Transportation secretary wants more bang from taxpayers’ buck

Anthony Foxx, the newly sworn-in transportation secretary, emphasized a need to improve the efficiency and performance of the existing U.S. transportation system in a blog post on the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) website Thursday.

“That’s no small challenge,” Foxx writes. “The American people are counting on [DOT] to be good stewards of their tax dollars, even as we also build and maintain the roads, bridges, ports, buses, rails and runways they need.”

Foxx adds that concrete examples already exist in which DOT is better spending money. One example he cites is the Federal Highway Administration’s Every Day Counts initiative, which includes a tool called warm-mix asphalt. According to Foxx, warm-mix asphalt is a paving technology that allows asphalt to be produced and placed on roads at a lower temperature. He estimates the use of warm-mix asphalt has already saved about $100 million and that its use should save more than $3.5 billion over the next seven years.

As Foxx, the former mayor of Charlotte, N.C., settles into his new position and seeks additional strategies to spend DOT’s funds more productively, it will be interesting to see how the department’s spending impacts aggregate producers up the supply chain.

In the meantime, based on his use of DOT’s blog twice this week, it seems apparent we’ll be hearing quite a bit from Foxx.