Why Is Rhode Island Building New Roads When Its Current Roads Are Falling Apart?
The residents of Rhode Island want their highways maintained. They want their bridges to be in good repair. Residents pay their taxes, pay tolls, and support initiatives to fund transportation, with the understanding that the state will properly maintain the roads and bridges they construct.
Sadly, this isn’t happening. Rhode Island residents are paying their taxes and tolls, and the state is collecting that money, but the state’s roads and bridges are not being maintained in the way that residents rightfully expect them to be.
More than 80% of Rhode Island’s non-interstate National Highways System (NHS) is in either poor or fair condition. Furthermore, the state leads the nation with the highest percent of rural roads with poor pavement condition. According to TRIP, a national transportation research nonprofit, driving on roads in need of repair cost Rhode Island motorists $620 million a year in additional car repairs and operating fees, or $823 per driver.
Rhode Island ranks last in the nation, 50th out of 50 states, in overall bridge condition. About 22% of the 1,162 bridges in Rhode Island are structurally deficient.
Rhode Island taxpayers are rightly upset about the condition of their roads and bridges, frustrated by the lack of care and attention given to this basic responsibility of the state. It is reasonable for residents to expect that state leaders, and the officials in charge of transportation policy who advise them, competently manage the systems they have built before they seek to expand them further. Nobody puts an addition onto their house when their roof is chronically leaking.
Yet, just a few weeks ago Rhode Island residents were told that their leaky transportation house is getting a new addition:
U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT) Director Peter Alviti and other state and local leaders today gathered on Phenix Avenue in Cranston to break ground for the $85 million Cranston Canyon Project.
The Cranston Canyon Project is an expansion project, widening five miles of roadway, adding a third lane, while also constructing a new bridge. While the official press release highlights rehabilitation and maintenance efforts that are included in the project, of the $78 million in non-admin project costs, widening projects constitute $41.4 million, or 53% of the total.
(Source: RIDOT.)
Instead of prioritizing the proper maintenance of Rhode Island’s transportation systems, transportation officials are spending the bulk of their resources on expansion. While more and more of the state’s roads and bridges fall into a state of disrepair, public officials continue to champion public investments that only add to the backlog of infrastructure to be maintained.
"Projects like this are why the Congressional delegation works so hard to land federal funding for infrastructure upgrades," Senator Whitehouse said. "I'm pleased federal dollars will help Rhode Islanders travel an important stretch of road more safely and efficiently, and glad to have partners like Senator Reed and Congressmen Langevin and Cicilline fighting with me in Washington to bring those dollars home."
Of the $85 million anticipated to be spent, the federal BUILD grant will pay for $21 million, about half of the cost of the expansion portion of the project. This means that, instead of a federally funded maintenance project, Rhode Island taxpayers are fully paying for the maintenance of their own bridges, paying all the project overhead costs, and then paying half of the system expansion. How is this a win for people who just want the road they drive to be maintained?
It’s not. The Cranston Canyon Project, and the federal BUILD grant that is enabling it, diverts Rhode Island taxpayer dollars from promised maintenance to system expansion. It will make the state’s long-term infrastructure funding problem worse. Sure, some bridges currently in disrepair will be fixed, but the state could have done that anyway without adding tens of millions of dollars in expansion to their already bloated inventory.
Rhode Island has already built more transportation infrastructure than the state has the capacity to maintain. There is no credible plan to maintain their existing road and bridge inventory, and new expansion projects—even when they attempt to masquerade as maintenance—only make that problem worse. They do damage to the state. They hurt everyone.
Rhode Island must stop doing this kind of transportation expansion project. Transportation officials must stop funding these kinds of projects, and the people running our public institutions must stop the internal pipeline that delivers them. We need to stop stealing from basic maintenance in order to pursue endless system expansion.
A stronger and more prosperous Rhode Island requires a true commitment to infrastructure maintenance. The Cranston Canyon Project is just more fiddling while Rome burns.
On this week’s episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck is joined by Beth Osborne, the director of Transportation for America, to discuss the Highway Trust Fund and how it affects federal and state transportation policies.