November 1999

As a journalist, I’ve always been very aware of the power of words — words that we read or write, and, perhaps just as importantly, the words that we think and those that we say. The effects of this power applies to our working, as well as our personal lives.

"...we are releasing powerful energies in our words and speech," R.P. Beasley wrote. "A casual, idle, thoughtless remark does not remain in the atmosphere in which it is spoken. It continues like an electrical impulse...gathering and attracting to itself its own kind. Particuarly does this apply to judgement and criticsm of others...Perhaps we are having just a social conversation, yet idle, critical, careless words can cause great disharmony."

When it comes to the words we use in our thoughts, Beasley reminds us that if we think about something long enough, we will come to not only believe that it is so, but also that we may consciously or unconsciously work toward the creation of those thoughts, whether they are positive or negative.

What does this mean to us in our work and personal lives? To me, it means that we need to be aware of the words we think, speak, or write, and that we need to use them with care.

At Better Roads, we use words in articles and departments, to bring you information that we believe you can profitably use in your work. We try to focus on words that are positive and helpful.

In our office, or in yours, it is just as easy to use words that offer a corworker encouragement or help in doing his or her job as it is to criticize. And it is possible to turn negative thoughts about our daily lives into positive ones by consciously looking for the positive aspects and then expressing them to ourselves and to others.

It pays to watch our words. "Never use them loosely or carelessly," Beasely said. "Thoughts gain by being said simply rather than by undue emphasis."

Using words truthfully is another aspect of handling words well in our work. If you tell one lie, for instance, you will need to remember to cover it with others. Telling the truth spares the need to remember what was said and encourages an ethical and energetic workplace.

And when you cannot think of positive words for a specific situation, such as your response to a new workplace rule that you don’t particularly like, or the request that you put in extra hours of work when you don’t really want to do it, sometimes silence is a better choice than angry or resentful words. Silence need not be the opposite of speech, but, instead can give you a needed breathing space before you again turn to communication with words.

How much of your work includes elements that use online activities? If the percentage isn’t very high now, it will be soon.

Here are just some of the areas that most highway agency managers already use during their regular workday:

1. E-mail, as a way to communicate with others in the agency, field personnel, peers in other agencies, associations, suppliers, and the public.

2. An agency Web site, which may be part of a state, county, or city site, as a way to provide information for the public and to give the public a way to contact you with ease.

3. Solutions to equipment, work activity, or funding problems that other agencies may have developed and that can help you.

4. Details about new technical developments that are related to your work.

5. Industry publication articles and news.

6. Online buyers guides and other supplier information.

7. Online product specification sheets and other information.

8. Online job listings.

9. Online faxing (sending and receiving), directly from a word processing program or other Windows application.

This list could go on and on, and in the months and years ahead, it will continue to grow.

Is this a good thing? Yes. It gives us immediate access to amounts of information that we could never have hoped to find in years past.

Can it be a bad thing? Yes. We need to use our new-found access prudently, spending time on finding information that can help us do the most and not wasting time on searches that are of marginal help.

We hope that you’ll continue to use www.betterroads.com as your main source of industry information. And, we will continue to publish addresses of interest in the magazine and online, and to provide direct links to associations and manufacturers, to make your searches easier.

If you have ideas about assistance you’d like to find online and don’t now, we’d like to hear from you. You can reach me through our Web site, www.betterroads.com, or you can e-mail me at TheEditors@worldnet.att.net.

Are you ready for the influx of additional work zones that TEA-21 funding will create? The American Road & Transportation Builders Association predicts that there will be a 66% increase in work zones. This means that dramatic steps must be taken now to ensure that work-zone fatalities and injuries don’t increase. In fact, we’d like to see them decrease.

How serious a problem is it? Every year more than 700 people are killed and 37,000 are injured at road construction sites, ARTBA reports. With a 66% increase in work zones, these numbers could climb rapidly, too, if nothing is done.

Something is being done, though. ARTBA and a lot of industry suppliers, including Better Roads, are helping provide a National Work-Zone Safety Information Clearinghouse.

The clearinghouse, based at the Texas Transportation Institute, provides the latest and most comprehensive information on:

Current laws and regulations.

• State work-zone contracts and current practices.
• Successful strategies for public education and outreach programs.
• State specifications.
• Training courses, seminars, and products.
• Research reports on new technologies.
• Work-zone crash data and trends.

You can reach the clearinghouse in one of several ways. Go to http://wzsafety.tamu.edu where you will find most of the information. Or phone 1-888-447-5556. The e-mail address is workzone@tamu.edu. The fax is 409-845-0568. If you want to write for information, contact the Texas Transportation Institute, P.O. Box 3135, College Station, TX 77843-3135.

To encourage you to work at improving the safety in your work zones, ARTBA offered us some computer mouse pads that puts the clearinghouse Web site address right in front of you. If you’d like one, e-mail the editorial office at TheEditors@worldnet.att.net and include your name, agency or company name, and mailing address.

Local road repairs, as well as larger projects, provide motorists with lots of frustration during the construction season. While the big jobs often include careful planning, the local jobs often do not. We could alleviate some of this frustration if only we would.

