49 U.S.C. § 104: Federal Highway Administration

The Federal Highway Administration is an administration in the Department of Transportation. The head of the Administration is the Administrator who is appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. The Administrator reports directly to the Secretary of Transportation. The Administration has a Deputy Federal Highway Administrator who is appointed by the Secretary, with the approval of the President. The Deputy Administrator shall carry out duties and powers prescribed by the Administrator. The Administration has an Assistant Federal Highway Administrator appointed in the competitive service by the Secretary, with the approval of the President. The Assistant Administrator is the chief engineer of the Administration. The Assistant Administrator shall carry out duties and powers prescribed by the Administrator. duties and powers vested in the Secretary by chapter 4 of title 23 for highway safety programs, research, and development related to highway design, construction and maintenance, traffic control devices, identification and surveillance of accident locations, and highway-related aspects of pedestrian safety; and additional duties and powers prescribed by the Secretary. Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 101(d) and 144 of title 23, highway bridges determined to be unreasonable obstructions to navigation under the Truman-Hobbs Act may be funded from amounts set aside from the discretionary bridge program. The Secretary shall transfer these allocations and the responsibility for administration of these funds to the United States Coast Guard. The Secretary [of Transportation] shall eliminate any programmatic decisionmaking responsibility of the regional offices of the Federal Highway Administration for the Federal-aid highway program as part of the Administration’s efforts to restructure its field organization. In carrying out paragraph (1), the Secretary shall eliminate regional offices, create technical resource centers, and, to the maximum extent practicable, delegate authority to State offices of the Federal Highway Administration. In locating the technical resource centers, the Secretary shall give preference to cities that house, on the date of enactment of this Act [ June 9, 1998 ], the Federal Highway Administration regional offices and are in locations that minimize the travel distance between the technical resource centers and the Federal Highway Administration division offices that will be served by the new technical resource centers. The Secretary shall transmit to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Environment and Public Works of the Senate a detailed implementation plan to carry out this section not later than September 30, 1998 , and thereafter provide periodic progress reports on carrying out this section to such Committees. The Secretary shall begin implementation of the plan transmitted under subsection (c) not later than December 31, 1998 .”