This May marks the 20th anniversary of Mn/DOT’s Adopt a Highway program, a public service campaign where community groups, churches, businesses and individuals pick up litter along Minnesota highways. The program was established in 1990 by Gov. Rudy Perpich and former Mn/DOT Commissioner Len Levine.

“The program enables environmentally conscious people to make a personal contribution to a cleaner environment,” said Jan Ekern, Statewide Adopt a Highway coordinator. “Thanks to these dedicated volunteers and their organizations, our department can use the resources that would have been used to pick up litter for highway improvement and safety projects.”

In the 20 years since its introduction, the program has saved the state of Minnesota millions of dollars.

“Adopt a Highway volunteers pick up 26,000 tons of litter per year along Minnesota highways,” Ekern said. “This saves Mn/DOT an estimated $5 million annually.”

There are more than 12,000 miles of state highway in Minnesota of which 9,800 miles are adopted. Currently, there are an estimated 4,500 statewide groups and 45,000 volunteers registered. 

“With April 22 marking the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s outstanding to see the number of people willing to make a difference in this environmentally altering effort,” Ekern said. “Still, there are many more miles of highway waiting to be adopted.”

By joining the Adopt a Highway program, groups agree to:

• Adopt a highway for a minimum of two years
• Select a segment of highway approximately two miles in length
• Pick up litter on both sides of a highway
• Pick up litter as often as needed spring through fall—usually two to three times a year
• Notify Mn/DOT after every pickup

In return, Mn/DOT will:

• Help volunteer groups select a highway to adopt—roads that have heavy traffic or are inaccessible to pedestrians are not eligible
• Provide retroreflective safety vests, trash bags and safety information
• Remove filled bags and large, heavy or hazardous items from roadsides
• Erect a sign along the group’s section of highway to recognize their commitment to a cleaner environment

For more information about the Adopt a Highway program, visit http://www.dot.state.mn.us/adopt or contact Jan Ekern at 651-366-3548.

All eight of Mn/DOT’s district offices and Central Office will observe Workers Memorial Day on April 28.

Employees can participate by wearing their Workers Memorial Day pins to honor the 31 state highway workers and 13 contract workers who lost their lives while working on Mn/DOT construction projects.

Districts will play a pre-recorded address by Commissioner Tom Sorel and observe 10 seconds of silence.

Additionally, Metro District and District 6 will host programs featuring speakers from Mn/DOT, the Minnesota State Patrol and local unions.

For more information on Workers Memorial Day events, contact Beth Petrowske at 651-366-4280.

Starting this week, employees will learn about Mn/DOT’s new Shared Competencies through a multi-faceted marketing approach nicknamed the “B” campaign.

The new competencies—character, innovation, leadership, responsibility, team work, and technical ability—encompass the knowledge, skills and attitudes expected of all who work at Mn/DOT.

Each week one competency will be spotlighted and employees will be given an opportunity to learn about each in more depth.

“Many in our work force already model these competencies, but through recognizing them as our Shared Competencies, we will better appreciate their importance to gaining and maintaining the public’s trust and confidence,” said Commissioner Tom Sorel. “The competencies provide a framework that is critical to our future success. They will guide us, as public servants, in making the people of Minnesota’s destination, our priority.”

“These competencies were created to align with Mn/DOT’s Strategic Vision and will be an integral part of how we do business. They will be incorporated into some of Mn/DOT’s important internal procedures such as how we hire people and the way we provide our public service,” said Lydia Bergen, Human Resources.

Sorel will introduce the Shared Competencies on Thursday, April 22, at 1 p.m. via a webcast (webcast link: http://oitw2ksvideo1.ad.dot.state.mn.us/dot3.asx). A rerun is scheduled for April 26 at 10 a.m. Employees can learn more about the competencies by watching the short webcast or by checking out the Shared Competencies iHUB site at: http://ihub/hr/competencies.

“The Web site includes a place where employees can reflect on their experiences related to the competencies. We will post several examples of reflections submitted each week,” Bergen said.

Submissions also can be sent via e-mail to: sharedcompetence.dot@state.mn.us.

The campaign elements also include posters, brochures and pins encouraging everyone to “B” each of the competencies.

