AASHTO Press Release
Today as states await action on a jobs bill, the list of ‘ready-to-go’ state infrastructure projects has surpassed the 9,800 mark. These projects, valued at more than $79 billion, will give state departments of transportation the resources necessary to put hundreds of thousands of people back to work, on projects that will improve travel and boost the economy.
(Inside Lane editor’s note: The AASHTO list shows Colorado as having 100 such projects with a cumulative value of $1.4 billion.)
In 2009, the transportation sector received just 6 percent of economic recovery funds, yet spending on state highway, bridge, transit, port, rail, and aviation projects has accounted so far for more than 24 percent of the jobs created. According to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, at least 250,000 direct, on-projects jobs, as well as hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs, were the result of 7,900 highway and transit projects that have broken ground across the country.
“Since we first released our survey back in December 2009, states have identified 300 additional ‘ready-to-go’ projects that can be approved for funding within 120 days,” said John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO). “States continue to turn recovery dollars into real jobs and paychecks.”
In December, AASHTO officials were joined by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman James Oberstar (D-MN), and House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) at a Capitol Hill news conference releasing the original state project survey.
Since then, the House of Representatives has approved the Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010, which would provide $37 billion for transportation projects – $27.5 billion for highway infrastructure projects, and $8.4 billion for public transportation. Based upon the record demonstrated under the Recovery Act, such funding could potentially create or support 1.1 million jobs.
“This survey illustrates the growing need for a significant investment in transportation infrastructure projects,” Horsley said. “The benefits are guaranteed and long lasting. Instead of the unemployment line, we’ll give hundreds of thousands of Americans the lifeline they need to stay in their homes, pay taxes, and rebuild our economy.”
You can find the updated survey online at http://downloads.transportation.org/Ready-to-Go.pdf.
CDOT Press Release
DOUGLAS/JEFFERSON COUNTY — Tonight, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) will resume weekend work on C-470 between I-25 and Santa Fe Drive as part of an American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) project. The project repairs and replaces concrete along nine miles of C-470 between I-25 and Santa Fe Drive, paves C-470 in asphalt and makes repairs to 26 miles of the C-470 bike path between I-25 and I-70.
“The project shutdown shortly before Thanksgiving so that our work would not impact holiday traffic,” said CDOT Project Engineer Scott Smith. “With the holidays behind us, the weekend work will resume and take place as weather permits.”
This weekend, crews will work from 8 p.m. on Friday, January 29th until 5 a.m. on Monday, February 1st. During this time, the following closures will be in place on C-470 and major delays are expected:
Eastbound C-470 between University Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard- The left lane of eastbound C-470 will be closed from 8 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday. Major delays are expected and alternate routes are strongly advised.
Since the concrete repairs require crews to place new concrete, there is about a 10 to 12-hour timeframe in which the concrete has to cure. During this time, the lane closure will remain in place but crews will not be visibly working. This is a necessary process for concrete replacement to ensure the pavement is of high quality and can withstand the heavy traffic C-470 handles. Once the concrete cures, crews will stripe and conduct some other minor work before reopening the left lane of eastbound C-470 between University Boulevard and Colorado Boulevard.
CDOT would like to remind motorists to obey all traffic signs and flaggers and to “Slow for the Cone Zone.” Most fines will be doubled if the infraction occurs in the work zone.
Castle Rock Construction Co. of Centennial, CO is the contractor for this $32 million Recovery Act project, which is scheduled to be complete in September 2010.
In all, Colorado will receive more than $400 million from the Recovery Act for transportation projects and $103 million for transit projects. For more information about how Colorado is putting the recovery act to work, visit www.colorado.gov/recovery. For a list of CDOT’s Recovery Act projects, visit www.dot.state.co.us/arra.
Adam Prince’s blog, Sure Why Not, notes that there will be a lot of unhappy people in many states next month when the U.S. Department of Transportation announces winners of TIGER transportation infrastructure discretionary grants, a part of President Obama’s stimulus program.
In a chart accompanying Prince’s blog, Colorado is shown as having submitted 30 grant requests totaling just over $1.1 billion. They include a request for up to $200 million to begin the first phase of bus-car pool-toll lanes on U.S. 36, and a $62.5 million request for safety and improvement work on CO 119 near Black Hawk.
TIGER stands for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery.
The Denver Business Journal reports that Colorado will get $1.4 million in federal stimulus money to study integrating a high-speed, inter-city rail line with Denver’s FasTracks mass transit rail system, part of $8 billion in high-speed rail grants announced Thursday by President Barack Obama.
The money, in the form of two grants, will go to the Colorado Department of Transportation. Colorado will match the money, for a total of $2.8 million.
Go to the Denver Business Journal to see the entire article.
Bloomberg reports that California will get $2.3 billion and Florida $1.3 billion to help build high-speed passenger-train service, the biggest winners among 31 states sharing $8 billion in rail grants from the U.S. economic stimulus package.
