University of California Transportation Center

Many state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) are engaged in strategic planning aimed at helping them improve their ability to identify coming problems and improve their ability to innovate. This paper examines common concerns or 'threats' currently facing DOTs, and identifies strategies to address them, or 'opportunities' that many DOTs support. The paper gives examples of innovative projects and programs from DOTs around the U.S., across a spectrum from leading innovative agencies to those just starting to initiate a discussion about change. Our methodology was to scan recent reports on critical issues and changing trends from a variety of experts and transportation stakeholder groups representing a broad selection of viewpoints. We then sought examples of how DOTs are currently innovating to address these critical issues and changing trends—both opportunities and threats—and identified ten main ways in which DOTs are adapting to meet them. Many reports on innovative DOTs describe small incremental changes, or lacked attention as to the timeframe over which an innovative solution might be expected to take hold. The selected examples of DOT innovation illustrate a broad range of how DOTs are currently responding and adapting to critical issues and changing trends. Within these, we identified four key factors that can help foster innovative DOTs: external pressure from state mandates; special attention to internal factors like culture, processes, and relationships with external partners; strong top level leadership that is consistent over time; and technical assistance from outside experts.