Tom Warne Report, 10 October 2011
OKLAHOMA CITY – Governor Mary Fallin this week announced a new initiative to fix all 706 of the Oklahoma state highway system’s structurally deficient bridges by 2019. Her Bridge Improvement & Turnpike Modernization Plan calls for lawmakers to increase the amount of state revenue set aside for road and bridge repairs by $15 million a year and raise the road and bridge maintenance cap to $550 million to repair all of the state’s structurally deficient bridges by 2019 without raising taxes, tolls or fees.
“By the end of this decade, Oklahoma will be one of the top five states in the nation for well-maintained highway bridges,” Fallin said. Her plan also calls for projects that would significantly reduce congestion on the Creek and Kilpatrick turnpikes.
Additionally, Fallin will ask legislators to provide an increase to help hundreds of county bridge projects through the County Improvement for Roads and Bridges (CIRB) fund. The additions are generated by raising the annual ROADS fund increases to $56.7 million from $41.7 million, and raising the cap to $550 million from $435 million. Similarly, the counties would benefit from increases of about $25 million a year to the CIRB program, phased in over a three year period.
In 2006, Oklahoma topped national lists for the number of deficient bridges. At that time, nearly 1,200 of ODOT’s 6,800 bridges were considered structurally deficient. Since that time, ODOT has been able to repair or replace some of the worst bridges on its system and reduce that number to 706 thanks to increased state funding by the Legislature in recent years.
Under Gov. Fallin’s plan, ODOT expects to remove those remaining bridges off the list, and counties will be able to begin work on several hundred bridges.