More streamlined and efficient - sounds like a new car. But it's the new-model state Department of Transportation, or so the DOT said recently in announcing a major reorganization.

Will taxpayers really get more mileage from their transportation tax dollars? It's possible. Things are off to a reasonably good start.

No doubt, the DOT has long needed a management upgrade. That infamous twice-paved section of I-40 made the department the butt of jokes. Much-needed bridge projects have languished for years. Cronyism and political influence have flourished, and morale has suffered. There's an obvious need for renewal and reorganization of this vast, statewide agency with 14,000 employees.

And that, in the wake of a $3.6 million report on the DOT by a consulting firm, and a special committee's separate study, is what the agency has now rolled out. Highlights include renaming and regrouping nearly all the department's units to increase focus and efficiency. There's a welcome new emphasis on strategic planning. And in a step that helps bring the DOT into the era of $4 gas, its 14 regional divisions, which focus on setting local highway priorities, will become "transportation divisions." If this means a higher priority for worthy transit, bicycle and pedestrian projects, it's about time.

There's a new slot for a departmental inspector general -- a so-far-vacant job that cries out to be filled with someone with high standards and a sharp nose for sniffing out waste.

The DOT is also getting a separate chief operating officer. To understand the job's importance, it's only necessary to consider its context.

North Carolina has both a secretary of transportation (Lyndo Tippett, appointed by the governor) and a Board of Transportation (also appointed by the governor, often from among campaign fund-raisers), which has its own chairman (Doug Galyon). It would make more sense, by the way, for the DOT secretary to chair the board. And for board members to be appointed strictly on their merits, not their wallets.

What the department hasn't had is a strong professional administrator in the No. 2 slot. Instead, that person has held the title of chief deputy secretary. The present chief deputy is a former legislator who started out at the DOT as its legislative lobbyist.

In the new scheme, the chief operating officer will be "responsible for the oversight and management of all departmental operations, expanding the position's role to managing program delivery."

That sounds like an overdue stress on professional administrative expertise. Or maybe it's just a title change.

In the reorganization, the former chief deputy secretary is -- immediately and apparently without an advertised job search -- the DOT's chief operating officer (a function he already claimed).

Dan DeVane is the man, and it may be that in the 14 years since he joined the department as its lobbyist he's proven well equipped for wider responsibilities. But given the scope of DOT's problems -- why else fork out $3.6 million? -- people could be forgiven for expecting a new face and a requirement for professional credentials. Perhaps, midway through a gubernatorial election year, such a major move must await a new governor.

Meanwhile, the state's 21st Century Transportation Committee, which reported to the legislature this spring, is set to renew its work this month. The DOT has taken some good steps. The committee can prod it to take more.

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