Asset Relocation and Realignment

Introduction to Asset Relocation and Realignment

Beyond protecting or redesigning assets in-place, agencies can consider relocating (or “realigning”) as another alternative to formal disinvestment. Relocating or realigning roads, or high-risk segments of roads, to less vulnerable locations may offer a longer-term solution than design modifications or protective measures. This approach has been utilized in some coastal states to ensure longer-term safety of roads threatened by erosion, frequent inundation, or washout from storms and to reduce future maintenance needs of roads.

State DOTs in particular may be encouraged to consider options for realignment when dealing with coastal highways that are vulnerable to extreme events. Under Federal Highway Administration regulations, state DOTs are required to conduct periodic evaluations to determine if reasonable alternatives exist to roads, highways, or bridges that have repeatedly required repair and reconstruction activities due to emergency events such as natural disasters.^{See footnote 1}

Erosion affecting SR 1 in Sonoma County, CA, where Caltrans is pursuing realignment. Source: Caltrans.

The intent is to encourage more cost-effective transportation planning and investment. The results of these evaluations are to be incorporated when state DOTs develop projects and are encouraged to be considered in long-range planning.^{See footnote 2} While these requirements do not apply at the municipal level, nor do they require analysis of repeated damage from non-emergency events such as high tide flooding, they may help encourage infrastructure agencies to plan proactively and build analyses and justifications for relocating infrastructure in high-risk coastal areas.^{See footnote 3}

Asset Relocation and Realignment in a Managed Retreat Context

In the context of a coastal area considering the need for managed retreat in the future, a road relocation or realignment strategy is likely a temporary solution, albeit an often longer-term solution than design modifications or protective features. Where additional near-term managed retreat tools are being pursued, this strategy may not be necessary or appropriate as use of the road would be expected to dwindle as retreat tools are implemented, leading in the extreme to a scenario where a resilient road does not serve any community. Transportation agencies might consider developing a proactive phased approach to public infrastructure disinvestment as part of a managed retreat strategy, which may include road realignment as a strategy to bridge the gap (as with design modifications and protective features) to permanent disinvestment. However, this strategy comes with significant administrative and financial burdens, and accordingly agencies will likely reserve this option for the most critical or heavily used routes.

Policy Tradeoffs of Asset Relocation and Realignment

Practice Tips

When considering the need for relocating/realigning public infrastructure such as roads and bridges, as compared to alternative strategies (redesign in place, disinvestment), decisionmakers may wish to consider the following practice tips to balance policy tradeoffs:

• Engage the public and communities likely to be affected by a road relocation or realignment strategy: This includes users who may be affected by any closures anticipated during construction or by the new siting of the route. Governments should solicit input through public meetings and active community outreach early in the planning process to identify community concerns and aim to address or mitigate them during siting, design, and construction.  For example, a realignment strategy may elicit concerns of loss of public access to the coast, travel delays, impacts to communities located near or around the original alignment and the proposed realignment, and more. In particular, residents and communities located in the areas proposed for a new road alignment should be engaged in the decisionmaking process at all stages in order to ensure that there will not be any adverse impacts to community cohesion or economies. Past practices relating to siting of the Interstate Highway System, for example, provide stark examples of how government decisions relating to infrastructure siting can destroy or isolate vibrant neighborhoods. Decisionmakers should learn from these mistakes of the past and view public and community engagement as a critical and ongoing component of the decisionmaking process in this context.

• Develop robust analysis and projections of future conditions to inform a realignment strategy: Given the significant administrative and construction costs of this strategy, decisionmakers will want to ensure the relocated road will last under future conditions for the full desired lifetime of the asset. Therefore it is important to have robust science and data regarding coastal impacts that the existing road is experiencing, like tidal flooding and erosion, and to understand how those impacts may continue, change, or accelerate in the future to determine siting options that will ensure long-term safety of the road.
  

• Integrate relocation and realignment strategies for high-risk coastal assets into transportation planning efforts and consider appropriate timing within asset management and investment cycles: As discussed above, state DOTs are required to develop risk-based asset management plans and to conduct periodic evaluations of alternatives to roads, highways, and bridges that have required repeated repairs due to emergency events. The information generated through periodic evaluations can inform both asset management and long-range planning and help transportation agencies evaluate timing of and potential funding to implement relocation and realignment strategies for repeatedly damaged roads.^{See footnote 6} For example, FHWA has clarified that both Federal-aid highway funding^{See footnote 7} and Emergency Relief (ER) funding^{See footnote 8} following disaster events can be used for resilience purposes, which may include design or protective measures and relocation strategies. In the case of ER funding, “betterments” that replace an asset with resilience improvements compared to the pre-disaster design or siting can be justified and federally reimbursed if the resilience improvement are required by newer standards in place at the time of disaster (e.g., state highway siting and design criteria) or if economically justified.^{See footnote 9}  Agencies eligible to receive federal disaster recovery funding for transportation can therefore plan ahead by identifying opportunities to rebuild more resiliently in following the next storm event and by adjusting siting and design criteria, codes, and standards in advance of the next storm event.
  

• Adopt an adaptive management approach: Policymakers can adopt approaches that “[track] hazards, impacts, costs, and effectiveness of adaptations and post-disaster response”^{See footnote 10} to inform future adaptation, realignment, or disinvestment policies and approaches. An adaptive management approach should consider the thresholds at which a protect-in-place strategy might give way to a realignment strategy, or at which a realignment strategy might give way to disinvestment as a more viable permanent solution. Thresholds might include environmental conditions such as the number of times inundated in a year, or policy triggers such as the implementation of other managed retreat tools that results in shifting public needs and priorities. Adaptive management should involve monitoring conditions proactively in order to leave time for planning and engagement around disinvestment strategies as threshold or “trigger” conditions are approaching.