A View on the Future of Highways & Bridges: A Q&A Mara Campbell

Transportation infrastructure is the backbone of society, enabling efficient movement of people and goods, fostering economic growth, and enhancing quality of life by connecting communities and supporting sustainable development.

Jacobs provides unmatched expertise in highway and bridge engineering and design, environmental documentation, program and construction management and highway safety – and we’re your neighbors, people who understand your stakeholder requirements and local challenges. That’s how we combine the right technical design, environmental, traffic, and safety expertise to offer the right solution that fits your needs. 

In this Q&A, we connect with Mara Campbell, our new director of highways and bridges for the Americas, to talk about the trends, technologies and solutions driving a more connected, sustainable transportation future. 

Tell us a bit about what a day in the life is like as the Americas Market Director for Highways and Bridges, and what we offer to our clients in this area. 

My new role is focused on helping our team win major pursuits and then guiding our operations teammates to deliver these critical infrastructure upgrades.

As our infrastructure ages and population increases, we use new technology and expertise to develop innovative solutions to address future transportation demand.  Ultimately, our team partners with the transportation industry to improve the movement of goods, services, and people by providing connectivity, accessibility, equity and resiliency within our transportation system. 

What are the biggest challenges in highways and bridges today?

We’re amid the most significant changes in transportation since President Eisenhower’s highway expansion program in 1956, which expanded the system from 1,000 to 41,000 miles in just over 12 years.  

The advancements in technology, the lack of investment for roads and bridges, serious injuries and deaths on roadways, and mitigating and responding to climate change are just a few challenges facing the transportation industry.  

• Advances in technology are disrupting transportation systems as autonomous vehicle technologies mature and micromobility trends are refined, becoming a part of our transportation system.  The need for roads and bridges will remain, but with autonomous vehicles, striping and planning for infrastructure will need to be different.  Other technologies such as BIM (building information modeling) and digital twins are impacting the way we work, adding efficiencies that didn’t exist before, while changing how we do business.
• Lack of investment in highways and bridges is holding back major progress in U.S. transportation infrastructure. Two well-documented facts characterize infrastructure investment in the U.S.: there’s been less investment in recent decades and reversing that decline would deliver meaningful economic benefits.  Investing in our infrastructure can strengthen our long-term capacity while creating opportunity for Americans in disadvantaged communities. The challenge is a big one, as the U.S. currently ranks 13^th in the amount of infrastructure investment being made globally, but that just creates an even greater opportunity to capitalize on. 
• Serious injuries and deaths on our roadways are unacceptable and have only risen over the last five years.  Almost 95% of people who die using our nation’s transportation networks are killed on our streets, roads, and highways, and this threat to our safety is getting worse. These incidents are avoidable and it will take creative, forward-thinking design and plans to make safety a priority again.
• Climate change forces us to think about transportation sustainability and infrastructure resiliency.   This is a huge challenge as hurricanes and other related threats are significantly damaging roads and bridges across the Americas. Preparing for and recovering from a varying climate will continue to be a top focus for our clients across the Americas.

How do we help clients think differently to respond to these challenges and those of the future?  

Our experience in highway and bridge engineering and design is unmatched. We bring a broad perspective to each of our projects, offering innovation and different ways of thinking to keep people safe and move goods and people efficiently.  Our team is always exploring ways to improve the journey, helping our clients see things differently.   Additionally, our team is building new tools to analyze, optimize and better design roadways and bridges for an enhanced and safer experience.  

A great example is our acquisition of StreetLight Data. Before StreetLight, it took manual counts, roadside surveys, and months of data collection to understand traffic flow. With StreetLight, we can now combine machine learning with deep transportation knowledge to shed light on how people, goods, and services move — and makes modern analytics available on-demand to professionals shaping today’s transportation. We also use StreetLight solutions to pinpoint and mitigate traffic disruptions during project construction. For example, its construction solutions allow us to view traffic patterns to optimize closure allowances and create data-driven detour plans before the build. Then during construction, StreetLight software allows us to observe traffic flows to dynamically adjust plans and build targeted public messaging about disruptions. Post-project, it allows us to analyze travel patterns and generate reports to illustrate the improvements. Together, these solutions are changing how we design, build and operate infrastructure into the future.

As the market will surely continue to shift, what are some of the biggest opportunities ahead?

It’s easy to be proud of the work we do every day. Roads and bridges are the lifelines of our communities – connecting people, fostering economic growth, and ensuring safe and efficient travel for all.