Most of the grants will go toward developing or laying the groundwork for 13 new high-speed rail corridors across the country, the Obama administration said in a statement.
The funding, from the $787 billion stimulus plan approved last year, is one of a number of programs President Obama will lay out in coming weeks aimed at spurring jobs, the administration said.
Statement on President Obama’s State of the Union Address
By John Horsley, Executive Director
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
“President Obama continues to show his strong support for infrastructure investment to provide good-paying jobs for Americans and to rebuild the transportation foundation that supports our economy.
“It was truly fitting that Rhode Island contractor Enrico DiGregorio was in the audience for the State of the Union address. The owner of DiGregorio Construction tells AASHTO that were it not for the recovery-funded projects his company has been involved with in his home state, he would not have been able to retain his current 100 employees and hire the 30 additional workers he added to the payroll last year.”
“It’s a gratifying feeling to be able to tell someone they can come back to work,” DiGregorio said. “The tough job is telling people hungry for work that you can’t hire them. Stimulus dollars have created real jobs that are helping real people.” (See DiGregorio’s interview at www.transportationtv.org.)
“Like DiGregorio, we urge Congress to keep the momentum going and invest in America’s transportation system. States are ready. Currently states have identified almost 10,000 additional transportation projects at a value of $79 billion that are waiting for the green light, if additional funds are provided.
“Through projects like these, state transportation departments have clearly led the way in creating good-paying jobs quickly under the economic recovery act. We’re prepared to go back to work again to support the economy and our way of life.”
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The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) is the “Voice of Transportation” representing State Departments of Transportation in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. AASHTO is a nonprofit, nonpartisan association serving as a catalyst for excellence in transportation.
USA Today reports that its quarterly survey of 50 economists indicates President Obama’s stimulus package saved jobs — but the government still needs to do more to breathe life into the economy.
Unemployment would have hit 10.8% — higher than December’s 10% rate — without Obama’s $787 billion stimulus program, according to the economists’ median estimate. The difference would translate into another 1.2 million lost jobs.
But almost two-thirds of the economists said the government should do more to spur job growth. Suggestions included increasing spending on infrastructure, suspending payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, enacting a flat tax on income and extending jobless benefits.
AASHTO Press Release
(Washington, D.C.)-This week, the Associated Press released a flawed analysis of the results of the economic stimulus spending on roads and bridges.
Its authors overlooked the 210,000 direct on-project transportation jobs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee determined were created by stimulus. And it argues that the 6,333 highway recovery projects under construction in America, valued at $15.2 billion, have had “no effect on local unemployment and only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry.”
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) strongly disagrees. In Texas, for example American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding is providing nearly one-fourth of the $1 billion needed for the critical, 8.4 mile, Dallas-Fort Worth Connector project.
150 direct planning and engineering jobs, including designers, construction engineers, and oversight engineers and technicians, are now employed on the project and approximately 400 additional direct jobs will be added next month, when construction begins. Are these jobs insignificant? Won’t they help to reduce the local unemployment rate and support hundreds of other jobs as workers make purchases and pay down mortgages? This is just one of 6,333 examples.
In its report, the AP concluded that money for road construction offers little relief to most contractors because they don’t work on transportation projects. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood’s corrected that in his blog posting this week titled “AP Misses the Transportation Stimulus Jobs Forest for the Trees.”
Sec. LaHood states that the highway and road construction industry totals about 258,000 jobs nationwide. “When we drill down to the transportation construction industry, the most appropriate basis for analysis, we find Recovery Act spending making a real difference in people’s lives,” LaHood said.
The construction sector is beleaguered. However a through analysis of stimulus spending on roads and bridges makes the case for greater infrastructure investment, not less.
States have identified 9,500 ‘Ready to Go’ transportation projects worth almost $70 billion that, if funded, will put thousands of additional construction workers back on the job. Every single job counts and when you add it up, investing in roads and bridges makes good sense.
The American Road and Transportation Builders Association disputed an Associated Press study of stimulus spending that claimed the influx of federal dollars had no effect on local unemployment rates. ARTBA said the report was based on an incomplete understanding of the construction industry.
“The truth is ARRA funding—as ARTBA members and economists have testified to Congress—has been the lifeline that has, thus far, kept much of the industry afloat during the economic downturn,” wrote Alison Premo Black, senior economist and vice president of policy for ARTBA. “To understand and appreciate this …
Associated Press reports that its study of President Barack Obama’s first stimulus including more than $20 billion for roads and bridges concludes the spending has had no effect on local unemployment rates, raising questions about his argument for billions more to address an “urgent need to accelerate job growth.”
An AP analysis of stimulus spending found that it didn’t matter if a lot of money was spent on highways or none at all: Local unemployment rates rose and fell regardless. And the stimulus spending only barely helped the beleaguered construction industry, the analysis showed.
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