5 months ago
Half of the nation's worst roads are in counties that will only get about 20% of the stimulus money allocated by state and federal officials for street repairs. Although the worst roads are in just a handful of counties, they account for 11,000 miles of pavement so rough the government has branded them as unacceptable.
The problem is a byproduct of a stimulus package designed to spend as fast as possible to revive the economy. Many roads are in such bad shape that repairs would take too long and cost too much to qualify for funds, says John Barton, head of engineering for Texas' Department of Transportation.
The result is that counties with the worst roads won't get much more repair money than counties with better roads. The 74 counties with half of the nation's bad roads will split $1.9 billion, records show; counties with no major roads in bad shape will split about $1.5 billion.
Areas most in need may still get more money. About 70% of the stimulus highway money has been allocated so far.
Using the most recent records from the U.S. Department of Transportation, USA TODAY compared nearly $10 billion in stimulus-funded roadwork to a ranking of rough roads in counties across the country. Repair money is the biggest single slice of the $27 billion included in the stimulus for roads and bridges. The review found:
State officials acknowledge Detroit's roads are in dire need of work, but say they didn't have enough ready-to-go projects there.
The one project approved since will give the city only about $19 million, about as much as it will give rural Tioga County.
But state officials responsible for picking the stimulus projects say it often isn't possible or practical to focus on the worst roads first, even if that's what drivers expected. "The expectations in some places were different from the reality of the requirements for stimulus projects," Barton says. "We're going to have to live with a relatively bumpy roads for a while because we don't have an available fix."
Federal Highway Administration spokeswoman Cathy St. Denis disputed USA TODAY's analysis and said it's improper to compare stimulus spending to rough roads. "Objective reviews show that Recovery Act dollars are going to the communities that need it the most to repair roads and bridges in need of help," she said in a statement.
The Federal Highway Administration data analyzed by USA TODAY assesses the nation's highways based on how bumpy they are. That measurement, from 2007, is the only nationwide rating for road quality, and is routinely used in studies of the U.S. transportation system.
That measurement isn't perfect - it doesn't, for example, assess whether the road is structurally sound, or other issues engineers consider in deciding which roads should be fixed first - but it remains a "good indicator" of a road's condition, Barton said. Other experts agreed. Tennessee's chief highway engineer, Paul Degges, said the measure "generally correlates with bad roads."
Written by Brad HeathUSA TODAY & usatoday.com
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