I stumbled across a report the order day that literally stunned me. It was called "The Worst Roads in Michigan." Oh, I thought, that'll be all about Detroit and Flint.
Boy, was I shocked to see where Livingston County was on the list -- 16th out of Michigan's 83 counties in miles of roads rated as "poor."
We are a commuter county. We depend on roads to get to our jobs in other counties, but we have some of the worst roads in the state.
A report issued earlier this fall shows that Livingston County ranks 16th among Michigan’s 83 counties in the number of miles of roads that are in poor condition. According to the Michigan Infrastructure and Transportation’s report issued in October, Livingston County has 416 lane miles of roads that are rated as “poor.” That means 33 percent of our roads that are part of the federal aid system are “poor.” Livingston County’s percentage of poor roads is 50 percent higher than Wayne County’s 22 percent. And we are nearly double the percentage of poor roads compared to the city of Detroit’s 17 percent.
When you look at individual townships, the situation is even more appalling. In five of Livingston County’s 16 townships, nearly half or more of the federal aid system miles are in “poor” condition. And in Iosco Township, the figure is 96 percent. Some particular roads that carry large numbers of cars are in urgent need, such as Pettys Road in Hamburg Township. It’s clear that too much of our county is stuck in traffic jams, if not literally stuck in the mud.
This is simply unacceptable for a county that expects to see its population grow 80 percent by the year 2030.
Things aren't likely to get much better any time soon. According to a report from the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments, Livingston and the six other counties in Southeast Michigan have $70 billion in road maintenance and construction needs between now and 2030 and will have only $40 billion to pay for them. In other words, southeast Michigan counties on average will only have enough funding to meet 57 percent of our needs. This funding shortfall is partly due to the fact that Michigan has been among the bottom 10 states in the nation in per capita state and local road funding for more than 40 years. But it is also due to the fact that we are a donor state to the federal government. We receive back only 91 cents out of every dollar we spend in federal gas taxes.
This situation is a looming crisis for our commuter county. We need leadership to deal with it, and we need it now.
After receiving a suggestion (tip of the hat to Tom), I urged members of the Livingston County Commission, our township boards, and the Livingston County Road Commission to ask U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers to seek funding for Livingston County infrastructure needs in the stimulus package that the new Congress will begin working on when it convenes on January 3. Congressional leaders hope to have this package on President-elect Obama’s desk on the day he takes office, January 20. Therefore, speed is of the essence.
We should ask for funds to meet at least the following transportation needs:
--Funds to rehabilitate or reconstruct at least 50 miles of our “poor” roads. On average, it costs $300,000 per lane mile to rehabilitate a road and $950,000 per lane mile to reconstruct a road. Funds to rehabilitate or reconstruct 50 miles would take care of about one fourth of Livingston County’s unmet needs for the next 22 years.
--Funds to complete the study of the WALLY commuter rail line between Howell and Ann Arbor in order to relieve congestion on U.S. 23 and to avoid spending millions of dollars on widening the highway.
--Funds towards the design and construction of platforms and stations for WALLY.
We have other pressing infrastructure needs, too. We should also ask for:
--Funds for deferred maintenance of public schools.
--Funds for purchase of new buses for our local school districts.
The stimulus package is the ideal vehicle for addressing this looming crisis. The goal of the stimulus package is to put some 2.5 million people to work and to put them to work right now. And there is no better way to do that than with road construction. Every $1 of spending will create $1.50 of economic activity. That’s the jolt our businesses need. People need to be working in order to have money in their pockets to spend."
“Furthermore, The New York Times has reported that some $15 billion of the stimulus package will be for 'green' projects and certainly the WALLY commuter train would fall into that category. We should seek funding to get that project moving. And certainly many of the school projects would fall into the category of improving energy efficiency.
“These are not 'bridge to nowhere' projects. These are projects that are needed to keep our county’s infrastructure from crumbling even more.”
This is something that Democrats and Republicans can unite on. We need to stimulate our economy and we need to fix our roads. Let's work together to marry the two.
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