| Billions of federal highway dollars may be on the way, and West Virginia officials are positioning themselves to reap some of that bounty.
Story by Walt Williams
Billions of dollars may be on the way to states in the form of federal highway funding, and as negotiations in Washington, D.C., are about to begin, state officials say they are positioning themselves reap some of that bounty.
State officials have identified $600 million in transportation projects that could be launched within 90 days if the funding was made available, State Secretary of Transportation Paul Mattox recently said on "Decision Makers," a public affairs program of West Virginia Media.
Mattox said afterward that another $600 million in projects could be launched within 180 days of receiving funding. That raises possibility that $1.2 billion in projects could be ready to proceed in a year's time if money were available.
Among the projects are sections of Corridor H in West Virginia's Potomac Highlands and Eastern Panhandle and a 13-mile stretch of U.S. Route 35 from Mason County to the Buffalo Bridge.
"There is a chance" money will be made available for U.S. 35, he said. "We don't know how much is going to be available to us."
That very question is what federal lawmakers will spend next year trying to decide. President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to inject billions of dollars into infrastructure projects in an effort to provide jobs and boost a sagging economy.
But perhaps just as importantly for transportation, lawmakers will begin negotiating the next highway spending bill, which spells how much funding states receive for road and bridge projects for a total of six years.
The previous bill the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act, or SAFETEA set aside $244 billion for public transportation when it was signed into law in 2005, the largest amount of money that had ever been targeted for surface transportation.
Highway funding is based on a complicated model that takes into account several factors. Mattox said two of the most important are the number of highway miles in a state and the amount of traffic that passes over them.
West Virginia gets roughly $100,000 per mile of public highway in the state under the current formula, he said.
Many states are facing huge budget deficits in coming years, and as a result, they're scrambling to put themselves in the best position to receive some of the potential federal windfall.
A recent survey of states by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials found more than 5,000 transportation projects that could be launched within 180 days if the funding was made available. The total cost for launching all of them would come to nearly $66 billion.
West Virginia's own standing for getting a large chunk of whatever money is set aside may have received a boost with the announcement Dec. 16 that Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., would be named the new chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Rockefeller specifically noted Obama's pledge to revive the nation's economy in the news release announcing his new role as committee chairman.
"The Commerce Committee has a major role to play in rebuilding our economy and our sagging infrastructure, making America more competitive, and delivering prosperity for families in West Virginia and throughout the United States," he said. |