KYTC Treating for ‘Noxious Weeds’ Along State Roadways
Kentucky Transportation Cabinet crews began treating for noxious and nuisance weeds along state roadways in March, with those treatments designed to help control the spread of “undesirable plants” along state highway rights of way to improve driver safety and ensure efficient maintenance operations.
[Photo by the KYTC.]
In particular, KYTC crews are targeting Johnson grass, giant foxtail, Canada thistle, nodding thistle, common teasel, multiflora rose, Amur honeysuckle, poison hemlock, marestail, Japanese knotweed and kudzu.
The agency added that those noxious weeds often invade and destroy the roadside turf grass, leaving these areas vulnerable to erosion. They can also smother native plants through rapid reproduction and long-term persistence.
“Left uncontrolled, noxious weeds can grow so large that they interfere with a driver’s line of vision on highways,” Jim Gray, explained Jim Gray, KYTC secretary, in a statement.
“Weed maintenance is important in preventing potential damage to pavement and embankments, as well as clogged ditches and drainage problems,” he said.
State departments of transportation are also experimenting with other forms of weed control as well.
For example, the California Department of Transportation – known as Caltrans – began using goats in early 2020 as part of a pilot project to control weeds within a 20-acre site adjacent to Highway 1 just north of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse.
Instead of relying on herbicides, Caltrans is taking what it calls a “more sustainable approach” to revitalizing the native coastal prairie adjacent to a highway realignment project originally completed in 2017.
According to an agency statement, the project brought in 300 goats for nearly a month to help remove invasive non-native weeds such as bur clover, mustard, and thistle.
Small Alabama Town Overcomes Barriers to Establish All-Electric Ferry
For two years, the Alabama Department of Transportation has quietly run an all-electric passenger and vehicle ferry, giving a tiny African-American community the distinction of having the only such vessel in the United States.
[Photo courtesy of the Alabama DOT.]
The story of how this unique ferry wound up in Gee’s Bend exemplifies the fundamental role transportation plays in civil rights, environmental, and social justice issues.
In the 1900s, Gee’s Bend had a hand-powered ferry – a wooden raft tethered to a cable stretched across the Alabama River. The old ferry linked Gee’s Bend – a community of about 300 people – to Camden, the county seat, where most of the grocery stores, schools, medical facilities, and government offices – including the voting registrar – are established. Without it, a 15-minute drive from Gee’s Bend to Camden turns into an hour-long journey.
“God blessed us to be able to have this ferry,” said Mary Ann Pettway, a champion African-American quilter and lifelong resident of Gee’s Bend. “That ferry is very important to all of us.”
Photo courtesy of the Alabama DOT.
However, as the civil rights movement rippled through Gee’s Bend in the 1960s, the ferry disappeared without explanation. The truth of its demise is as murky as the river it crossed, but the loss symbolized a host of injustices heaped upon the people of Gee’s Bend, who had limited access to jobs, education, medical care or emergency services.
That all began to change one night in 1993 when Hollis Curl – owner of The Wilcox Progressive Era, the county newspaper – looked across the river toward Gee’s Bend and saw smoke rising from a house fire. He knew the house was doomed and everyone inside was in danger because there was no ferry to get firefighters there in time.
“When I was a child, I remember him talking about it,” said Ethan Van Sice, the grandson of Curl, who died in 2010. “People’s houses were being burned down. He saw that smoke across the river and I think something in him clicked.”
Curl penned a front-page editorial, arguing that re-establishing the ferry would be good for both communities. The increased mobility, Curl wrote, would provide the children in Gee’s Bend with a chance at a better education and a better quality of life for everyone.
People in Camden were astonished at the newspaper’s editorial shift, but Curl’s words left them unmoved.
“It wasn’t totally received well,” Van Sice said.
Undeterred, Curl started a crusade to re-establish the ferry – and he found a willing partner in the Alabama DOT or ALDOT.
“We saw a need there,” said Josh Phillips, a public information officer for the agency. “We said, ‘We need to find a way to make this happen.’ It became a special project for ALDOT.”
Photo courtesy of the Alabama DOT.
After years of planning and some federal funding, the Alabama DOT finished the ferry in 2006, reconnecting Gee’s Bend to the rest of the world.
The ferry broke down often, however, and the service was unreliable. Ultimately, the agency decided to convert the ferry from diesel to electric power, replacing all the diesel components electric parts, lithium-ion batteries, cooling systems, and a computer and software package to orchestrate the operation.
The Alabama DOT also negotiated with two power companies to get sufficient electricity to each landing to re-charge the ferry’s massive batteries between trips.
