Some NC road projects planned before stimulus (ACT)
Sep 28, 11:07 AM EDT
ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) — At first, the $13 million repaving of a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 26 in North Carolina wasn’t a stimulus project. Then it was. Now it may not be.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported Monday that the state Transportation Department had planned to use federal interstate aid for the Polk County project before Congress passed the stimulus package.
Other work also scheduled before the stimulus are now stimulus projects, including a bridge replacement in Cherokee County.
In picking projects already planned, the state is complying with the federal requirement for “shovel-ready” projects. DOT officials say money spent on those efforts will free up state funds for other work. But the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act also has a goal of creating jobs that would not have existed otherwise.
DOT officials say they were running low on money to pay for scheduled projects.
“Would they have been done? Possibly,” said Joel Setzer, division engineer for 10 western counties, “but something else wouldn’t have been done.”
State officials tentatively have approved returning the I-26 project to regular funding to avoid going over budget on stimulus money.
The road projects were slated as part of the state’s last major rewrite of its long-term transportation plan in June 2008. At that time, the state expected to take in $3.9 billion over the next year in transportation revenues like the taxes on fuel and car sales. It ended up $250 million short of that projection.
In northwest North Carolina a priority was to widen a mile of U.S. 421 in downtown Boone to curb congestion. But planning work ended last fall when the economy fell apart, said Mike Pettyjohn, division engineer.
Work has begun now, thanks to more than $17 million in stimulus money approved as one of the first awards. If not for that, Pettyjohn said he has no idea how long it might have been delayed.
The $479,000 bridge replacement in Cherokee County was another early award.
In the seven-county division around Asheville, engineers chose projects that either weren’t mentioned in last year’s transportation plan or were relegated by the plan to an unfunded future beyond 2015.
Division engineer Jay Swain said engineers didn’t want to supplant existing projects and had plenty of other needs, like repaving projects.
“They were on our radar, very high on our radar, and we were really just kind of looking for funds,” Swain said.
Eight miles of Interstate 40 in Buncombe County is due for pavement rehabilitation. Six miles of I-26 in the county is being resurfaced. Other crews will pour new concrete for the decks of 31 bridges in Buncombe and Madison counties at a cost of $13 million.
Sen. Martin Nesbitt, D-Buncombe, who is helping oversee the stimulus in the legislature, doesn’t fault officials for the different approaches.
“When you’re given 30 days to spend $800 million and tell them where its going, and it’s got to be shovel-ready, it’s going to be helter-skelter,” he said.
— Information from: The Asheville Citizen-Times, http://www.citizen-times.com
