Rip Van
Winkle at ODOT?
"If you were transportation planner Rip Van Winkle, and you
went to sleep around 1970 and you just woke up today, you'd
find you could walk right in to transportation planning
operation in a state DOT...and go right to work. You'd be
instantly employable.
"Can you think of another field where that's true? I mean,
that is a bit of a scandal."
--G.B. Arrington
(speaking at Portland State University.
Watch entire presentation. G.B. Speaks on
the 21st Century Dept. of Transportation...what's to come,
and what's wrong with the current model.
He calls the current model, the last vestige of the "Soviet style"
government in the U.S.)
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The
"new look" Oregon Dept. of Transportation has managed to put on
a fresh face (a fresh coat of paint, as it were).
Despite
a major shortfall in the overall budget, it has used this new image
not only to gain credibility within the legislature, but has
managed to gain an
additional $1 billion out of the last legislature to pave some new
roads and rebuild many dilapidated bridges. These are the same
bridges that have fallen into
disrepair and neglect under the self-same agency (the "old"
ODOT).
In
this section, we will take our own closer look at the Oregon
Dept. of Transportation (ODOT). Through the course of our
investigations at ABCGov.com, we will look into the
responsiveness of the agency, to find if its claims to be
reforming itself are, in fact, true. We understand that there is
a lot of work to be done and a lot of bureaucracy to muddle
through, however.
Is the
governor's office a help or a hindrance to the business of
improving roads and lessening the driving times between points
in the state? Or is the office using the same old "no new roads"
as a political tool to get people into the utopia world of
alternative transportation?
This will be
an ongoing investigation to find out what ODOT is doing to improve
itself with the roughly $3 billion biennial budget it now
oversees.
We will speak
with executives of the organization, as well as regional
managers, workers and the unions over the course of the next
year and learn the good, the bad, and the ugly of the agency.
Should a lack
of cooperation be forthcoming from any individual or department, though we do not expect such from servants of the people
(and
because of the new détente), we will not hesitate to report that
as well. Information shouldn't be withheld from the people--and
cannot be by law, except for personnel matters.
Yet we still
have to wonder, in an improving climate at ODOT, why:
-
traffic
lights on state highways don't fire off with proper timing
and remain that way
for many months at a time;
-
bottlenecks such as 99W through the tiny town of Dundee
between Newberg and McMinnville never seem to get
resolved, even after 20-plus years and the umpteenth study
of the same problem; and finally,
-
Does the
use of ODOT's
"jurisdictional exchanges" sometimes threaten counties in lesser populated
areas with either taking over maintenance of state highways at
reduced levels of funding or else be shut out from needed
major state projects to relieve traffic congestion?
There is much
promise under the relatively new leadership of ODOT Director
Bruce Warner and Deputy Director Michael Marsh.
It is the
promise that more dollars will be directed to the roads (and
bridges, etc.) and traffic congestion problems will improve. It
is also the promise of a more competitive ABC government and
that less dollars will be thrown away in bureaucratic paper shuffling.
ODOT could go
either way: towards the future or mired as a political tool of
those who are threatened by the combustion engine, as
it seems to have been in the very recent past.
We'll try to find out which way it goes,
as well as the various shades and hues of progress or lack
thereof.
►click the email
link below for your input or to be kept up to date
with new material on this page. Be sure to mention that wish.
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Possible Quality
Measures |
Activity-Based
Costing method would normally "Scorecard" the progress of an
agency. In the case of ODOT, it might attempt, for instance
to use as measurements:
a) skid resistance of the 7,500+ state miles of highways (the greater the
friction, the safer the roads. This is a measure used
successfully in
New Zealand);
b) average commuter time spent on state highways in terms of minutes on
state roads per driver mile traveled;
c) number of injuries/ deaths on the highways per driver mile driven.
These
are measurable bottom line figures which could determine the
quality improvement or lack thereof of the Department's
performance as compared with previous years (and vs. other
states/ countries measuring in a similar way).
Although this is an oversimplification (as there are
variations, such as mountains and snow travel vs. valleys
and rain, etc. that skew comparisons, it is possible to
further divide measures to get real measurable performance
data. |
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