Interim Report to the 83rd Texas Legislature: House Committee on Transportation Page: 9
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pavement economically.
Taking proactive maintenance measures to reduce damages to roadways is a much more cost-
effective strategy than replacing or restoring roadways after it has been damaged. Proactive
maintenance strategies include reconstructing or resurfacing a road to preserve it before damage
occurs. Proactive maintenance of the transportation infrastructure reduces overall repair and
maintenance costs by approximately 700 percent.4
TxDOT also utilizes an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) network to manage and operate
the existing transportation infrastructure at the highest level of efficiency. ITS allows state and
local governments to collect and examine data on traffic accidents, travel time, and delay.
Fourteen Traffic Management Centers located in individual TxDOT districts around the state are
able to collect and share real time data, snapshots, and traffic information over a dedicated
communications system. This information can also be shared with the public over dynamic
message signs, or through third party data providers.
Rider 36 Study
The general increase in oversize/overweight vehicle traffic on Texas roads prompted the 82nd
Legislature to direct TxDOT to study the issue. Rider 36 to the FY 2012-2013 General
Appropriations Act requires TxDOT to "evaluate the damage that oversize and overweight
vehicles cause on roads including exempt vehicles such as agricultural, garbage collection,
grocery, produce, farm produce, concrete, milk, timber, and rock vehicles." Findings of the
study, which is being conducted by the Center for Transportation Research at the University of
Texas, will be submitted to the Governor and the Legislative Budget Board on December 1,
2012.5
Bridges
Texas' 51,943 bridges represent a twelfth of the bridges in the entire nation, nearly 60 percent
more than any other state. Each of those bridges is categorized as either on-system (located on a
designated state highway system and maintained by TxDOT) or off-system (not part of the
designated state highway system and maintained by a local government or district). There are
more than 17,000 on-system bridges and more than 33,000 off-system bridges in Texas.6 These
bridge assets are valued at over $83 billion.7
The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) further classifies bridges according to their
condition: sufficient, structurally deficient, functionally obsolete, and substandard for load only.
FHWA Characteristics Number On- Off-
Classification System System
Sufficient Meets current federal and 42,035 30,253 11,782
Texas requirements
Structurally Extreme restriction on load- 1,311 250 1,061
Deficient carrying capacity;
deterioration severe enough
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Texas. Legislature. House of Representatives. Committee on Transportation. Interim Report to the 83rd Texas Legislature: House Committee on Transportation, report, December 20, 2012; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth531933/m1/10/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.