Houghton Cty. road improvements among projects to be cut
By GARRETT NEESE, DMG WriterHOUGHTON - Two Houghton County road improvements on M-26 are among $740 million worth of projects slated to be cut from the Michigan Department of Transportation's five-year plan due to a lack of money.
A $2.49 million road reconstruction project in Laurium and a $3.29 million reconstruction project from Tamarack City to Hubbell joined 135 others for which the state cannot afford to provide a match for federal funds.
"We've been discussing for quite some time that we are facing a shortfall in funding," Ron DeCook, MDOT's director of governmental affairs, said Thursday. "It's finally come to the point where we've kind of reached that perfect storm."
That shortfall was created by declining gas tax revenues thanks to greater fuel efficiency and a drop in driving, DeCook said. On the other end, the boom in infrastructure spending in growing countries such as China and India has made materials such as steel and asphalt more expensive.
To that, DeCook said, you can add some of the oldest roads and bridges in the country.
"They were built to last 25 years, and they're still in existence today," he said.
The state will be unable to match $576 million in federal funds by 2011, growing to $700 million two years later, DeCook said.
The cancellation of the Hubbell project affects more than just the highway surface. A $6.5 million project to replace aging water lines in Hubbell was supposed to dovetail with the tearing up of the road, said Torch Lake Township Supervisor Brian Cadwell.
"This throws a monkey wrench in the works for sure," he said.
Cadwell said he would consult the project engineer to see how the water plan would be affected. But the loss of the road project is a definite setback for Hubbell, he said.
"That rebuild was going to be a pretty important project for the Hubbell area because that road is in bad shape, the sidewalks are in bad shape ... we're very disappointed," he said.
Laurium Village Administrator Ed Vertin wasn't surprised by the cutbacks. It's been an ongoing problem not just at the state level, but federally, he said, pointing to last year's $8 billion shortfall at the federal Department of Transportation.
While the federal government could pull money from the general fund, Vertin said, Michigan doesn't have enough.
"It's imperative to get the politics out of the way and solve the issue," he said. "Nobody likes gas tax, use tax, but it doesn't go to 'run the government.' It goes out for everybody's roads to be used. It gets spent back out there into hard infrastructure outlets."
A package of bills was introduced in the state House of Representatives that would, among other things, raise the state gas tax from 19 cents per gallon to a maximum of 34 cents over five years, and increase vehicle registration fees by 90 percent over five years. The tax on diesel fuel would also rise from 15 cents per gallon to 18.5 cents.
The increases would create an estimated $1.8 billion in revenue per year.
State Rep. Mike Lahti, D-Hancock, said he'd have to wait to see what the bills look like when they come out of committee. But he likes the idea.
"Good roads are essential for our state, whether it's business, running logging trucks, commercial trucks, cars, personal transportation, you need good roads to ride on," he said. "So we've got to pay for them ... we need to invest in our infrastructure."
If the changes aren't made, DeCook said, the state would lose about $600 million per year from the federal government.
"If we do this very gradually, we think it would have a very minimal impact on taxpayers, but it will protect our investment that we paid in our infrastructure, which is a very, very, important thing to do," he said.
Garrett Neese can be reached at gneese@mininggazette.com.
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Randy01
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06-05-09 12:57 PM
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Keep this up, and it won't be long before AAA and the rest of the Auto Clubs will be advising their members not to travel to Michigan.
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