Major issues focus on highways

The 2009 Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference was held December 9 to 11 at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel. This year’s conference focused on how the industry can best use the $1.33 billion in stimulus funds that Pennsylvania has received from the federal government to improve public transportation safety

Vendors displayed the latest in transportation technology.

Martin Pietrucha, professor of civil engineering at Penn State and head of the Larson Transportation Institute, organized the conference.

Describing the event as an information exchange with a regional focus, Pietrucha explained that attendance was down slightly from previous years since the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation had limited resources available for travel.  In most years, the event attracts nearly 600 participants.

In addition to the hundreds of attendees, about 25 vendors were on hand to display the latest advances in the industry.

Pietrucha outlined the three major issues addressed at the event: safety, engineering, and funding.

With regard to safety, he was emphatic that change needed to come and needed to be sweeping.

“There are 37, 000 people killed each year on the highways. That’s a lot but pales in comparison to the 3.5 million serious injuries that affect people’s live4s. We need revolutionary change, not evolutionary change.”

He outlined the “4 E’s” of safety: engineering, enforcement, emergency medicine, and education.

“We need to work cooperatively. If enforcement was all we did things would be worse,” he said.

Pietrucha noted that we live in a “do as I say not as I do” culture, we are all willing to accept things that are unacceptable: texting, talking on phones, combing hair, shaving, make up and reading while behind the wheel.

“It’s not all right. We should not be willing to accept it. Driving is a lot riskier than people know,” he said. “Changing driver behavior isn’t rocket science. It’s much harder.”

Transportation engineer Brian St. John, of McCormick, Taylor, Inc., in Harrisburg, was at the conference seeking insights into the future of transportation. “With the current state of funding for transportation at both the state and federal levels, I hope to gain a better understanding of how we as professionals can make sure the right projects move forward.”

Did the federal stimulus help the Pennsylvania transportation industry?  “We are so far behind that all it did was to stop the bleeding,” he said. As for tolling Interstate 80, Pietrucha asks, “If we don’t what ARE we going to do? This is not a new idea. People in the I-76 corridor (Pennsylvania Turnpike) are telling us to stop whining. I’d like to see a study done comparing economic development near the Turnpike versus Interstate 80.”

As for the vendors represented at the conference – and the rest of the industries serving transportation — Pietrucha believes they are experiencing a slight downturn in business. “Our vendors are aware of belt tightening,” he explained. “But it’s a little it of a downturn. Not much. It’s a huge industry and things are always wearing out. There is always a baseline of business. We are always going to be repairing something.”

Pietrucha would like to see the high-speed rail proposed for Pennsylvania finally move forward. “It’s one of ten corridors that will be able to compete with air service. But I’m afraid they’re going to carve up the money too much. Let’s finance one corridor, build it, and see how it works. The way they’re going about it isn’t going to work.”