional elements.
The vehicles that travel over our bridges and roads will
change, too, says Matthew Franchek, a Purdue professor of
mechanical engineering. Engines will monitor their own health.
Automobiles will communicate with drivers and mechanics to
request service. Global positioning satellites will monitor road
emergencies and send repair crews with the correct parts when
needed.
Bridges will be part of the intelligent system as well, with
new materials that increase strength when needed or call for
maintenance before structural damage occurs.
Better Roads will keep pace with changing times, discussing
new technology online and providing the 2022 version of .pdf
files so that you can print the pages you want or just surf the
net to look at them. Formats will provide interaction with
authors, editors, and product manufacturers so that you can ask
questions online and receive answers via instant messaging.
And if Hayley Coleman’s daughter is as talented as her mom,
she’ll be graphically designing these interactive information
Web presentations to make them easier for you to understand.
July
2002
Hats off to ARTBA
On June 25th, the American
Road & Transportation Builders Association celebrated a
century of helping the highway industry move forward. The
organization was originally founded to help connect the nation’s
capital to transportation in the states.
Today, ARTBA does far more than those early organizers
envisioned. It has eight membership divisions and 5,000 members,
covering all aspects of transportation, including contractors,
planning and design, transportation officials, traffic safety,
materials and services, public-private ventures in
transportation, research and education, and equipment
manufacturers.
Like Better Roads, ARTBA realized that teamwork among all of
the players who build and maintain roads and transportation
needs to be included, rather than addressing each segment
singly.
You’ll find more about ARTBA’s 100 years of
accomplishments on page 13 (of our print magazine).
When you think about this organization, though, remember that
one of its key roles is preparing the industry for the future.
In the past 18 months, an ARTBA-convened task force of more than
100 industry experts met to study the effectiveness of current
federal transportation statutes and to prepare recommendations
for the 2003 reauthorization of TEA-21. This group released a
proposal calling for a minimum of $50 billion in annual federal
highway spending and an additional $2 billion in mass transit
from 2004 through 2009 to meet our nation’s needs. These
recommendations provided a virtual blueprint for others to
follow and have begun to shape the debate on Capitol Hill.
With today’s need for excellent transportation for moving
people, goods, and for national preparedness, roads are a
critical part of the picture.
We salute ARTBA for their efforts and look forward to working
with them for many years to come.
June
2002
Remedies for Road Rage
Radio station WRR in Dallas created one
excellent answer to rush-hour road rudeness, speeding, and
dangerous driving with music they call road-rage remedies.
Rather than playing Wagner’s The Ride of the
Valkyries or Beethoven’s The Storm (which actually once caused
a newly built large concrete civic center in Australia to
disintegrate with cracking, followed by structural collapse),
they concentrate on soothing drivers with songs.
This morning’s program featured Faure’s
Pavane and Kreisler’s Liebesfreud during my own drive.
Stations that focus on popular rather than
classical music can try the same approach, playing U2’s Peace
on Earth or Beautiful Day, Cat Steven’s Morning Has Broken, or
even the Beatles’ Long and Winding Road. They can save
Jennifer Lopez’s Let’s Get Loud or Pink’s Missundaztood
for a non-rush-hour time of day.
If you have a local radio station with DJs who
have lively personalities, why not suggest road-rage remedies to
them.
It can help reduce driver stress (including
your own) and could even cut down on work-zone and other
accidents on our roads.
May 2002
On a Road Well
Traveled,
Watch for Work-Zone Signs
The new road construction season begins about
now, before last year’s came to a close in most locations.
Night work, week-end work, and repairs in colder weather than
once thought possible have been part and parcel of the increased
jobs funded under TEA-21.
Even though President Bush built his proposed
budget with reduced highway construction and maintenance
spending, some of this funding will be restored. Work will go on
an a healthy level – possibly even growing a bit this year.
This means that we need to continue to pay
close attention to work zones and to training the people who
work in them.
If you’re involved in night-time projects,
make sure that lighting is adequate.
