Pennsylvania Department Of Transportation - Pennsylvania Department Of Motor Vehicles

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) oversees transportation issues in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The administrator of PennDOT is the Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation, currently Leslie Richards. Presently, PennDOT supports over 40,500 miles (65,200 km) of state roads and highways, about 25,000 bridges, as well as new roadway construction, the exception being the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, although they currently follow PennDOT policies and procedures. In addition, other modes of transportation are supervised or supported by PennDOT. These include aviation, rail traffic, mass transit, i ntrastate highway shipping traffic, motor vehicle safety & licensing, and driver licensing. PennDOT also supports the Ports of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Erie. The current budget is approximately $3.8 billion in federal and state funds. The state budget is supported by the motor vehicle fuels tax which is dedicated solely to transportation issues.

In recent years, PennDOT has focused on intermodal transportation. This is a broad attempt to enhance both commerce and public transportation.

PennDOT employs approximately 11,000 people.

PennDOT has extensive traffic cameras set up throughout various parts of major cities in the state, such as Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Allentown (Lehigh Valley), and Luzerne County. The latter's cameras are actually fed through to a television channel for Service Electric cable customers in Wilkes-Barre. These cameras are primarily installed for ITS purposes, not for law enforcement (as opposed to speed cameras).

History

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation was created from the former Department of Highways by Act 120, approved by the legislature on May 6, 1970. The intent of the legislation was to consolidate transportation-related functions formerly performed in the Departments of Commerce, Revenue, Community Affairs, Forests and Waters, Military Affairs and other state agencies.

PennDOT is responsible for constructing and maintaining a system of roads at the sole expense of the state. It controls more than 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of roadway. Townships control approximately 51,376 miles (82,682 km) of roads and streets; boroughs, 9,460 miles (15,220 km) and cities 6,779 miles (10,910 km). In all, there are more than 118,226 miles (190,266 km) of public roads, streets and toll roads in the Commonwealth.

Greatest growth in the state highway system occurred in 1931 when 20,156 miles (32,438 km) of rural roads were taken over by the Commonwealth. At that time, the Department of Highways, at the direction of Governor Gifford Pinchot, embarked upon an extensive program of paving rural roadways, well known as the "get the farmer out of the mud" program.

The Federal Government in 1916 instituted grants to the states for highway construction. These grants continue today and now comprise the key element in determining the size of the state's roadbuilding programs.

State payments to local communities for road maintenance also have continued to expand so that they average approximately $170 million annually.

The agency went into well-noted organizational decline. An effort to bring quality management principles to PENNDOT over an extended period--four changes of state governor--accomplished a great deal.

Driver & Vehicle services

PennDOT is responsible for motor vehicle titles and registration along with issuing driver licenses. Through a system of decentralized, privatized providers, driver services are available at over 1700 sites statewide. The privatized system of providers sometimes referred to as auto tag agents or even private DMV offices has existed for over 45 years. This revolution of private DMV Offices has been followed by only 5 more states. However, Pennsylvania is the only state to separate motor vehicle offices from driver license offices. Driver license centers to this day are all run and owned by PennDOT, unlike motor vehicle offices which are strictly run and controlled by PennDOT however privately owned. An exception to this is at the PennDOT headquarters on Front St. in Harrisburg, which has a large room for all motor vehicle transactions and drivers' license transactions, with a separate room for photographing and issuing licenses to motorists.

There are over 1700 card agents and full agents, in which approximately 400 online messengers, each of these with incrementally increasing authority as dictated by law and all controlled by PennDOT. Online messengers exist throughout Pennsylvania with the same authorities as DMV offices in other states.

Bridges in Pennsylvania

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. These figures would have been higher, but the state had recently undertaken a program to quadruple state funding for bridge repairs.

Across the United States, 61,000 bridges are "structurally deficient", which means that 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, 8 of the top 10 most traveled structurally deficient bridges are located in Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania has the highest number of structurally deficient bridges in the U.S. Overall, the state has 25,000 bridges excluding privately owned bridges, which is the third largest number of bridges in the U.S. 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.

Districts

Administratively PennDOT is divided into engineering districts to localize engineering and maintenance. The following is a table of the districts and their associated headquarters. The statewide headquarters for PennDOT is located in the Keystone Building in Harrisburg.

Criticism

PennDOT, like most government bureaucracies, has gotten its share of criticisms over the years. The biggest controversy has been the quality of the roads in the Commonwealth, as Pennsylvania in the past has had among the worst roads in the United States. (However, according to a July 14, 2015 article in the Business Insider, PA roads didn't even make the top ten (10) worst roads in the nation. ) Among the reasons:

• The rather long period of time used for construction, which in most cases has caused delays by several years.
• Accusations that cheap material is used, which explains why roads are in need of repairs again so soon after construction.
• Ignoring needed repairs or putting in temporary fixes such as simply filling in potholes.

However, there are a many supporting arguments as to the roadway conditions being terrible in Pennsylvania that are not entirely the fault of PennDOT, including:

• The weather the state receives, due to its location in the Northeastern United States, results in more wear and tear on roads than in other parts of the nation.
• The rugged terrain in the Poconos and Western Pennsylvania.
• The fragmentation of Pennsylvania's various transportation departments prior to the 1970s that led to the consolidation of most of them to form PennDOT, the lone exception being the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, which remains a separate entity today.
• Pennsylvania contains a large amount of roads servicing a relatively small population, creating a shortage of funds that can be acquired through taxes and designated for PennDOT.
• Most roads in the Scranton/Northeast area have been built on abandoned coal mines which can cause poor conditions of the roads.
• The relatively short construction season in the Northeastern United States as compared to longer construction seasons in the southern parts of the country.

Other controversies PennDOT has faced have been nothing out of the ordinary, such as corruption and misuse of public funds as spending money for its employees.

Unlike other states, PennDOT does not support nor work closely with its corresponding transit agencies (SEPTA, Port Authority of Allegheny County). In addition, there is no dedicated transit funding source usually sponsored by the state DOT.