In spring of 2019, it all came together, and the first all-electric ferry in the United States purred across the Alabama River from the Camden terminal to Gee’s Bend.
Mike Wilson of the Alabama DOT said other state departments of transportation can make the conversion to all-electric in certain situations.
“The technologies are pretty much off-the-shelf technologies, so it’s doable in the right circumstances,” he said. “Most operations that are trying to do something like this go to a hybrid boat simply because the routes are longer. Our route is such that we didn’t need to do that.”
Tim Aguirre, general manager of HMS Ferries Alabama, said the first lesson is “don’t start from scratch. There’s a lot of experience out there on this, and there are engineering firms that know how to do this.” Having the nation’s first all-electric ferry in Gee’s Bend is “a fascinating story with a neat outcome,” Aguirre said. “Ferries connect communities; they always have.”
ETAP Podcast: Managing the Transition to Electric Vehicles
In this episode of the Environmental Technical Assistance Program or ETAP Podcast, Shoshana Lew – executive director of the Colorado Department of Transportation – discusses the critical role state DOTs are playing in helping electrify the nation’s transportation system.
[‘Photo by the Colorado DOT.]
Prior to heading the Colorado DOT, Lew worked for nearly two years as the chief operating officer of the Rhode Island Department of Transportation. She also spent eight years serving the Obama Administration, including a stint as chief financial officer for the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“My career has been at the nexus of finance and infrastructure issues,” she explained on the podcast. “It’s provided an interesting vantage point to see how investment in infrastructure impacts the economy on a ‘macro’ scale as well as how it impacts everyone’s daily lives.”
Moving from the federal level to the state level added another level of detail to that transportation discussion, Lew said. When she first joined the Colorado DOT, she visited all 64 counties across the state to talk about what transportation issues they experienced. That also provided her with insight into the challenges of electrifying the state’s transportation system.
“This is something we are hugely focused on; it is kind of the moment for this,” Lew emphasized. “I think what you’ve seen last five years is the tipping point for electric vehicles (EVs) – we are at the cusp of the transition but makes the challenges very different. To get people where they need to go – for EVs to work in this space – we need to build out the EV recharging network. That has to happen now so state residents can have the option of using EVs and traveling to farthest reaches of the state.”
She pointed out that it cannot be understated how big the transition to EVs will be – especially in terms of how it will help everyone rethink mobility.
“The state DOT cannot do it all by itself – there are huge roles to be played by the private sector, public utilities, the state department of energy, and others,” Lew said. “You need to have everyone thinking about this.” To hear the full podcast, click here.
ITD Shares Award for Eco-Friendly Bridge Work
The construction of the new Rock Creek Bridge to replace a culvert on US-20 recently won an engineering excellence award from the American Civil Engineers Council of Idaho – an award shared by the Idaho Transportation Department (ITD) and Jacobs Engineering.
[Photo by the Idaho Transportation Department.]
The new bridge now allows wildlife to pass under the highway, reducing the risk of possible collisions involving wildlife and vehicles on the roadway. The ITD added in a statement that this particular section of US-20 witnessed 64 vehicle-wildlife collisions over the last five years, which totals a “societal cost” of approximately $2 million when adding together the cost of vehicle repair or replacement, medical bills, and increased insurance rates – not to mention the cost to wildlife.
The project also allowed the ITD to restore the streams forded by the new bridge to a more natural condition, which in turn should positively benefit the surrounding ecosystem by encouraging safer fish passage under the highway.
Building a bridge also reduced the impact on the local environment versus replacing the existing multi-plate culvert with a similar culvert design, ITD added.
This was one of ITD’s first projects incorporating ‘fabric encapsulated soil lifts’ into a design – a way to ensure streambank stability as water levels rise and fall while still promoting vegetative growth. The project has already improved the environment while enhancing the safety and the natural beauty of the project area, ITD added. Just a few months after construction, the agency spotted fish swimming upstream to spawn, while noting several deer – and a moose – traveled along the channels under the bridges.
Louisiana DOTD Kicks off ‘Take 10’ Trash Removal Effort
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development recently implemented a new policy for its field crews to pick up trash in the footprint where they work for the day. Called the ‘Take 10’ campaign, it commits agency work crews to take 10 minutes per day at their job sites to pick up highway litter.
[Photo by the Louisiana DOTD.]
