U.S. Department of Transportation
Federal Highway Administration
1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE
Washington, DC 20590
202-366-4000
Most nations of the world have made significant investments in transportation infrastructure. In the United States alone, such investment is estimated at more than $1.75 trillion. However, as this infrastructure is used and exposed to natural forces, its condition will deteriorate. In the United States in particular, a significant challenge facing national, State, and local officials is how to preserve the functionality of the existing transportation asset base while at the same time funding expansions of the transportation network to handle increasing demands. Although transportation officials often spend considerable time and energy on new roads, transit facilities, airports, and pedestrian/bicycle facilities, by some accounts, the Nation will spend more money over the next several decades preserving and maintaining the existing transportation base than building new facilities.
Transportation asset management has been defined many different ways. In essence, it is a strategic approach to inventorying, monitoring, and managing at desired levels of performance the many different assets that constitute a transportation system.
The purpose of this international scan was to investigate best-case examples of transportation asset management techniques and processes in the world. Lessons from this experience could help the United States better understand how asset management applications can enhance the effectiveness of decisionmaking and infrastructure management in Federal, State, and local transportation agencies. The United States faces a significant infrastructure preservation and capital replacement challenge. The lessons learned from this scan could provide important indications of how those who have been working on this issue for some time have approached the problem from both an institutional and technical point of view.
Asset management is an important concept to transportation professionals working at many levels of government and in the private sector. To reflect this range of potential application, the scan panel represented a diverse set of interests and concerns for national, State, and local-level decisionmaking. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), and National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) jointly sponsored this scan. In addition to FHWA officials (at the headquarters and field levels), the panel included representatives from departments of transportation (DOT) for the States of Michigan, New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina (in addition to representing the AASHTO Subcommittee on Transportation Asset Management); an official from the Portland, OR, Office of Transportation representing the American Public Works Association (APWA); a university representative representing the Transportation Research Board (TRB) Committee on Transportation Asset Management; and a university professor who was the report facilitator. These panel members represented a diverse set of interests and expertise in the areas of asset management, bridge and pavement management systems, transportation policy and planning, and transportation system operations (see Appendix A for contact information and biographical sketches for scan team members).
Several nations, states/provinces, and local governments are at the cutting edge of asset management practice. As the scan team found, however, even these asset management practitioners are in a continuous process of learning. Based on a scoping process of international experience in asset management, the scan team chose to investigate the asset management practice in Alberta and Edmonton, Canada; England and London, United Kingdom; New Zealand; and New South Wales, Queensland and Brisbane, and Victoria, Australia. This mix of site visits thus included two national experiences (England and New Zealand); four state/provincial experiences (Alberta, New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria); and three local experiences (Brisbane, Edmonton, and London).
The scan team met with the following types of representatives during its 15-day study:
The scan team sent each host of a site visit a set of amplifying questions in advance that outlined the specific information the team desired (see Appendix B). These questions provided a framework for the scan team's investigations of asset management practice, and gave the host government an opportunity to organize its information dissemination in response to these questions. In many cases, the team received written responses to the questions. In others, audiovisual presentations were coded so that the scan team knew exactly which questions were being discussed at that moment. The team also received a great deal of supplementary material from the host agencies.
Given the different circumstances and challenges facing governments at the national, state/provincial and local levels, this report is organized by level of government. Chapter 2 examines the national government experience in England (even though it is a part of the United Kingdom) and New Zealand. Chapter 3 examines asset management experience at the state/provincial levels, focusing on Alberta, New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. Chapter 4 presents the results of the team's visit to local governments, including Brisbane, Edmonton, and London. Chapter 5 examines one of the aspects of good asset management practice that was not anticipated before the scan—the important role of professional and local government associations in asset management. Chapters 6 and 7 present general observations and lessons learned from this scan. The final chapter describes recommended implementation steps for the scan findings.
To provide consistency among the different asset management experiences, each case description follows the same format. Each description provides sections on context, how the agency has organized for asset management, the drivers for asset management, asset management in the decisionmaking process, use of performance measures, asset management systems, data-collection strategies and techniques, the analysis and prioritization procedures used to rank asset management strategies and projects, and general observations.
Given that the most effective asset management programs are often found within a larger agency performance-oriented decisionmaking structure, the concepts of performance measures and strategic planning become important points of departure for understanding effective asset management programs. To learn more about performance measures, see the scan report on performance measures, Transportation Performance Measures in Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand, available at the Office of International Programs.
In each case, monetary amounts are reported in the country's own currency unit, followed by a conversion to U.S. dollars. Similar conversions are shown for metric distance measurements. In the case of currency, although much of the financing information is reported from planning and budgetary documents prepared over the past 10 years, the conversion rates into U.S. dollars were those on April 24, 2005. Although this suggests the buying power of the monetary estimates might be different from that intended in these documents, such a conversion serves the purpose of comparing investment levels consistently from one country to another.
