Jim Tymon, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, recently joined the “Talking Michigan Transportation” podcast – produced by the Michigan Department of Transportation – to discuss the national “Reimagining America’s Interstates” initiative recently launched by the Federal Highway Administration.
[Above image via Michigan DOT]
FHWA unveiled this new initiative during a June 30 media event that also celebrated the 70th anniversary of the “Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways,” created when President Dwight Eisenhower signed into law the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 – an event that also included the unveiling of new “Freedom 250” highway signs created by the U.S. Department of Transportation in celebration of that anniversary.
“This is a great opportunity for us to celebrate the history of the interstate system,” Tymon said on the podcast.
He went on to explain that this new national effort includes making sure that everyone is benefiting from the interstate system as well as incorporating new technologies into it to ensure maximum safe and efficient operation of the country’s highway network.
“I think that there are a lot of opportunities for us to take a look at the interstate system as a whole and figure out how can we ‘reimagine’ to ensure it benefits all Americans moving forward,” Tymon stressed.
“Again, I go back to the technology aspect of it. We all want to get down to zero highway fatalities, right? So the only way we’re going to do that is to leverage the technology that we have today and the technology that we’re going to have tomorrow,” he noted. “We have to make sure that we’re open to incorporating that technology into our vehicles and into the actual [highway] infrastructure in order to make it as safe as possible.”
To listen to the full podcast episode, click here.
Nation
