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Highway and Motor Carrier

Transportation Sector Network Management

Our Vision

The vision of the highway mode is to lead the national effort to maintain the capability to move freely and facilitate commerce in all conditions, and to continuously set the standard for excellence in highway transportation security through our people, processes, and technology.

Background and Overview

The highway transportation mode is unique in that it consists of privately owned vehicles traveling on publicly maintained roads. In 2001 the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) reports that the 50 states spend $104 billion to build and maintain highway infrastructure that supported some 2.7 trillion vehicle miles of travel.

The U.S. highway infrastructure includes

• 46,717 miles of Interstate highway (BTS, 2001)
• 114,700 miles of other National Highway System roads (BTS, 2001)
• 3,801,849 miles of other roads (BTS, 2001)
• 582,000 bridges over 20 feet of span, (AASHTO, 2002)
• 54 tunnels over 500 meters in length (AASHTO, 2002)
• Over 50 freeway traffic operations centers (USDOT, 2002)
• Over 300 municipal traffic operations centers (USDOT, 2002)

The U.S. economy is totally dependent on this infrastructure. It includes many historically and culturally significant structures that are easily accessible to vehicles of all kinds without screening or inspection. Some of these structures also have high economic value and could easily be targeted by terrorists. Trucks routinely carry hazardous materials that could be used to attack targets that are part of, or are adjacent to, the highway system. This was conclusively demonstrated with a truck bomb at the Murrah Federal Building in Okalahoma City, April, 1995 and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City.

No one entity owns or operates the entire highway infrastructure in the United States Roads, bridges, and tunnels are owned and operated by states, counties or parishes, municipalities, Native American tribal authorities, private enterprise, and authorities made up of any conceivable grouping of these entities. Indeed, any piece of the infrastructure system may be owned by one entity, yet operated by another through cooperative agreement or long-term lease.

The U.S. vehicle fleet includes 7.9 million trucks, 750 thousand buses, 137 million cars, 4.9 million motorcycles, and 84 million other 2-axle vehicles. The motor carrier industry, which does not include the intra-city buses of the mass transit industry, consists of three primary stakeholder constituencies:

The $5 Billion U.S. Motorcoach Industry

• Scheduled ($1.5 billion/year),
• Charter/Tour ($3.5 billion/year),
• 3,600 bus companies (90% are small operators with fewer than 25 buses),
• 39,000 buses,
• 190,000 jobs provided (122,000 full-time), and
• 630 million passengers annually.

The School Bus Industry

• Largest fleet of public vehicles in the United States,
• 460,000 school buses,
• Transports 25 million students daily, and
• Travels 4 billion miles annually for an estimated 10 billion student trips.

The Motor Carrier Freight Industry

• 1.2 million motor carriers in the United States,
• 9.7 million workers including 3.3 million drivers,
• 15.5 million trucks that operate in the United States,
• 40,000 new motor carriers annually,
• 42,000 HAZMAT trucks, and
• 75% of U.S. communities depend solely on trucking for the movement of commodities.

HMC Senior Staff

Bill Arrington
General Manager

Ray Cotton
Assistant General Manager

Bud Hunt
Threats, Vulnerabilities and Consequence Branch Chief

Paul Pitzer
Policy and Planning Branch Chief

Steve Sprague
Highway Passenger, Infrastructure and Licensing Branch Chief

Phil Forjan
Motor Carrier/Trucking Branch Chief