Full text: Gov. Rick Snyder makes case for improving Michigan infrastructure

Michigan is also a national leader in the development of new technologies including:

Life-cycle budgeting, a process that abandons the old, short-term approach of quick fixes for road maintenance and places emphasis on maximizing the life of the road. A Congressional Budget Office study shows life-cycle budgeting can reduce long-term maintenance costs by 40 percent.

High-strength Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) to reinforce concrete bridges. The use of this new product offers several distinct advantages, one of which is the virtual elimination of corrosion, a common problem among steel reinforced bridges.

Energy efficient LEDs in freeway lighting and trunkline signaling devices. Today, some 55 percent of state highway lights have been upgraded with LED lenses. As a result, MDOT is seeing a 90 percent power savings where LEDs are used.

The use of solar power to reduce its energy consumption. A demonstration project undertaken with the Michigan Economic Development Corporation Michigan Energy Office is using elevated solar panels at an MDOT carpool lot in west Michigan to feed power directly into the electrical grid during the day and offset the power needed for the freeway interchange lights at night.

A modern electronic bidding system developed in partnership with the private sector that uses the Internet to reduce errors, save taxpayer dollars, and shorten processing time. That means doing away with 10,000 pieces of paper that a single bid letting previously required along with the inefficiencies of such a labor-intensive process. For example, in 2002, the state had 34 low bid rejections, which cost about $370,000 to correct. In 2007, with the introduction of electronic bidding, there were no low bid rejections among 1,106 projects.

These innovations have saved money and stretched our transportation dollars, and we must do more. Today, I am challenging MDOT to provide opportunities for increased competition for maintenance services, like snow plowing. I propose taking a portion of the state network and competitively bidding for long-term engineering management services, construction and maintenance operations. I am giving the department 12 months to have the contracts in place and report back to me on the progress.

Moving to a performance-based system for managing and maintaining roads will lead to more efficiency in the preservation of our roads and bridges and save taxpayers money.

It is time to streamline the way we do business. We saw how successfully that worked for the auto companies who took painful steps to become leaner and more efficient. Ultimately, those difficult decisions helped make those companies sustainable. Many other businesses in Michigan have had to make similar painful choices in order to survive the past decade of difficult economic times.