Sometimes quality is in the eye of the beholder: highway users and other stakeholders share their views on what makes a successful road project

Public Roads, May-June, 2004 by Kathleen A. Bergeron

A familiar parable from India tells of six blind men who came upon an elephant for the first time. As each man touched a different part of the animal, he came to a different conclusion about the elephant. The first felt the pachyderm's side and said that an elephant is like a wall. Others, upon touching the elephant's tusk, trunk, knee, ear, and tail, argued, respectively, that the elephant certainly was more like a spear, a snake, a tree, a fan, or a rope. As John Godfrey Saxe concluded in a poem based on the fable (paraphrased), "though each was partly in the right, all were in the wrong." A one-dimensional viewpoint rarely tells the full story.

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Consider a modern example of this principle. During the planning of a roadway in Cupertino, CA, several years ago, local authorities proposed building a major highway interchange. Although the design seemed to fill the need, according to San Jose's The Mercury News, local residents derided the plan as a "Berlin Wall," because its height would physically split the community. Residents wanted the interchange sunk below ground level to reduce the visual impact and traffic noise. The engineer from the traffic authority, however, refused to compromise, arguing that during storms the nearby creek might flood a belowgrade interchange. The residents returned a few days later with a petition signed by 1,800 residents, demanding the belowgrade approach. Finally bending to the show of political force, the traffic authority went forward with the sunken design.

But that was not the end of the story. When The Mercury News article ran in February 1998, it was part of a larger piece on the extensive flooding from that year's El Nino phenomenon. The writer pointed out that during the week before the article ran, the interchange flooded for the second time in 3 years. The reporter asked a local resident how the community felt about the sunken interchange now, since the engineer had been proven correct about the flooding. The resident responded, "Our view was that if it only happens once every 100 years, we can live with it. It's better than having the large concrete structure."

It is not unusual to find that what engineers and planners see as the perfect solution to a transportation problem may not conform to the residents' ideas of perfection. As with the blind men in the parable, determining the true nature of the beast requires a number of viewpoints. This principle is at the heart of why public transportation agencies hold listening sessions during the planning stage of a project. Even though transportation agencies are staffed with experienced and knowledgeable design and construction professionals, they often are focused on just a few aspects of the overall project. Failing to address the concerns of other stakeholders--including the driving public, disabled persons, trucking and bus operators, and business owners along the right-of-way--leads to a narrow viewpoint and approach that may cause problems in the future.

The USDOT Approach

When officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) decided to look more closely at their approach to designing highways, they sought to capture the perspectives of multiple stakeholders. Asking only the people who design or build the highways is not enough.

"Our focus on the customer must drive our priority setting and the way we use our resources, right down to how each of us spends our day," says FHWA Executive Director Frederick G. "Bud" Wright. "Our choices must be governed by what we know to be the most important needs of our customers, because we have asked them."

In 2003, USDOT sponsored a series of listening sessions with representatives from several key groups, including owners and operators of highways, contractors who build roads, suppliers of construction materials and equipment, and users of the highway system. The purpose was to shed light on how the various constituencies view and define the notion of quality in highways and construction projects.

Each session lasted several hours and began with a brief orientation on a topic related to improving the quality of the Nation's highways. The participants met with key highway leadership at USDOT, including Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta, FHWA Administrator Mary E. Peters, and Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Administrator Annette M. Sandberg. The hosts posed specific questions and then opened the floor for discussion.

The diversity of opinions expressed by the participants suggested that definitions of quality depend on the perspective of each respondent. Followup interviews with a few of the participants highlight some of the key factors identified as important to specific constituencies and emphasize the value of inviting diverse stakeholders to the table when planning highway projects.

The following questions and responses were posed to Darrin Roth, director of highway operations at the American Trucking Associations (ATA); Mike Acott, president of the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA); Val Riva, president of the American Concrete Pavement Association (ACPA); Kathleen Marvaso, managing director for government relations and traffic safety policy at the American Automobile Association (AAA); and John Bukowski, a pavements engineer at FHWA.