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DOT traffic‑safety and asset‑management teams roll out Project Lifespan and electronic crash‑data upgrades
Summary
Traffic Safety Director Shannon Glendening and Asset Management Chief Virginia Stobella told legislators about impaired‑driving enforcement results, a USDOT discretionary grant for electronic crash reporting (~$9M), ARAN pavement data collection, and a Project Lifespan Initiative to bring safety, environmental and condition data earlier into project planning.
Shannon Glendening, director of DOT’s Traffic Safety Division, told the Transportation Infrastructure Revenue Subcommittee the division runs federally funded impaired‑driving and occupant‑protection programs and is expanding public‑education efforts and enforcement partnerships across the state.
Glendening said Federal Fiscal Year 2024 enforcement activity included 303 checkpoints and 1,619 DWI arrests and noted the division funds seatbelt and child‑restraint enforcement and outreach programs. She highlighted a state discretionary USDOT award — about $9 million — intended to expand electronic crash‑reporting and data accuracy; the goal is to reduce paper reports and speed access to crash data for decision‑makers.
Virginia Stobella, Asset Management Bureau Chief, described data collection and analysis used to prioritize projects. She explained the ARAN pavement‑condition collection van finished its 2025 route and the department captures rutting, cracking and roughness to produce a pavement condition rating used in the Condition Analysis Report (CAR). Stobella said non‑NHS routes are collected on a two‑year cycle while NHS routes are collected annually.
Stobella introduced the Project Lifespan Initiative, which aims to provide engineers and planners with early access to condition, crash, environmental and permitting information so project scoping can include safety countermeasures and resilience considerations earlier. “What we want to do is expand on [condition analysis] and be able to provide planning data… so that if I have two projects I can decide with a large amount of data upfront,” Stobella said.
Committee members raised constituent concerns about potholes, school‑bus safety and local congestion. DOT officials said immediate pothole responses are handled by district patrols and maintenance employees using local knowledge, while the CAR score and ARAN data support longer‑term prioritization. On school‑bus safety, Glendening said driver‑education instructor certification includes training on vulnerable road users and school‑bus interactions.
The subcommittee asked for follow‑up on how DOT will measure enforcement outcomes (for example, convictions or repeat offenders) to align program spending with long‑term behavior change. DOT officials said they will work to correlate enforcement inputs with outcome measures for legislators.
The committee did not vote on policy changes during this session.
