When state government agencies turned in their 2023-27 strategic plan last month, it was probably no surprise for safety to top the Texas Department of Transportation’s list.
The department rounded out its other top goals as delivering the right projects, focusing on the customer, fostering stewardship, optimizing system performance, preserving assets and valuing employees.
What follows are snippets of TxDOT’s seven goals from its website, with some minor edits. To make progress toward the department’s core goals and the governor’s statewide objectives, the department seeks to:
1. Promote Safety
TxDOT plans to:
- Achieve maximum accountability to the tax and fee payers of Texas by establishing a safety-first culture in all levels of its operations.
- Continue to develop highly effective methods and procedures to promote safety on Texas roadways and for TxDOT employees while minimizing waste and redundancy.
- Use the approximately 350 traffic safety grants to promote traffic safety education and enforcement.
- Hold public meetings on roadway projects, listen to public feedback on crash locations and maintain safety rest areas for distressed drivers.
- Provide project information in a simple-to-understand format, ask for feedback on safety rest areas and provide safety information on the TxDOT website.
2. Deliver the Right Projects
TxDOT plans to:
- Continue to monitor and improve the transportation planning process and tools and apply portfolio and performance management to ensure that the appropriate projects are selected in a transparent manner.
- Include performance measures and metrics to ensure strategic alignment, efficient use of resources and budget utilization on the most appropriate projects.
- Select projects based on their ability to meet TxDOT objectives.
- Train employees to deliver consistently high-quality projects at a faster pace that enhances the travel experience.
- Post information on plans, programs and performance measures and targets online.
3. Focus on the Customer
TxDOT plans to be:
- Accountable to tax and fee payers of Texas.
- Efficient such that maximum results are produced with a minimum waste of taxpayer funds, including through the elimination of redundant and noncore functions.
- Effective in fulfilling core functions, measuring success in advancing performance measures and implementing plans to continuously improve.
- Attentive to providing excellent customer service.
- Proactive in outreach to ensure transparency in its initiatives and strategic vision and allows input from external stakeholders.
4. Foster Stewardship
TxDOT plans to be:
- Responsible for being good stewards of taxpayer funding while making transportation investments on behalf of the state.
- Efficient in the use of all state resources including funding, infrastructure and materials.
- Responsible for implementing asset management policies and practices, reporting on performance in fulfilling core functions and identifying areas for continuous improvement of processes.
- Responsible for using asset management practices to help TxDOT optimize addressing public needs.
- Responsible for using a performance-based planning process to improve transparency by providing information that is current and available online.
5. Optimize System Performance
TxDOT plans to:
- Improve traffic management for freight and passenger vehicles.
- Consolidate the state’s advanced traffic management systems and implement a transportation systems management and operations strategic plan.
- Advance and integrate innovative traffic management systems and data initiatives for freight and passenger vehicles to improve overall system performance, advance safety objectives, address public interests and continue the improvement of the system toward a more connected vehicle environment.
- Optimize the application of funding to highest-priority needs to provide Texans with the most effective mobility improvements.
- Improve road construction operations to have a much more near-term and continuous impact.
6. Preserve Our Assets
TxDOT plans to:
- Protect the taxpayer investment, extend the useful life of the assets and allow for the prioritization of resources to meet other investment demands such as added capacity.
- Minimize project life cycle costs by ensuring the consistent application of proper maintenance practices.
- Maintain the integrated transportation system properly to avoid higher maintenance costs in the future or replacement ahead of the planned life cycle.
- Perform proper maintenance on the Texas transportation system, equipment, technology and facilities to minimize incidents that would affect mobility for the traveling public and freight.
- Use the department’s asset management practices and plans so that a non-engineering population can understand TxDOT's management practices.
7. Value Our Employees
TxDOT plans to:
- Respect and care for the well-being and development of its employees.
- Require an agile and highly trained workforce to deliver on the transportation plan.
- Grow the diversity of its programs and workforce that reflects Texas in who we are and what we do.
- Provide internal communications, development programs and a healthy work environment to produce better-informed employees empowered to provide a high level of customer service.
- Train all employees on the importance of and effective methods for providing transparency in TxDOT’s work.
In addition to clarifying those seven goals, TxDOT also went on to identify redundancies and impediments it expects to contend with.
1. The Texas Transportation Code authorizes TxDOT to collect rail safety fees from Class I, II and III railroads to conduct safety inspections.
TxDOT recommends establishing a segregated account in the State Highway Fund to ensure that the amount estimated by TxDOT to recover the costs of the Rail Safety Inspection Program is fully appropriated for their intended safety purpose.
2. TxDOT is responsible for the safety, inspections and inventorying of over 55,000 bridges open to the public. The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) requires TxDOT to install load posting signs at all state and nonstate public bridges when a restriction is required. The bridge load posting requirements by FHWA for nonstate bridges has changed from 180 days to within 30 days of when a determination is made. While TxDOT is responsible for oversight and compliance with these FHWA bridge load posting requirements, TxDOT does not have the statutory authority to install bridge load posting signs on nonstate bridges, nor does TxDOT have the authority to require local governments to do so.
TxDOT recommends amending the transportation code (or other appropriate code) to authorize TxDOT to install nonstate bridge load posting signs as required by the federal National Bridge Inspection Standards.
3. The Texas Transportation Code requires that when TxDOT intends to sell or transfer “surplus property,” the Texas Transportation Commission must determine the value of that property and authorize the transaction. If the surplus property is valued at $10,000 or greater, the transaction must be approved and signed off by the attorney general and the governor, with an attestation by the secretary of state (acting as a notary). If the commission determines the property value to be less than $10,000, TxDOT’s executive director may execute an instrument conveying the property without the approval and signature of the governor.
TxDOT recommends amending the code to increase the threshold property value in which a surplus transaction requires the approval of the attorney general and the governor from $10,000 to $100,000.
4. The Texas Transportation Code allows TxDOT to let certain highway improvement projects of less than $100,000 at the local TxDOT district rather than at TxDOT headquarters in Austin. In 1997 the maximum was increased by the Legislature to $300,000.
TxDOT recommends amending the code to increase the allowable value of local let highway improvement contracts from $300,000 to $1 million.