Some of the easiest ways to cut down on the grumpy phone calls you get from drivers include the following:

1. Coordinate work with utilities. How many streets did you resurface last year that got chopped up for major utility work shortly after the resurfacing was completed? This is an ongoing problem and one that is growing rapidly, because many utilities are installing new cable underground to provide Internet capacity.

2. Coordinate small projects so that every street leading into or out of a neighborhood isn’t under construction at the same time. Drivers who go to the next main road to avoid patching or resurfacing and find another project there are generally not amused.

3. Once a road is readied for resurfacing, get the work done as quickly as possible. In Dallas, this summer’s process seems to be to remove the old surface with the manholes sticking up several inches and big dropoffs on the cross streets and then leave the street in that condition for a month or more. Dallas drivers faced the same problem with lanes closed for rail overpass work. The lanes continue to be closed for many weeks, yet absolutely no work was done.

4. Be sure that work zones are properly marked. Most of the problems I’ve encountered personally over the years stem from utility rather than road department crews. It’s safer for the crews and motorists if there is ample warning for drivers, rather than one or two cones thrown down carelessly in the lane immediately behind the work.

Recently, a friend e-mailed me a list of ways to tell whether you’ve had too much of the 1990s. The list was in reverse order, with the number one reason coming at the end. That reason read, "[you know you’ve had too much of the 1990s] when you came to work at 8:00 a.m., go home at 5:00 p.m., and feel guilty about working only half a day."

We laughed in the Dallas editorial office, and most of the friends to whom I forwarded the joke agreed that of the 22 items on the list, this was the most true of them all, deserving its number-one spot. Yet, is this really funny?

Whether it’s agency engineers facing the uncertainties of whether their job will be restructured by new regulations and other red tape, or a mid-level manager suddenly facing a one-third addition to his or her workload because of staff cuts, the experience of a high degree of work stress has become a common element in our lives.

One of the best ways to beat this and other kinds of stress, according to Hawaii’s Serge King, is find a way to feel centered. "When you are centered," he says, ...You have no conflicts causing stress, your mind is clear, and your body is relaxed....Fear ceases to be. A third characteristic is confidence. You feel able to do what you want and able to handle any circumstances that may arise...anger and frustration are non-existent."

So how do you achieve these wonderful stress-relieving goals in our overloaded work world?

King says you need to practice something specific, without a lot of effort, that will make you feel better. Practice giving, he says.

And what do you give? "Anything you want," King says, "as long as it’s done consciously, freely, and willingly."

This doesn’t necessarily mean giving material things, but rather, giving acknowledgment, attention, appreciation, gratitude, encouragement, support, and helpful thoughts and acts.

 What will the Y2K situation ultimately mean to the highway industry? I believe that we can and should play a critical role in keeping our economy afloat and our nation safe by helping provide businesses and U.S. citizens with reliable transportation when January 1, 2000 rolls around.

The reason is simple. While most U.S. businesses and agencies have "broken the back of the problem," according to Y2K guru Peter de Jager, companies in many other countries won’t be as ready to make the change. We need to look at those countries that supply us with many of the goods we need for everyday life. Many fall in categories three and four, according to the GartnerGroup, which ranked countries’ readiness into four categories that assess the level of risk and percentage of companies within a country likely to experience failures. The U.S. is in the Status Group 1, where 15% of companies will be likely to experience a failure, with those failures likely to be "isolated and minor," the GartnerGroup reports.

In countries ranked with a Status Group 3, 50% of their companies will experience a failure and they are more likely to have continuing moderate problems with power loss, telephone operations, and some types of transportation. Germany and Japan are in this group, too, by the way.

Status Group 4 countries will have about two-thirds of their companies with failures, and those failures will range from widespread and moderate for power, telephone, and some kinds of transportation, to isolated and severe for food supplies.

So, if Y2K failures in countries exporting goods to us create problems, reliable local transportation can help save the day. We need roads that are open to traffic; especially to trucks carrying food and other needed goods.

In this country, and in our industry, there is work still to be done. Internet sites are still reporting that the U.S. Department of Transportation gets a grade of F in readiness. This doesn’t mean that we need to get an F at the local or state level. We need, instead, to be sure that our systems, including stop signs and ITS systems, are compliant and reliable.

Most, not all, agencies are working on the problem. But, there are still American agencies, mostly in rural areas and small communities, that respond with "Y-to-what?"

A major newspaper recently reported that as many as half of the traffic fatalities each year stem from road rage — rage, whether from work or personal stress, lack of time, or other problems, that leads to running stop lights and signs, unsafe tailgating, rushing to beat a train to a crossing, and so on.

Of course, not everyone agrees that as many as half of traffic fatalities come from such causes, but undoubtedly the total is high.

The point is that rage, road or otherwise, and the problems it causes go beyond driving. You can see signs of rage almost everywhere. Work crews do a fast and sloppy job, growling about working in the rain or heat, because they are pressured. Mechanics complete only part of the maintenance that was scheduled for a piece of equipment because their supervisor pushed them to do another three machines before quitting time. The boss snaps at you because he or she is under pressure either from the next level of management or has personal problems. The kids come home from school demanding loudly that you provide the latest electronic gadget because all of their friends have them.

