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AHTD Director Scott Bennett Says Putting Plans on Hold Could Hurt the Road

3 min read

Scott Bennett began his career at the AHTD as a summer employee. After graduating college in 1989, he started working full time for the department’s Planning & Research Division as a civil engineer. Bennett worked his way up through the agency until he was named the department’s assistant chief engineer for planning in 2004. The Arkansas Highway Commission chose him to lead the department effective Sept. 22, 2011.

Bennett earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 1989 from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and a master’s degree in 1994. He was named one of the UA College of Engineering Young Alumni of the Year in 2005 and was inducted into the Arkansas Academy of Civil Engineering in 2010.

The AHTD has had to suspend millions of dollars worth of highway construction projects because of uncertainty over the Federal Highway Trust Fund. What are the economic effects in the state of this?

It has a ripple effect that most people don’t think about. Delaying work means motorists feel it in their pocketbooks: It costs more to operate a vehicle on poor roads, and it costs more to repair the road later. The work that’s not being done is work that would have been performed by Arkansas workers, so it also affects our citizens through lost jobs and wages. That could have a tremendous impact on families.

Also, businesses are less likely to locate here or expand if our infrastructure isn’t adequate, which has a negative impact on growing our economy in Arkansas. But our biggest concern is always safety. Every project we undertake has a safety component to it. Every project that is delayed is a missed opportunity to make our roads safer.

What should Congress do to ensure this fund, vital to highway projects in Arkansas, is adequately funded every year? For example, should fuel taxes, which haven’t increased since 1993, be raised?

Taking care of our nation’s infrastructure has taken a back seat to other issues for far too long. Funding our roads and bridges must become a higher priority. This is not money that would be going overseas; this is money that we would be investing in ourselves right here at home. Finding the right funding source is the hard part.

Since fuel prices are relatively low now, raising the fuel tax is the first option that comes to mind. But it is a consumption-based tax, and thanks to better fuel efficiency, our consumption is declining. We could raise the fuel tax and we would see an immediate increase in revenue. However, it would be highest in the first year and then start declining because consumption continues to fall. Adjusting the fuel tax for inflation may be part of the long-term solution, but raising it alone is not the answer.

Is the department studying climate change, its effects on Arkansas highways and whether the agency’s budget should be adjusted to handle potential increases in highway-damaging weather?

We do not study climate change, per se. We know that snow is going to fall and ice is going to form in varying amounts each year. What we do is follow research on the best practices to address those events and remove the snow and ice in a timely manner. Upgrading our equipment, making our own salt brine and using beet juice as an additive were new practices we instituted this year that we believe made a big difference in our ability to treat icy roads. The same principle holds true for extreme heat or wet conditions: We are constantly tweaking our operations and changing our concrete and asphalt mix designs to perform better in all weather conditions. We budgeted $18 million more in equipment, materials and manpower for maintaining our existing highway system this year. We believe that was money well spent, but it means we had $18 million less for construction projects.

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