NewsOK
The Oklahoman Editorial
Published: July 15, 2011
“IT has certainly outlived its useful life.”
Gary Ridley, head of the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, said that about the elevated portion of Interstate 40 that crosses through Oklahoma City. The remark came six years ago, after rumblings in Washington, D.C., threatened to affect funding of the new I-40 Crosstown Expressway.
There have been other potential roadblocks to completion of the new Crosstown Expressway, which officials once hoped would be finished by 2010 and now has a target date of next year. One such hiccup occurred in 2008, when a shortage of Federal Highway Trust Funds resulted in a delay in bidding out a contract for some of the Crosstown's grading and surfacing work. “Grim news. It's not good,” Ridley said then.
And now there is more such news, in the form of a proposal in Washington to significantly reduce highway spending. The chairman of the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee wants to spend about 20 percent less on the next six-year authorization bill than was spent in the 2005 bill.
When federal stimulus money is removed from the equation, the proposed bill would reduce federal transportation spending by about one-third. For Oklahoma that would mean a cut of about $200 million per year in federal funds... FULL ARTICLE
Posted on
Fri, July 15, 2011
by John Cox