If you use workers who speak little or no
English, make sure that a bilingual foreman or supervisor is
part of the crew.
Use training videos and other materials
supplied by third-party companies or by equipment manufacturers
to teach workers how to be safe on your projects. Multilingual
training materials are a good idea.
And, keep your workers safe with excellent
signage, well-designed work zones, and, if at all possible, at
least one policeman complete with a car with a flashing light.
Nothing else will slow drivers as well.
Our bridges and roads need continuing repair
and maintenance, and we want to provide that work so that
drivers will have better, smoother, and less-congested highways.
At the same time, we need to be sure that drivers and crews are
protected when work zones make up an ever-larger part of the
roads.
April 2002
Congress: Learn from North
Carolina
Congress would do well to learn a lesson from
the North Carolina General Assembly. Last fall, the state’s
legislature authorized use of $470 million in the State Highway
Trust Fund reserves to restore primary routes’ pavement.
The fund held reserves of $858 million at the
time, and the state’s Highway Fund had a cash balance of $270
million.
The bill, now passed into law, directs that a
portion of the monies be spent on pavement preservation,
including strengthening, shoulder widening, and resurfacing of
the primary highway system in North Carolina.
The improvements won’t interfere with
delivery of Highway Trust Fund projects in the 2002-2008 North
Carolina Transportation Improvement Schedule.
If legislative members of both parties can get
it together in North Carolina, why can’t Democratic and
Republican U.S. Representatives and Senators get the message
that money in the Federal Highway Trust Fund needs to be added
to road building and maintenance coffers to preserve the
investment we have in our road system?
Is there something in the water in Washington,
D.C. that causes our elected representatives to decide that
monies set aside specifically for transportation belongs to them
to seemingly offset general fund deficits or otherwise try to
confuse taxpayers?
Perhaps a Congressional trip to North Carolina
to view the exotic behavior of responsible legislative road
system management should be added to U.S. Representatives’ and
Senators’ agendas.
Our Interstate system of 42,000 miles and the
many thousands of additional local and state roads need to be
supported and maintained if we are to protect the billions of
dollars that we’ve already spent on them.
New materials, quality control, and quality
assurance programs can help keep costs down if the repairs are
made before the roadway reaches a condition that requires
replacement.
Sure, the Bush budget guts highway spending
next year. That doesn’t mean our elected representatives have
to follow his suggestions. We need action from Congress now. You
can still help remind the Representatives and Senators in your
own state.
Just click here
and join the more than 1,500 people who have already signed the
online petition to restore full highway funding.
March 2002
Digging Deeper into Pot-Hole
Repair
Many years ago, when moving from New York to
Dallas, I wrote an editorial called Farewell to New York Pot
Holes. It ended with the statement, “It’s got to be better
in Dallas.”
And, indeed, at the time I moved, the roads
were better in Dallas. You could drive down any residential
street, freeway, or toll road and not bounce into the nearest
pot hole. Your tires and axles were very unlikely to be
destroyed by inches-deep holes in the street.
Today, this is no longer true. Dallas has some
of the worst pot holes I’ve seen in the country, whether they
are on Ross in a low-income part of town or on Preston Avenue,
where tony houses sit side by side.
Traveling to meetings and conventions in San
Diego, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Milwaukee, Chicago, and St. Louis
recently has left me wondering what happened to Dallas streets.
I would dislike thinking that Dallas street repair management
has been patterned on business operations at Enron.
Dallas, with perhaps one or two minor freezes
a winter, has pot-hole patches popping like microwave popcorn.
Lane-wide road heaves leave dangerous bumps, without any
weather-related reason. Watching public works repairs, when they
eventually get completed, will explain why.
Poor-quality materials are dumped into the
hole and slapped into place by the back of a shovel. In three
months, or less, the material will be out of the hole, the pot
hole will enlarge, drivers will curse and call the street
department, and the whole process will begin again.