“I try to never ask anyone to do anything that I’m not willing to do myself,” said Shawn Wilson, Ph. D., Louisiana DOTD’s secretary, in a statement. “I know I’m asking my employees to stop doing necessary maintenance work for 10-15 minutes a day to remove trash that should’ve never been put there in the first place. But my long-term vision is to get to a point where this policy is no longer necessary and that we’re no longer spending millions to help correct a 100 percent preventable problem.”
The agency noted it spends approximately $9 million per year on trash-removal efforts, which includes mowing/litter contracts, sweeping contracts, municipal agreements, sheriff’s office agreements, and in-house removal costs.
Louisiana DOTD added that roadway litter also often washes into lakes, bayous, and other state waterways – which is not only unattractive but also potentially deadly for wildlife. Such trash can also clog drainage systems and lead to flooding of streets and homes, the agency said.
The Louisiana DOTD is also issuing a challenge to local municipalities to implement the same ‘Take 10’ policy for their field crews.
“For the local entities that may already be doing this – I say, ‘thank you.’ And I challenge the others to join us in the fight against litter to help keep Louisiana beautiful,” Wilson noted.
Photo by the Louisiana DOTD.
“The goal is to improve the communities where we work, play, and live, but governmental agencies can’t do it alone,” he emphasized. “We also need commitments from the general public to not litter in the first place, as well as to pick up trash when you see it and when it’s safe to do so.” State departments of transportation are regularly engaged in a variety of trash-removal efforts and litter education campaigns.
The North Carolina Department of Transportation is gearing up for its annual Spring Litter Sweep to remove trash from along the state’s roadways, which will run from April 10-24 this year. To date, the agency said its crews, contractors, and volunteers have already collected some 1.8 million pounds of litter from roadsides statewide since January 1.
The South Carolina Department of Transportation noted that 1,700 of its employees picked up 13,130 bags of roadside trash weighing 209,725 pounds on November 17, 2020, in support of Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette’s “Grab A Bag SC 2020” statewide cleanup program.
In October 2020, the Georgia Department of Transportation launched a new anti-litter campaign – called “Keep It Clean Georgia” – focused on preventing and eliminating litter along 50,000 miles of interstates and statewide routes.
The Virginia Department of Transportation launched a public outreach campaign entitled Virginia is for Lovers, Not Litter in September 2020; noting that it spends nearly $3.5 million annually to remove litter from Virginia’s roadways, with more than half of that litter coming from motorists with another 25 percent from pedestrians.
The cost of litter removal from state roadways does not come cheap. In February 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation released the results of a Pennsylvania Litter Research Study – conducted from 2018 through 2019 in partnership with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, Keep America Beautiful, and Keep Pennsylvania Beautiful.
That study found that Pennsylvania’s cities collectively spend more than $68 million annually on cleanup, education, enforcement, and prevention efforts related to litter and illegal dumping, the study found, with PennDOT spending upwards of $13 million per year on staff and resources to pick up litter along state-owned roadways.
Review and Approval of Projects – Susquehanna River BasinCommission (Notice of proposed rulemaking; notice of public hearing)
States Finding Ways to Reduce Pedestrian Fatalities
While a new report from the Governors Highway Safety Association showed pedestrian fatalities trended up in the first half of 2020, the report also noted how several state-directed efforts are successfully improving pedestrian safety.
[Photo by North Carolina DOT.]
GHSA’s annual Spotlight on Highway Safety report found that the U.S. pedestrian fatality rate increased 20 percent in the first six months of 2020 as speeding, distracted, and impaired driving – as well as other dangerous driving behaviors – increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The analysis found that from January through June 2020, motor vehicle crashes killed 2,957 pedestrians – six more than the same period in 2019. Consequently, as vehicle miles traveled or VMT declined 16.5 percent nationwide during the same period in 2020, the rate of drivers striking and killing pedestrians jumped to 2.2 deaths per billion VMT — a significant increase from 1.8 deaths in 2019.
GHSA’s report also identified significant improvements within its analysis of state-reported data:
Pedestrian fatalities during the first half of 2020 declined in 20 states and Washington D.C. compared with the same period in 2019.
Nine states – Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina – witnessed double-digit percentage and numeric declines in pedestrian fatalities in the first six months of 2020 compared to the same six-month period in 2019.
Based on analysis of 2017-2020 data, Arizona has experienced two consecutive years of declining pedestrian fatalities, while Delaware and Kentucky have experienced three consecutive years of declining pedestrian deaths.
GHSA’s report noted that most pedestrians are killed on local roads, in the dark, and away from intersections – suggesting the need for safer road crossings and increased efforts to make pedestrians more visible through improved lighting and other countermeasures.
