Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, Michael B. Carroll. PennDOT supports nearly 40,000 miles (64,000 km) of state roads and highways, about 25,000 bridges, and new roadway construction with the exception of the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission.[2]
Agency overview
July 1, 1970
- Department of Highways
- Bureau of Motor Vehicles and Traffic Safety
- Mass Transit Division
- Aeronautics Commission
- Department of Revenue (oversaw licensing, registration and inspection of motor vehicles)
5th Floor, Commonwealth Keystone Building, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.[1]
40°15′59″N 76°53′1″W / 40.26639°N 76.88361°W
~12,000
$9.1 billion
- Michael B. Carroll, Secretary of Transportation
Other modes of transportation supervised or supported by PennDOT include aviation, rail traffic, mass transit, intrastate highway shipping traffic, motor vehicle safety and licensing, and driver licensing. PennDOT supports the Ports of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie. The department's current budget is approximately $3.8 billion in federal and state funds. The state budget is supported by motor vehicle fuel taxes, which are dedicated solely to transportation-related state expenditures.
In recent years, PennDOT has focused on intermodal transportation, which is an attempt to enhance commerce and public transportation. PennDOT employs approximately 11,000 people.
PennDOT has extensive traffic cameras set up throughout the state's major cities, including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, Wilkes-Barre, Scranton, and the state capital of Harrisburg, In Wilkes-Barre, cameras are fed through to a television channel for Service Electric cable customers in the city and its suburbs. Unlike speed cameras, these cameras are primarily installed for ITS purposes, and not for law enforcement.
Pennsylvania bridges[edit]
According to a 2011 study by Transportation for America, 26.5% of Pennsylvania's bridges were structurally deficient and the state led the United States with six metropolitan areas with a high percentage of deficient bridges.[10] These figures would have been higher, but the state had recently undertaken a program to quadruple state funding for bridge repairs.[10]
Across the United States, 61,000 bridges are deemed "structurally deficient",[11] which means they need repairs, contain a piece rated as "poor," and might also have a weight limit. The term structurally deficient does not mean a bridge is unsafe for travel. In Pennsylvania, eight of the top ten most traveled structurally deficient bridges are in Philadelphia.[12]
Pennsylvania has the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the U.S.[11] Overall, the state has 25,000 bridges excluding privately owned bridges, which is the third-largest number of bridges in the U.S.[13] Pennsylvania has launched a program called the Rapid Bridge Replacement project to increase the number of bridges it fixes. The project is a public-private partnership between PennDOT and the private firm Plenary Walsh Keystone Partners. The project fixed almost 700 bridges in 2014.[11]
Criticism[edit]
PennDOT has received criticism over the years regarding the quality of the roads in the Commonwealth, as Pennsylvania has previously ranked among the worst maintained road systems in the United States.[14]