LANSING – The Michigan Department of Transportation issues rolling five-year plans for road construction in our state. Like nearly everything else related to construction in Michigan, the 2010-2014 MDOT Five-Year Transportation Program indicates that the wheels are coming off the state’s effort to keep smooth roads.

MDOT Director Kirk Steudle wrote in the plan that “motorists are driving less, and buying more fuel efficient vehicles and hybrids, leading to a $100 million decrease in gas tax revenue over the past five years. The bottom line is that MDOT is reaching a point of not being able to maintain its capital investments and the system reliability that Michigan’s economy needs, and residents expect.”

Michigan’s Five-Year Transportation Program would invest a total of $5.87 billion in state road work beginning this year – if federal revenue sharing money is factored in.  But that federal money is hardly a lock, and given the state’s precarious financial situation, it may never filter to our state.

Some of the lowlights of the report include:

*As it stands today, Michigan does not have sufficient state revenues to match all the available federal funds beginning in 2011 – a likely loss of $2.1 billion between 2011-2014 that would go to other states.

*Michigan will spend about $1.4 billion on road work and maintenance in 2010. But in each of the four years that follow, without a state gas tax increase, or without being able to match federal highway funds, our state will only on have about $600 million to spend each year.

*If that reduced five-year funding plan plays out according to current estimates, Michigan will support about 8,400 construction jobs per year – a drop of 7,000 jobs each year compared to fully funded plan-years.

The strategy to deal with the reduced funding, Steudle said, is to allocate 87 percent of road dollars to “pavement preservation, bridge and safety categories.” But the consequences of the reduced funding are significant: MDOT estimates that pavement conditions are expected to decline from 91 percent “good” in 2008 to 63 percent good in 2014. Even if current funding levels were maintained, MDOT says there would still be a “rapid decline” in pavement conditions without new funding (such as from a state gas tax increase).

To emphasize the roads crisis, Michigan’s roads were rated the second worst in the nation, according to a “Highway Report Card” released March 30 by Overdrive Magazine. Truck drivers did the rating. (Pennsylvania had the worst roads).

“Without increased transportation funding, MDOT will continue to eliminate projects throughout the state, they recently eliminated 243 projects across Michigan,” said Mike Nystrom, vice president of government and public relations for the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation Association. “Those projects represent hundreds of local jobs.”

Working with the Michigan Transportation Team, which includes organized labor representation,  the group calls for increasing raising revenue through increases in vehicle registration fees, user fees on gasoline and diesel fuel, and other new funding strategies.

“No more excuses, fix Michigan’s roads now!” Nystrom said.

THE 2010 CONSTRUCTION season will see the last of the big-time spending on road and bridge construction in Michigan, unless funding plans quickly change. Shown here is re-construction of the I-675 bridge deck over Michigan Ave. in Saginaw.

A TRADESMAN jackhammers an old support during construction of the M-59 & Opdyke Road bridge deck in Oakland County. Photos courtesy Jim Lemay MDOT Photo Lab