States Delay Many More Projects Amid Highway Trust Fund Uncertainty

The number and value of delayed highway projects jumped this month, as more states said they cannot count on the federal funding share with the Highway Trust Fund’s authorization expiring again on May 31.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx told a March 19 infrastructure forum in Washington, D.C., that four states have already announced they were having to put a hold on projects as they wait for Congress to clear up the federal program uncertainty.

He said these are examples of how the repeated short-term extensions of the federal highway program have a negative economic impact for state planning and development.

 McMurry

Georgia Department of Transportation Commissioner Russell McMurry recently delayed 329 projects statewide that have an estimated value of $715 million, due to the uncertainty created by the HTF program deadline.

That total includes projects that were in preliminary engineering, ready for acquiring rights of way or ready for construction this year but not authorized due to the federal funding issue, GDOT said.

McMurry gave some of those details in a public forum March 12 in Gainesvile, Ga., the Gainesville Times reported.

“The impact of this large list of delayed projects becomes compounded with each day that we do not have a transportation funding bill, so we are very hopeful for a bill very soon,” Meg Pirkle, the Georgia DOT’s chief engineer, said in a statement to AASHTO Journal.

Wyoming Department of Transportation Director John Cox told a March 17 congressional hearing his agency has delayed 18 construction projects worth about $28.5 million, since the Highway Trust Fund that provides the federal share is currently authorized only through May 31.

“With the uncertainty of when – or even if – Congress will authorize the rest of the 2015 program, Wyoming and other cold-weather states may miss this construction year for a full third of our programs,” Cox said in his prepared remarks to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Besides delaying those projects in Wyoming, he said that having to wait more months for Congress to reauthorize the federal program “will also force us to advertise projects late in the construction season, resulting in less competitive bidding, less value for the public’s investment and the potential for delaying important and needed projects that will improve communities and their economies.”

Meanwhile, the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department pulled another five projects worth an estimated $27 million from a March bid-letting, Arkansas Online reports.

That comes on top of three projects worth $30 million that AHTD Director Scott Bennett had dropped from a January bid-letting, for at least $57 million in delayed Arkansas road construction projects so far this year, because their bills could come due at a time when the federal funding flow is not assured.

And there could be more to come, since AHTD has another bid round scheduled for April.

Tennessee in October became the first state to announce project delays related to the 2015 Highway Trust Fund reauthorization deadline. Since Tennessee is a pay-as-you-go state that cannot borrow, its DOT has to be able to count on funds before it can proceed with projects.

Tennessee Transportation Commissioner John Schroer delayed projects worth about $400 million – 12 projects that were ready for construction and 21 more that were poised for acquisition of rights of way.