“I hope employees will wear or display the “B” button for the next six weeks,” Bergen said. “We designed the button as a fun way to remind folks of this new initiative playing off the word ‘be’.”

For more information about the Shared Competencies, contact Lydia Bergen at 651-366-3373.

Mn/DOT received an award in customer satisfaction from the Swedish Road Administration as part of the Road to Excellence, an international competition between national road authorities. Mn/DOT received the award for its market research in determining how satisfied customers are with the department’s road maintenance efforts.

“The international challenge was an innovative way of bringing together road maintenance experts from a number of counties to learn from each other and to see how our maintenance practices measured up against each other,” said Steve Lund, state maintenance engineer.  

Beyond the competition, Lund traveled to Sweden to explore future technology exchange and knowledge transfer opportunities between the department and the Swedish Road Administration. Mn/DOT currently has an international exchange agreement with Sweden.    

“The Swedes are known internationally as world leaders in road maintenance,” Lund said. “We can learn from each other’s efforts in many areas of transportation.”

As part of the competition, eight countries were invited to compete in four categories of road maintenance—customer satisfaction; energy and environmental efficiency; efficiency of rendered services; competence development and identifying best practice for research and development.

Each country completed a detailed questionnaire on each of the four categories prior to the conference. A team from Aalto University School of Science and Technology then evaluated each country based on their responses. As a follow up to the written submittal, two representatives from Aalto University visited each county to further evaluate the responses.

“It was pretty special to receive this award, particularly in the area of customer satisfaction,” Lund said. “This award was the most sought after prize of the four categories—let’s face it, all service providers want to score well in customer satisfaction.”

In addition to Mn/DOT, transportation agencies from Canada, Scotland, Finland, Norway, Denmark, Slovenia and Sweden competed in the challenge. Scotland won the award for efficiency of rendered services. Sweden won two awards in energy and environmental efficiency and identifying best practice for research and development.

By Qin Tang

The March 2010 edition of New Library Materials is now available at http://www.dot.state.mn.us/library/newlibmat.html.

New Library Materials is a compilation of book titles and other resources added to the library collection during the previous month. If you would like to be added to the distribution list, contact Pam Gonzalez at 651-366-3749.

Included in this issue is information about Kindle e-book readers that the Library has recently added to the collection to better meet the demand on books from the Commissioner’s Reading Corner list. In addition, there are several books on popular social networking tools such as Facebook, Twitter, wikis and blogs.  

By Bob Filipczak

As the physical plant supervisor for the western portion of District 6, Floyd Baird is responsible for some of the busiest rest areas in the state. Five of the eight class one rest areas he oversees are right on I-35W between the Iowa border and the Twin Cities. In terms of traffic and visitors, “they rank up there in the top 10 percent for the state,” according to Baird.

He also oversees nine truck stations and the District 6 building maintenance team, which he splits with his Rochester counterpart Steve Wondrasch. The entire maintenance team is responsible for 120 buildings located throughout District 6.

With such busy rest areas, what are your challenges?

It isn’t too different from maintaining other rest areas, except there’s a lot more wear and tear on the buildings. You also have to respond a lot faster. I’ve got one guy who is almost totally dedicated to the busiest rest areas—delivering supplies, testing the water and more.

How do you track how busy they are?

You can tell a lot by how much water is used. There are also industry standards that help you estimate visitors. For example, one roll of rest-area toilet paper is supposed to handle 122 people. So you can make educated guesses.

Water is important and we work with that a lot. Steve and I split up the district and we are the only Mn/DOT employees who carry wastewater licenses, which means we are certified to operate a wastewater plant for a small city. A couple of our rest areas have their own ponds and wastewater treatment facilities because they have so many visitors.

These rest areas can get crowded at night with all the trucks.

The truck parking for most of the rest areas was designed for the late 60’s and early 70’s. Back then, they were running around with 30-foot to 40-foot trailers. Now they are running around with 53-foot trailers—and the truck traffic has increased because the population has increased. You will see them parked all along the exit and entrance ramps late at night.

Do we have adequate spacing to hold all the trucks that want to stop there? No, we probably don’t.

Anything odd happen at your rest areas?