00:00Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll try to wrap it up here, but Senator Lummis had to leave,
00:05but she wanted me to ask you a question, Chad, on her behalf. So I'm going to do my best to
00:11sort of summarize her point here. She wanted to touch on her legislation, Senate 1066,
00:18Highway Funding Flexibility Act. I think you might have mentioned it. It addresses the practical
00:25reality that the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program is fraught with significant
00:30implementation challenges, which has left substantial funds unobligated, while states
00:35have, of course, high priorities. So her question is, from a state transportation management
00:40perspective, can you explain how the flexibility to redirect stalled NEVI funds to highway and
00:46bridge projects could help deliver more immediate benefits to the public?
00:50Thank you, Chairman Cramer. In North Dakota, as in most states, we have a lot of needs. Needs
00:59outweigh the dollars out of variable form. So with the NEVI dollars, with the bill that you
01:05referred to, that would give the state's ability to spend those dollars on highways and bridges,
01:10which gets back to the basics of our system, spending dollars on highways and bridges. That
01:16would, that would give us the added flexibility to inject more dollars into, into our system. So
01:23we would be very open to that, rather than those dollars going elsewhere, to be having to flow back
01:27into the highways and bridges. Thank you. Okay, let me just wrap up with, I have a, I'm going to ask
01:35another safety question, but I'm going to ask it of you, Ms. Bidlin, you, Mr. Oren. It has to do with
01:40safety. Because one of the things we see, I, you know, we've talked a lot about how short North
01:45Dakota's season is. And in some respects, as much as we don't like to see winter, we do appreciate
01:50the fact that the freeway is wide open again. That said, as big a hurry as we are to get a highway
01:59maintained or built or, or fixed, we're also often too big a hurry to get to wherever our destination
02:07is. And don't pay close enough attention to the hazard of workers right on, on the, the very
02:14highway we're, we're driving on. Maybe, maybe you could, if you have any thoughts or suggestions
02:21legislatively that we should be looking at for improvement of, of worker safety. You know,
02:28I just know when I see orange, I slow down and, and, and the minimum fine doesn't even, isn't really
02:34the factor. It's more of the human situation that scares me. But, but maybe if you have some
02:39specific thoughts on how we can improve the legislation to help states with, with that
02:43program, it'd be useful. No, thank you so much for the question. And it certainly hits close to home
02:49for the state of Maryland. Certainly the tragedy that we experienced just last year was the one that
02:54I think garnered a lot of attention nationwide. But unfortunately, in March of the year prior,
02:59we experienced a, a crash on the Baltimore Beltway that killed six highway construction workers.
03:06We had vehicles traveling in excess of 100 miles per hour in work zone. And to your point, you know,
03:13not everyone, unfortunately has the same reaction to the human factor there. So in the state of
03:19Maryland, we previously did have, you know, work zone cameras that did issue tickets, but the maximum
03:24tish ticket, even for a repeat offender was still $40. And that just wasn't getting anyone's attention.
03:30So through working with our state legislature and the support of our governor and lieutenant governor
03:34who chaired a work group on this topic, we implemented legislation through the state of Maryland that
03:39introduced a tiered fine structure and also allows us to expand our implementation of work zone cameras.
03:46I always say that I hope we don't earn a single dollar through these programs because it's not about
03:50generating revenue. It's about protecting our workers and saving lives. But I would be happy to submit further some of
03:57the other components of that legislation for the subcommittee's consideration, things that we've seen that have been
04:01beneficial in the state of Maryland. And we do think that we've seen behavioral changes since some of that tiered
04:06structure and other technologies have been implemented.
04:09Well, deterrence can be expensive, but not nearly as expensive as not deterring.
04:14Mr. Oren, if you have thoughts on that, I'd welcome them.
04:17Senator, obviously safety is at the utmost importance in everything that we do every day.
04:22And a work zone is just don't accommodate contractors.
04:25Our workers from our departments are also in those same work zones.
04:29So it's very near and dear to our heart.
04:31The main thing I want to say there is we have a real good relationship with our AGC, our American general contractors.
04:38So we do work with them.
04:40And work zone is important, but we don't want to see a bunch of restrictions added to it.
04:45We still want flexibility to be able to work with our contractors and our partners on the work zone safety.
04:51And if we hear any feedback, we make corrections.
04:54We fix it.
04:55We listen to them because we know it's critical with that.
04:58A few examples of stuff that we did in North Dakota, as Samantha alluded to, we also just raised our fines within work zones,
05:07almost doubled them in the state.
05:08And that's going to go in effect on August 1.
05:10The state legislature does that.
05:12And another thing we do, and we've been doing for years and years and years, is we provide overtime dollars to our highway patrol.
05:21So then that they can patrol the work zone.
05:23So if there's contractors or our employees in work zones that feel like they think just the traffic's moving way too fast,
05:30things aren't quite right, they make a few phone calls and the highway patrol shows up and they patrol.
05:34And we help pay for the overtime for those highway patrolmen to be in those work zones to make sure that the workers are safe.
05:41Excellent.
05:42Well, thank you all very much for your testimony.
05:44It was a very valuable hearing and appreciate your contributions to that.
05:49With no further questions, I want to thank the witnesses, all my colleagues.
05:53Many more participated than I actually thought were going to, so I'm grateful for their participation.
05:58Senators who wish to submit written questions for the record have until 5 p.m. Wednesday, August 6th to do so.
06:06Witnesses' responses to those questions are due back to the committee no later than 5 o'clock on Wednesday, August 20th,
06:13and will be submitted for the record.
06:15That would be 5 o'clock p.m.
06:16Not everybody gets up at 4.30 like I do.
06:19With that, this hearing is adjourned.
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