Busek Links DOT, ATAC With FHWAWe all like to think we're safe drivers, but when Steve Busek travels North Dakota, he pays particular attention to how safe and easy it is to travel the state. As the Federal Highway Administration's Safety and ITS Engineer for North Dakota, that's his job.
The job of ultimately accepting or rejecting those projects rests with FHWA officials in Washington, D.C. "If everything's OK, they turn around and issue funding authority, then we work out the ITS project agreement with the DOT and help the DOT develop a contract with ATAC." Once that's done, Busek provides oversight for FHWAfunded ITS projects in North Dakota. "We work cooperatively with the DOT, but they provide a little more handson oversight on a month-to-month basis. We can be brought in and consulted with if there are any issues or questions that come up." Busek oversaw ATAC's development of ITS architectures for the State of North Dakota and three MPOs in the state. The architectures were in place for all four agencies well before the April deadline. "Now the challenge is to actually use them and make that a meaningful process. ATAC's role will be to make sure staff understand their architecture and look at it critically and adjust it. It will be equally as big a job to use and maintain the architectures. ATAC staff, as the ones who know the architectures best, will have a major role in that." Busek and the FHWA are also involved in a statewide traffic operations roundtable coordinated by ATAC. Traffic engineers and traffic operations staff from around the state will meet to share ideas and approaches to minimize congestion and improve safety. "That's going to be a tremendous opportunity," Busek notes. Finally, ATAC is working with the DOT and the FHWA to study the use of ITS in work zones to improve safety. "ATAC has really stepped up to the plate. To make that happen, we'll really be relying on the resources of ATAC. The staff members know the technical side and the people side of things and have the ability to put that together," Busek says. Busek is a Bismarck native and a 1975 graduate of the North Dakota State University civil engineering program. He joined the FHWA immediately after college and completed training in Colorado, Texas and Florida. He also worked in Florida and Wisconsin as an area engineer with FHWA before returning to Bismarck in 1984. Of course, Busek's responsibilities are much broader than interaction with ATAC. Busek notes that his agency provides major funding to the state- about $200 million annually. Most of that funding moves through the NDDOT and its sub-grantees. "Our job is to provide some degree of oversight of Federal-aid Highway funds that come to North Dakota," Busek says. Recent projects include:
A second major role of the FHWA is to provide technical support to agencies in the state. "That support is primarily to the DOT, but also to counties and cities. In terms of technical support, I'm the point of contact in the safety, traffic operations and ITS areas to assess what our partners need and try to satisfy those needs." FHWA's third primary role is technology transfer. "It's our effort to build the professional capacity of folks, to make sure everyone on the job has the tools they need in a higher technological world." Busek says he looks for opportunities to find and observe best practices in surrounding states. "I've organized and led scanning trips involving many of our traffic engineers and other staff in North Dakota to observe new and innovative technologies in Denver, Duluth, Minneapolis and elsewhere to look at how things are done and bring those ideas back here." Another approach is to bring in training opportunities for transportation professionals in the state. That's an area where ATAC has been involved. Recent examples include sessions on ITS standards. Busek says there are several issues related to highway safety and ITS that will need continuing attention in North Dakota. He says the state needs to maintain strong safety design standards in its preventive maintenance programs. The state also needs to continue to build expertise and understanding of ITS at state and local levels. "Finally, we need to actively promote safety engineering issues as a key component of integrated safety in the state's strategic planning process," Busek says. |
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His work also brings him in close contact with ATAC and its staff. In most cases, Busek says, FHWA ITS Integration Program funding destined for ATAC goes to the NDDOT first. "It's just financially simpler to move funds into the DOT first and then ATAC becomes a sub-grantee," he says. "At the state level, we're given the responsibility to work with grantees and sub-grantees to develop project proposals and work plans to meet the intent of the ITS Program."