The Boulder Daily Camera reports that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Monday during a visit to Broomfield that the recent stimulus grant to extend U.S. 36’s bus, car pool and managed lanes will give that project “a running start” and bring jobs to the area. Pelosi was in Broomfield to tout the anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The project to widen U.S. 36 will receive $10 million from the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program. The project was one of 51 winners selected from more than 1,400 applicants. The grant was announced Feb. 17.
The Federal Times reports that Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood said Wednesday the department has a backlog between $80 billion and $100 billion in high-priority infrastructure improvement projects that it cannot afford to fund.
The Journal of Commerce reports that stimulus funds for transportation infrastructure have so far paid to complete more than 3,000 construction projects around the United States and are now supporting three times that many under construction.
Those numbers come from the latest oversight report from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, based on data as of Dec. 31.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act set aside $64.1 billion for expenditures under the committee’s jurisdiction. The report said nearly 17,000 projects totaling $56 billion have already been identified.
Go to the Journal of Commerce …
The Washington Post says that a new report released Tuesday by congressional economists said the economic stimulus law added between 1 million to 2.1 million workers to employment rolls by the end of last year.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office study also said the $862 billion stimulus added between 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points to the growth of the economy in 2009. The controversial stimulus law combined tax breaks for individuals and businesses with lots of government spending.
The Regional Transportation District has put together a $122.6 million wish list of projects that are ready to go in the event Congress approves a second stimulus program for transportation infrastructure. Half of that total consists of four FasTracks pieces totaling $60.5 million.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is giving a $10 million grant to extend U.S. 36 bus-car pool lanes and adding toll-paying solo drivers – far short of the $200 million the state sought but allowing work to proceed incrementally.
As the Senate debates the merits of a Jobs Bill, a new report — Projects and Paychecks: a One-Year Report on State Transportation Successes under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — finds that more than 280,000 jobs were created and more than 12,250 transportation projects are underway as a result of the jobs bill signed into law one year ago.
The Federal Highway Administration this week approved Colorado’s last highway Recovery Act project, which means Colorado has now obligated all $385.6 million in highway funds nearly one month ahead of the March 2 deadline.
The Journal of Commerce reports that the U.S. Department of Transportation paid states a hefty $524 million in the week ending Jan. 22 to reimburse them for construction project costs under last year’s stimulus law, raising the total paid out so far to $8.787 billion.
The week before that, DOT paid out only $162 million to states, well below the average of roughly $300 million. In all, DOT will spend $48 billion on highway and bridge, airport, transit and inter-city passenger rail projects under American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which was designed to spend most of its funds over two years.
With the possibility of a second wave of stimulus funding coming out of Washington, Colorado’s transportation planners are solidifying lists of shovel-ready projects that can quickly ride that wave from the drawing board to the ground.
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