By Greg Bishop
10-21-19
Gov. J.B. Pritzker unveiled Monday a multi-year plan to spend $23.5 billion on road and bridge projects that were included in Illinois’ $45 billion capital plan, which will be funded through tax and fee hikes.
The Rebuild Illinois plan enacted this summer doubled the state’s gas tax from 19 cents to 38 cents a gallon. Taxpayers have already paid more than $414 million in just two months, $200 million more than the year before. The plan also increased other driving fees. Such funds are going to roads and bridges in the plan.
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Pritzker detailed $23.5 billion in road and bridge spending specifics on Monday in Springfield. The multi-year plan’s detailed projects can be found at IDOT.Illinois.gov.
The plan covers more than 2,000 miles of roadway and 847 bridges.
Illinois Department of Transportation Secretary Omer Osman said state funding would be supplemented with about $9 billion from the federal government.
“And of course that’s going to give us the flexibility of matching any federal funding,” Osman said. “And even if we have another transportation bill coming out of [Washington] D.C., even if that goes up, we still have the ability to match that increased funding.”
Pritzker said the state is also using a federal Transportation Asset Management Plan standard.
“Many other states have been working toward that standard, we are for the first time working toward that standard,” Pritzker said. “What does that mean? It means we’re saving a lot of money for taxpayers as we’re focusing on our roads and bridges.”
The U.S. Department of Transportation said TAMP is “a strategic and systematic process of operating, maintaining, and improving physical assets, with a focus on engineering and economic analysis based upon quality information, to identify a structured sequence of maintenance, preservation, repair, rehabilitation, and replacement actions that will achieve and sustain a desired state of good repair over the lifecycle of the assets at minimum practicable cost.”
Illinois’ TAMP was accepted by the federal government in August.
“We look forward to working with IDOT as you implement the TAMP to achieve and sustain a state of good repair over the life cycle of both pavement and bridge assets and to improve or preserve the overall condition of the National Highway System,” U.S. Department of Transportation Division Administrator Arlene Kocher said.
No money has gone out from Illinois’ plan yet, but Pritzker’s administration said it will use pay-go funds for roads and bridges and borrowing through taxpayer-backed bonds for larger highway projects such as interchanges.
Laborers Local 477 representative George Alexander said the statewide infrastructure plan would put unions back to work.