To those street department managers who don’t
know, there are good materials that stay in place for the life
of the road, provided the hole is properly repaired. If you want
a list, give me a call, and I will send you one. It won’t cost
you any more to do the repairs in this way, since you will only
need to do them once rather than 12 or 15 times over the life of
the surface repair job.
To Dallas’ new mayor, Laura Miller, who
campaigned promising better roads, I hope that you will truly
keep your promise.
And to whoever decides on materials and
methods to repair pot holes in Dallas, you might follow TXU’s
gas street-cut repair crew around for a few days. They know how
to complete the repair right. You could even ask them for the
specs for their materials.
February 2002
Street-Cut Repairs
Some Utilities Outperform Street Departments
Managers in town and city public works
departments have often complained that their biggest problem in
maintaining streets revolves around utility cuts. And, often,
this has been very true.
Recently I watched our local gas utility, TXU,
repair a street cut. I was possibly a lot more interested in the
work than most of the other drivers, who probably grumbled about
the extended repair work and the time the street was shut down
from four to two lanes — several weeks.
What delighted me the most was that the
company did a first-rate street-cut repair job. After installing
new mains, they prepared the base properly, made sure the base
materials were dry, and installed a patch of asphalt that
appears to be better quality than the rest of the surface of the
street, with the sides properly aligned and whole repair well
compacted.
In fact, the repairs are far superior to those
made by our local street department when it takes care of a
pothole, a freeze-thaw heave, or other problem. Then, it seems
that the answer is to toss in some material, compact it poorly
so that a huge lump remains, and to expect the repair to fail
within three to six months.
Increasingly gas utilities have turned to
being very careful with street-cut repairs in the hopes of
avoiding the multitude of new fees that towns and cities now
charge when a cut must be made. And these fees should be
moderated or eliminated, when the utility takes responsibility
for putting the road condition back into its condition (or
better) before the work. Save the extra charges for the
utilities that don’t make the effort to meet this goal.
And while you’re looking at utility
street-cut repairs, don’t forget to take a look at what your
own crews are doing. Ask yourself if they meet the same
standards you expect of the utilities.
Dallas is not alone in its pot-hole filled and
bumpy streets, although the city recently lost a company
relocation to a smaller city with smoother roads. As I travel to
meetings, I find that the problem is a common one. A quick,
shoddy repair may seem like a way to save money. But since labor
is the largest element of a street repair, having to repeat it
often is much more costly in the long run when the repair needs
to be redone repeatedly.
January 2002
The Road to a Happy New Year
Willa Cather said, “The road was new to me,
as roads always are, going back.”
As 2002 begins, many of us take time to look
back, and, in doing that, we look ahead.
Here’s a good way to look back at what you’ve
accomplished in the past year or several years in order to move
ahead, making this coming year one of your personal best.
Rather than resolutions, start a list of the
things you really want — at work or at home. Add what you’d
like to personally contribute to society, as well.
Be sure your list includes goals you truly
would like to achieve, not things that you just want to avoid,
such as I want to implement more teamwork and responsibility in
my agency or company, rather than I don’t want so much
uncertainty and lack of responsibility among my workers. Watch
for the words avoid, not, no, and similar terms as a signal that
you are moving into the avoidance realm with your list.
The list can be as long as you choose, but try
to include at least 20 items.
Next, prioritize the list, numbering each item
from one to the last number, with number one being the most
important goal you have in the year ahead.
Go over the list and combine any goals that
may be similar, such as better finances and more economic
security.
Take an especially close look at the top five
items on your list and rewrite them on a card or enter them
where you can see them in your computer or in a palm pilot, so
that you can review them often.
As the days and weeks move on, continue to
look at your top-five list. If your goals change, change that
list and replace it so that you can continue to review it.
What will this do for you? As author Serge
King says, “Energy flows where attention goes.”
In looking back at your list as often as you
can throughout 2002, I believe you’ll be surprised how much
your concentration will help you move into new areas to achieve
your goals.
Give it a try and let me know how it works for
you.
Best wishes for the coming year. |