A friend who teaches defensive driver classes says the secret to dealing with rage, including road rage, is FIDO or FIMO. When driving, he says, and someone cuts you off, don’t give him the finger. Forget it, drive on.

When someone snarls at you or makes a sarcastic remark at work, forget it, move on.

Detaching yourself from other people’s rage helps you live your own life and complete your own work in a more measured, human way.

How do you manage that detachment? Sometimes it’s not easy.

Start by breathing very deeply, first inhaling and then exhaling very slowly, to a count of at least 10 on each in and out breath. This is something you can safely practice even in a car, truck, or other work vehicle. If you want to say something, try, "I forgive your bad driving and I hope that you improve soon." You need to mean this when you say it, and not just mouth the words.

Another method that works is to concentrate fully on something else. If you’re driving, concentrating on the road, the pattern of the traffic around you, and the signs and signals can help. If you’re in a work situation, focus on something you enjoy that’s near you, such as the sunlight coming in the window of your office.

Do you surf the web? If so, we hope that you’ll make some visits to www.betterroads.com. As the months roll by, we’ve added many features to our web page and plan to add many more.

You can find links to industry associations and suppliers on our site. And, you can look up articles that ran previously by checking our online editorial index. You can read the most timely current articles on the site, and check to see what topics we plan to cover editorially in the future.

You can renew your subscription online, or complete a reader service inquiry form to receive additional information. You can find out how to reach us by e-mail.

In the coming months, there will be additional articles and more late-breaking industry news added to the site to help you with your information needs.

The internet is rapidly changing the way all of us do our jobs — magazines that provide information, as well as your own agencies and operations. I believe the changes are good ones for the most part.

E-mail is one of the best examples of these advantages. By subscribing to online newsletters or topic searches on subjects that interest me, I find e-mail with information I can use in providing you with industry news almost every morning of my working week. E-mail lets me get a request from a reader and respond the same day, or even the same hour if necessary. It provides me with early and constant feedback from those of you who subscribe to Better Roads.

When writing articles, the web gives us a way to check for the very latest facts. Often, we receive data from a research organization or supplier who wants us to write about a specific topic. With a search of the web, we can check on what they’ve told us. Is it so? Is it the latest research? Are there other views on which we need to report?

Publications on paper will continue, at least for the next few years, and especially for industry publications. As more and more readers come online, the publication will be published both places — on the web and in printed form. Eventually, I believe, most publications will be published only online, and if you want a copy, you’ll print one on your own printer.

With recent pressures to keep our agencies operating at reasonable costs, it is a good time to think about the philosophical law of opposites. In this law, it is said that the truth about anything is generally found in its opposite, so that, for example, better overall bridge ratings will eventually result from an excessive number of poor ratings, undoubtedly due to public pressure from seeing those low ratings.

"Men live and progress by friction...by opposing forces...by intelligence versus ignorance and progress versus inactivity," says Ronald P. Beesley, an English philosopher.

It’s true that a shake-up in the fixed patterns of an agency’s operation or an individual’s life often eventually leads to progress. When a shake-up happens, Beesley says, all that has been suppressed erupts and continues to boil and simmer until the forces involved have equalized each other, and the airing or expression of ideas redirects the pressure.

It is human nature to resist change, especially when things are moving along comfortably. When the pressure of a forced change requires us to act or react, though, it provides us with an opportunity to improve our agencies and our industry. Now is such a time.

Use current pressures for more work at less cost to re-examine your own operations. Let them be a catalyst for improvement or reorientation.

"For better or for worse," Beesley says, "the stimulation of opposing forces is necessary to us, for without opposition we would not rise to any challenge, and would not effectively attempt to develop our own resources. Opposing forces are not the enemy of progress, nor of mankind, but the stimulating and challenging elements that make us dig deeper into our initiative to extend and adjust ourselves to the need of the situation.

In recent years, we’ve faced many changes and new regulations, as well. Today, another factor threatens to thwart our progress, and that of many other industries, too. We don’t need computer system and application regulation by the federal government. Nor do we need Web regulation. Your agencies and managers can regulate these for themselves, using their buying decisions.

Do you take the idea of a computer monopoly seriously? I find it laughable, given the plethora of operating systems, applications, and software used in both the governmental road and the publishing industries. Threats of dissolution or other control of any company that reaches a large size in the computer industry could do more damage than just changing the operating system on our PCs or the internet browsers we use. It could slow or make more difficult the multitude of computerization steps already underway in our industry.

These steps aren’t something useful or nice if and when they come about. Rather, geographic information systems, intelligent transportation systems, and the whole host of computerized devices and systems already in place are essential and critical if we plan to carry out our daily tasks within the ever-tighter budget constraints that are available to us.

Will we have the new technology we need? Perhaps, if computer industry companies are left alone to develop the software and hardware that can do our jobs and let them make the profit they require to stay in business themselves. Perhaps not, if companies find themselves heavily regulated or split into small units that can’t share research and facilities in a cost-effective way.