In addition, during the past 10 years, the number of drivers striking and killing a pedestrian after dark increased by 54 percent, compared to a 16 percent rise in pedestrian fatalities in daylight, GHSA said.
The group’s report further noted that alcohol impairment by the driver and/or pedestrian occurred in nearly half of traffic crashes that resulted in a pedestrian fatality.
[Editor’s note: In a recent ‘On Time with Tymon’ video series, Jim Tymon – executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials – discussed why motor vehicle crashes increased during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, despite the overall reduction in VMT.]
The report highlighted proven strategies employed at the state and local level to reduce pedestrian fatalities – including engineering and road design, high visibility and automated enforcement, pedestrian safety assessments and road safety audits, and education directed to children and crash bystanders. Some examples include:
North Carolina’s “Watch for Me NC” program and New Jersey’s “Street Smart,” aim to reduce pedestrian and bicycle injuries and deaths through a comprehensive, targeted approach of public education, community engagement, and high visibility law enforcement. Evaluations of both programs indicate they have been effective in changing motorist and pedestrian behavior.
The Georgia Office of Highway Safety is awarding grants to implement education programs in cities with significant increases in pedestrian fatalities and where walking is the primary mode of transportation – one of a number of educational strategies identified in the state’s five-year multidisciplinary Pedestrian Safety Action Plan designed to work in consort with engineering, enforcement, and emergency strategies.
The Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning’s statewide campaign, “Everybody’s Road, Everybody’s Rules,” involves 12 law enforcement agencies in 12 cities to educate and engage with motorists and pedestrians. They focused on motorists making illegal turns, failing to stop at a signal or crosswalk, and not yielding to pedestrians, and spoke with pedestrians about using sidewalks where provided or walking against traffic on a roadway without a sidewalk.
Delaware Highway Safety Office programs such as summer beach pedestrian high visibility enforcement and education mobilization; updated pedestrian information via its “Arrive Alive DE” website; conducting pedestrian safety outreach via Delaware Rapid Transit bus “street teams” along high crash routes, and developing “visibility messaging” to address nighttime pedestrian fatalities.
The Ray Signs Charters to Pilot ‘Green’ Initiatives in Central Texas
The Ray – a Georgia-based transportation innovation non-profit – recently signed separate charters with the Texas Department of Transportation Austin District, Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority, and the City of Austin to pilot new technologies and “green energy solutions” for the Central Texas region.
[Above photo via The Ray.]
“Central Texas is a dynamic growing community with a tech-based economy and a highly educated workforce,” explained Tucker Ferguson, district engineer for TxDOT’s Austin District, in a statement.
“The community expects government entities like TxDOT, the City of Austin, and the Mobility Authority to use new technology and innovative strategies to enhance mobility, protect the environment, improve quality of life and increase economic opportunity,” he added. “The partnership with The Ray is a great opportunity to bring additional expertise and experience to our work.”
“In Georgia, The Ray has partnered with state and industry leaders to create the world’s first sustainable highway living laboratory, and we are excited to bring our experience in transportation innovation to Central Texas,” noted Laura Rogers, director of strategic partnerships at The Ray.
[Editor’s note: The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Center for Environmental Excellence recently interviewed Allie Kelly, executive director of The Ray, as part of its Environmental Technical Assistance Program or ETAP Podcast series. Click here to listen to that interview.]
“Focusing on infrastructure that supports future-forward transportation technology through regional collaboration allows for a seamless transition of service across jurisdictions and provides a model to scale similar initiatives across the state and nation,” she said.
Rogers noted this new Central Texas region collaboration is focusing on “facilitating, executing, promoting and building” projects that prioritize road safety, improve infrastructure resiliency, plus protect and restore the environment.
Those projects include but are not limited to connected autonomous vehicle infrastructure, solar-powered photovoltaic electric-vehicle or EV charging stations, and in-road dynamic wireless EV charging, she said.
The Ray’s 501c3 nonprofit status will open additional opportunities to collaborate between the public and private sectors by acting as a bridge to accelerate project delivery while leveraging “innovative funding mechanisms,” explained Harriet Langford, president and founder of The Ray.
By working with the various tech companies moving to Austin and those that already call Austin home, this new collaboration will bring industries together to create better results that directly benefit the citizens of Texas through job creation, resilient roads, and cleaner air, she said.
“Much like my father Ray C. Anderson shared his model for circular business with companies around the world, The Ray is ready to scale our record of transportation innovation with states across the country,” Langford noted. “Georgia and Texas are both states with an independent streak, and together with all three agencies, The Ray will expand on our projects to create smarter and safer transportation infrastructure for Texans.”
