PITTSTON TWP. - The majority of the $300 million that would be injected into state road and bridge projects in the first year of Gov. Tom Corbett's proposed transportation plan likely would go toward maintaining existing infrastructure, not the construction of new roads.
At a Focus 81 Committee meeting Tuesday, state Department of Transportation District 4 Director George Roberts said as critical as the proposed increase in transportation funding would be - an additional $1.8 billion by year five of the plan - it isn't even enough to match the $3.5 billion required to maintain the state's existing assets.
Instead of using the additional money to fund expansion projects, Mr. Roberts said it would be beneficial to first address the poor roads and structurally deficient bridges.
"Most of the work will be asset management-type work, to try and get back to an acceptable IRI (International Roughness Index) on our roadway system and continue to work on our structurally deficient bridge project," Mr. Roberts said.
Of Pennsylvania's approximately 40,000 state-owned highway miles, 8,452 are in poor condition based on the International Roughness Index - a standard for measuring pavement smoothness - according to a report by the state Transportation Funding Advisory Commission.
If there is no spike in transportation funding, the number of highway miles rated as poor is expected to jump to around 17,000 by 2020.
The proposed hike in transportation funding would derail the nearly five-year trend of an increase in poor state-owned highway miles, and eventually would drop the figure to less than 8,000 miles for just the fourth time since 1996, according to a graph provided at the meeting.
"Right now, we are just doing thin overlays on our roads," said Tom Lawson of Borton-Lawson Engineering. "You are going to have to rebuild the base eventually. You just can't put the Band-Aid on forever, or you are just going to have to do it so frequently it doesn't matter."
He said additional funding is necessary to address the increasing number of failing bridges and roadways, but also to offset the drop in revenue generated from the flat gas tax.
The use of more fuel-efficient vehicles is a key factor in the decrease, and revenue will continue to dip, he said.
"We can't depend on the gas tax solely in the future," Mr. Lawson said. "It's just not sustainable."
Contact the writer: miorfino@timesshamrock.com, @miorfinoTT on Twitter